RESUMO
OBJECTIVES: The purpose of the study is to identify the leadership practices of Psychiatrists in the National Center for Mental Health, which would help in developing a subspecialty training of Administrative Psychiatry in the Philippines. Specifically we will describe the demographic profile of the psychiatrists at the National Center for Mental Health and how they view themselves as a leader as well as compare the leadership practices between Consultant and Residents in training.METHODOLOGY: This is a descriptive study that included all the residents in training and consultants of NCMH employed from July to December 2013, using the Leadership Practices Index (LPI), a 30-item questionnaire that enables individuals and organizations to measure their leadership competencies and act on their discoveries, Measures of central tendency, means and medians were computed using the Epi Info 7 software. Means of each LPI statement with its corresponding LPI practice were calculated and ranked. The responses of residents in training were compared to those of the consultants for each LPI statement.RESULTS: Forty-five of the 53 psychiatrists-19 of whom were consultants and 26 were residents in training-responded to the questionnaires and were included in the statistical analysis. Thirty-eight percent were males & 62% were females. Twenty two (48.9%) were in the age range of 31-40 years old. Twenty six (57.8%) have been employed 4 years or less at NCMH. Fifty-three percent never had any leadership training. Psychiatric consultants and residents in training ranked the same 3 Items as their top choices: Item 14 i.e. "I treat others with dignity and respect", the highest (mean score of 8.74 for consultants 8.69 for residents), Item 5 i.e. "I praise people with job well done" (8.13 for consultants, 8.31 for residents), and Item 4 i.e. "I develop cooperative relationship among people I work with" (8.37 for consultants, 8.23 for residents). The 2 groups differed in what they least practiced: Item 12 i.e. "I appeal to others to share an exciting dream of the future" with lowest score of 6.42 among consultants while, psychiatric residents i training ranked Item 13 i.e. "I search outside the formal boundaries of my organization for innovative ways to improve what we do" with a low score of 5.85. Of all the leadership practices Enable others to act, which is strengthening others and fostering collaboration in the workplace (47.84) as well as Encourage the heart i.e. giving encouragement and recognition to others (46.13) were the top 2 practices frequently seen among all psychiatrists of NCMH. The least practiced were Challenge the process- seizing initiative and exercising outsight to make things better (40.84)- and Inspire a vision- envision the future and show how common interests can be fulfilled (39.8). When compared to worldwide scores those of the psychiatrists in NCMH were only in the 20th-40th percentile.CONCLUSION: The low scores of both the residents in training and consultants when compared to worldwide percentiles indicate the need for further leadership training for both groups. But as expected when comparing the scores of residents in training and consultants of NCMH, the latter had higher scores for all 5 areas of leadership as expected.