title: Bridging the gap: academic and practitioner perspectives to identify early career competencies needed in healthcare management.
abstract: Healthcare organizations, health management professional associations, and educational institutions have begun to examine carefully what it means to be a fully competent healthcare executive. As a result, an upsurge in interest in healthcare management competencies has been observed recently. The present study uses two critically important groups of informants as participants: health management practitioners and faculty. Using the nominal group process, health administrators identified critical environmental issues perceived to have an impact on healthcare executives today. These issues were employed in a card-sort assessment and a survey was administered to a nationwide sample of health administrators. These data were used to create a map and five clusters of the environmental landscape of healthcare management. These clusters of environmental issues provided a framework for having groups of administrators and faculty members generate and rank perceived behavioral competencies relative to each cluster. Implications for healthcare management practice, education, and research are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Services Administration, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Webb Building 5th Floor, 1530 3rd Avenue South, Birmingham, AL 35294-3361, USA. shewchuk@uab.edu
authors.forename: Richard M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Shewchuk
authors.forename: Stephen J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: O'Connor
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Fine
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003625:Data Collection; D005178:Faculty; D005260:Female; D006270:Health Facility Administrators / Q000193:education*; D006739:Hospital Administration / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011361:Professional Competence / Q000592:standards*; D014481:United States