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Research Article: Experiences of Frontline Managers during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Recommendations for Organizational Resilience

Date Published: 2024-02-04

Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a global health crisis directly impacting the healthcare system. Healthcare leaders influence and shape the ability of an organization to cope with and recover from a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Their actions serve to guide and support nurses’ actions through unpredictable health service demands. The purpose of this paper was to examine frontline managers’ experiences and organizational leadership responses that activated organizational resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to learn for ongoing and future responses to healthcare crises. Fourteen managers participated in semi-structured interviews. We found that: (1) leadership challenges (physical resources and emotional burden), (2) the influence of senior leader decision-making on managers (constant change, shortage of human resources, adapting care delivery, and cooperation and collaboration), and (3) lessons learned (managerial caring behaviours and role modelling, adaptive leadership, education and training, culture of care for self, and others) were evidence of managers’ responses to the crisis. Overall, the study provides evidence of managers experiences during the early waves of the pandemic in supporting nurses and fostering organizational resilience. Knowing manager’s experiences can facilitate planning, preparing, and strengthening their leadership strategies to improve work conditions is a high priority to manage and sustain nurses’ mental health and wellbeing.

Introduction:
The World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, to be a global pandemic on 11 March 2020 [1]. The urgent need to respond to the pandemic placed unprecedented demands on healthcare systems in Canada and globally by challenging regional and organizational capacity for containing the outbreak, rationing of healthcare supplies, infection control, and information management, placing intense pressure on frontline managers and staff to make difficult decisions while working under demanding…

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