Leadership characteristics for interprofessional collaboration in China

To explore the perceptions of health professionals and educators regarding the characteristics of leadership that they believed were required for successful interprofessional education and interprofessional collaboration initiatives in China.

Leadership is a key competency in the successful implementation of any collaborative initiative in healthcare. However, there are few studies about leadership characteristics how these facilitate interprofessional collaboration in health care, especially in China.

Data for this secondary analysis came from a qualitative study of Interprofessional Team Development in China. Grounded theory methods were used to analyze fifteen semi-structured interviews from the original study.

The three leadership characteristics extracted that facilitated interprofessional collaboration were: 1) serving as a role model of Junzi (according to Confucianism the idea person); 2) initiating and maintaining collaboration; and 3) showing benevolence to all team members during interprofessional collaboration. One overarching category that surfaced throughout the interviews was that leaders who behaved in ways congruent with typical Chinese cultural expectations for leadership would be most effective.

This study describes the characteristics of leadership for interprofessional collaboration, providing directions for training and cultivation of healthcare professionals and workers so that they are better prepared for and work more effectively in interprofessional collaborative practice.