Characteristics of the Best Healthcare Administrators and Managers

Healthcare managers ensure the business operations of a healthcare facility run smoothly. To be successful in this position, you need the ability to build relationships with others, solve problems, and make sound decisions. You should also be passionate about healthcare administration and love what you do. Do you have these important traits?

1. A Passion for Healthcare

Whatever role you have in the healthcare system, your end goal should be quality patient care. If you’re passionate about helping others, becoming a healthcare manager might be a good career path. Passion leads to success—when you care about your job, you work hard to do well. You also create a positive and healthy environment for patients and staff. And your passion can be contagious. When others see that you love your work, it can motivate them to go the extra mile for others too.

2. Compassion for Patients

Ultimately, your work impacts patients, so you need empathy and compassion. Keep your patients and their loved one top of mind in everything that you do. Your compassion can shape the workplace culture too, extending to staff. The golden rule goes a long way to make everyone’s life better.

3. Ability to Solve Problems

you work in healthcare, you’ll encounter day-to-day puzzles, challenges, and problems. You might need to cover the shift of a nurse who called out sick or help a patient understand their benefits. Or you might need to pitch in to address facility-wide staffing shortages that could impact patient care. To be adept at solving problems, you need to keep a cool head and think critically and logically. What’s the easiest, most effective solution to the problem at hand?

4. Excellent Interpersonal Skills

As a healthcare manager, you will communicate with lots of different people, from nurses and doctors to patients and families. It’s important that you’re clear, patient, and appropriate to your audience. For example, you might use technical and medical terms with doctors, but you should use laymen’s terms with patients. You should also listen to others and use your people skills to build strong relationships with your teammates.

5. Ethical Judgment and Decision Making

Your job is to ensure that your facility provides excellent care, while remaining in compliance with local, state, and federal laws. You need to know the laws and how to make ethical decisions that abide by them. You may be faced with conflicts, such allocating limited resources, disclosing medical errors, or reacting to cybersecurity threats. Whatever the challenge, you need to remain honest and ethical. Every decision you make should consider whether you’re doing the right thing.

6. Ability to Delegate

You might have a variety of skills and be able to handle a large volume of work, but you can’t—and shouldn’t—do it all. You need to have the discipline to pass work off on to others. Teach your team and trust them to do the work they are trained to do. And as you assess their skills, you’ll be able to know their strengths and weaknesses so you can determine who can take on what task.

7. Open to Lifelong Learning

The healthcare industry is always changing, and there will always be new skills to acquire and new methodologies to learn. Be a student of life and your profession. You should be open to new ideas and methods of accomplishing your tasks.

If you have these 7 traits, you might be a great fit for a career in healthcare administration. At Charter College, we offer an online Bachelor of Science in Healthcare Administration that can prepare you for entry-level work in the field. Where could it take you? Call 888-200-9942 or fill out the form to find out.