Skills to Develop Before Going Into Healthcare Administration

If you want to excel as a healthcare administrator, it’s a good idea to go in with a certain set of skills that will help you thrive in your new role. Many of these skills are less about the operations of a hospital and more about what it takes to collaborate effectively with a room full of people you don’t know — at least not at a personal level.

In this article, we talk about skills to develop before going into healthcare administration.

Leadership

In office settings, there are hierarchies based on title and those based on behavior. Regardless of what position you enter the hospital administration with, people with leadership skills can always leverage that factor to have their ideas considered and implemented.

Being a workplace leader doesn’t even necessarily mean that you want to work as a supervisor. It simply means that you are the sort of person others go to for insights and opinions. Leadership ability is great from a purely productive standpoint and will make you stand out on the promotion track.

Very nice. But how can I develop this magical charisma that you are referring to?

True. Many leadership qualities are innate. However, many are not. A survey revealed that only about 10% of people are natural leaders. Everyone else learns leadership qualities over time. Be kind, helpful, and always ready to share an idea.

In workplaces, making valuable contributions is always the best way to stand out.

Communication

Communication is the lifeblood of any productive office. You need to be able to articulate your thoughts and actions in a way that is concise, productive, and collaborative.

That means developing the ability to tell people what you think confidently and with kindness.

It also means being able to listen.

Everyone in office workplaces is there to make a contribution. When they can’t do that, the results are disastrous. A study showed that as much as 86% of workplace failures are the result of poor communication.

Good communication, by contrast, has been shown to boost productivity by as much as 25%.

How can you hone your communication skills? Fortunately, this is something that can be practiced every day. Work on being clear in your speech and active in your listening. When you send emails and text messages, give them a second read-through.

Is meaning obscured in a downpour of unnecessary words? Is everything the other person needs to know included in the message?

Personal communications as a rule don’t have to be as efficient as workplace messages. Still, practicing at home will help get you ready for game day.

Problem-Solving

Problem-solving is an important skill in any office. In the hospital setting, it’s even more important. During the height of Covid, when there were more patients than there were ICU beds, it was the administration that had to solve the problem.

Hospital administrators are still hard at work, problem-solving staffing issues, and other problems that impact a hospital’s ability to run at full capacity.

Problem-solving is a soft skill that more or less stems from the abilities described above. To withstand the pressures of an emergency you will need to be able to lead and communicate effectively. The only difference is that you’ll be doing it with the pressure turned up.

Technology

Digital technology has become an important part of hospital administration and overall operations. You don’t need to know how to code the hospital website. You do need to be able to:

• Use virtual communication tools: Many hospitals use collaboration tech suites to handle communications, send work from employee to employee, and make schedules. These tools certainly don’t take a special degree to use, but they can come with a fairly steep learning curve for the previously uninitiated.
• Understand and interpret data: To be clear, data-related jobs do require their own degrees. You do not need one of these degrees to work as a hospital administrator. It will be someone else’s job to collect and organize operational data. However, you should be able to interpret this information, make conclusions, and offer insights. Data competence will increase the value of your contributions and make you stand out.
• Implement best cyber security practices: Hospitals are frequent targets for cyber attacks. They also have an extremely high standard when it comes to protecting information. Consider it your constant responsibility to be on the lookout for, and protected from cyber threats.

The hospital may provide training on some or all of the above-mentioned skills. Take full advantage and try to learn these skills as best you can. They are a vital part of modern office life.