ABSTRACT
‘Complexity, chaos, high rates of change, serious safety and quality issues, and workforce shortages in health care are some of the reasons why clinical leadership is important.’ Joseph & Huber (2015).Increasingly, Practice Education is involved in the early stages of managing an emerging crisis- historically this has not always been the case. We describe key elements used to succeed and in what ways these positively impacted on the teams.Arguably, clinical leadership in nursing education reflects that described by Joseph and Huber (2015);‘the process of influencing point-of-care innovation and improvement in both organizational processes and individual care practices to achieve quality and safety of care outcomes.’Necessity, combined with strong senior leadership during the initial stages of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, led to the Lead Practice Education team taking up leadership positions across the trust to ensure that teams were clinically supported with effective, responsive nursing education. This re-modelling of the team, coupled with adaptations to workstreams enabled a singular focus on clinical nursing. Whether through upskilling and refreshing those in non-ward based roles, disseminating changeable infection control advice or developing education plans for emerging conditions such as PIMS-TS, the leadership of this team was highly effective and well received.Since this time, Lead Practice Educators have been called upon to support the delivery of high flow humidified oxygen to more patients transferring from ICU, and most recently in supporting the Parenteral Nutrition intravenous lines crisis. The ‘traditional’ educational approach, combining clinical leadership with compassion and common sense utilised the following key elements;Rapid Training Needs AnalysisWide organisational reachRapid translation of policy into practiceClinical credibility and visibilityJoseph L, Huber DL. Clinical leadership development and education for nurses: prospects and opportunities. J Healthc Leadersh 2015;7:55–64. https://doi.org/10.2147/JHL.S68071 accessed 30/07/21
ABSTRACT
On 5 March 2020, South Africa recorded its first case of imported COVID-19. Since then, cases in South Africa have increased exponentially with significant community transmission. A multisectoral approach to containing and mitigating the spread of SARS-CoV-2 was instituted, led by the South African National Department of Health. A National COVID-19 Command Council was established to take government-wide decisions. An adapted World Health Organiszion (WHO) COVID-19 strategy for containing and mitigating the spread of the virus was implemented by the National Department of Health. The strategy included the creation of national and provincial incident management teams (IMTs), which comprised of a variety of work streams, namely, governance and leadership; medical supplies; port and environmental health; epidemiology and response; facility readiness and case management; emergency medical services; information systems; risk communication and community engagement; occupational health and safety and human resources. The following were the most salient lessons learnt between March and September 2020: strengthened command and control were achieved through both centralised and decentralised IMTs; swift evidenced-based decision-making from the highest political levels for instituting lockdowns to buy time to prepare the health system; the stringent lockdown enabled the health sector to increase its healthcare capacity. Despite these successes, the stringent lockdown measures resulted in economic hardship particularly for the most vulnerable sections of the population.