Reflections of a Healthcare Leader in an Emerging Market in Europe: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic

The challenges of leading through the Covid-19 crisis have included not just remote staff members and customers but business coming to a standstill. Returning to the workplace has been fraught with restrictions, limitations and safety concerns. Leadership in the healthcare sector has been especially difficult, with pressures on already-limited resources, high infection-rates and death-rates, and increased need for total hygiene. One of our co-authors, experienced in the past as a leader of a large hospital and now advising international healthcare authorities, was facing another war zone. He had to listen to anyone with ideas of how to deal with the crisis; had considered unusual and new paths of action; had to act swiftly and with the conviction that any action was better than no action, with nearly everything based on improvisation, whilst surrounded by terrified patients and families and a lack of clarity from governments and the media.