‘Shadowing as a technique for leadership development for healthcare professionals: a qualitative study.’

Abstract

Title: ‘Shadowing as a technique for leadership development for healthcare professionals: a qualitative study.’

Background: Healthcare professionals have an important role in providing high quality and cost-effective care. However, leadership is barely part of daily activities, because of a variety of reasons. There are successful leadership programs that include different techniques to develop leadership, including a small part of the programs that contain shadowing as a technique. However, there is little insight into the experiences and the contribution of shadowing to the leadership development of healthcare professionals.

Research question: What are the experiences of healthcare professionals with the learning technique shadowing in the development of their leadership?

Method: A general qualitative design is used to explore these experiences. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposeful sample of twelve healthcare professionals who completed the course ‘Leadership in healthcare’ and shadowed a leader in healthcare. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis.

Results: Most participants indicated shadowing contributed to their leadership development, because they gained understanding in leadership and skills through shadowing. In their current practice, most participants experience an informal leadership role. They considered lifelong learning as important to be able to show leadership throughout their career. Leadership development could only took place when certain conditions were secured, such as openness, showing natural behavior by the shadowee and having theoretical frameworks to apply into practice.

Conclusion: Healthcare professionals experience shadowing as a positive and informative method to develop leadership. Shadowing gave professionals the opportunity to develop leadership in direct practice.

Recommendations: Having insight in the concept of leadership to be able to make the right choice for the right leader is important to further explore. Further research is also needed to explore on the basis of which criteria a leader should be choosen.