Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the world of leadership. Every healthcare professional—front-line staff and leaders alike—adapted their work to confront this virus. The contributions of clinical leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic are unique and important. Experiences of clinical leadership reinforce the critical nature of leadership strategy, quality improvement principles, and commitment to integrated, whole-system quality. Clinical leaders, possessing the dual responsibility of front-line care and system-level leadership, hold critical insights regarding change in healthcare organizations as a whole. In their pandemic response, clinical leaders demonstrated key leadership characteristics that required individual growth and facilitated team cohesion: communicating with consistency and humanity; being the first to try; attending to burnout and moral injury; and building bridges to strengthen the overall response. John Kotter’s landmark book, Leading Change, provides an anchoring framework for examining the experiences and strategies of clinical leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic.
