Leading through Crisis in Health care. Management Case Study Assignment

Leading through Crisis in Health Care
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Institutional Affiliation
Leading through Crisis in Health care
The Case Study
Health is a primal necessity for human existence in modern times. Amidst this certainty, there is also a never worse time that a pandemic could hit the globe considering the role that globalization has played over the recent years. The world has become a global village, meaning that a single happening at a certain location could have worldwide impact. This scenario defines the present prevailing COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic is proving to be one of the most significant the healthcare sector has faced in 21st Century surpassing Ebola scare (OECD, 2020). It is an infectious disease that is highly transmissible. The rate of spread and the number of casualties are consequences that highlight the dangerous nature of this pandemic placing healthcare leader in precarious situations where they have to articulate the best response mechanisms to guide people out of this predicament.
It was in late December 2019 and, more precisely, on the eve of the New Year when a pneumonia of unknown cause was detected, reported to the World Health Organization Country Office in the People’s Republic of China. This occurrence was in the Wuhan province in China. The number of patients with the pneumonia had risen to 41 patients by early January 2020 and were already admitted in various hospitals across the country. Despite its exponential spread, many stakeholders including political leaders disregarded the gravity of the situation leading to its presence in various places across the globe. This result was amidst constant intelligence reports providing ominous, classified warnings of the same (Harris, Miller, Dawsey, & Nakashima, 2020).
The lockdown measures in Wuhan stabilized the spread in the Asian country, but then global air transport had facilitated its spread to all continents. 146 countries had the virus by mid-March is doubling the number of patients as a result of super-spreading events including those held for sporting reasons (Anderson, Heesterbeek, Klinkenberg, & Hollingsworth, 2020). Community transmission became the next method of transmission with approximately 2 million cases and casualties at about 125,000 by April 15 (Grossling, Scott, & Hall, 2020). Consequently, countries have enacted lockdowns, social distancing, and closure of learning institutions and businesses as well as the postponement of events. Nevertheless, health practitioners and more importantly, its leadership bear a significant burden of steering the entire global community from this threat and guarantee their wellness.
According to Nyenswah, Engineer, and Peters (2016), a health pandemic, such as the COVID-19 has four phases which include “crisis recognition and early mobilization, the emergency phase, the declining epidemic, and the long tail.” In all of these situations it is up to the leader to ensure that they manage the prevailing circumstances well. The first step towards this direction is creating external partnerships with the community. It is very difficult for healthcare institutions to handle the extremities of this virus single-handedly. Besides, the pandemic fails to adhere to organizatio...