Leadership Perspectives From Respiratory Therapy Leaders

Background: Perspectives on leadership vary vastly and are based on many factors. Often, there is a disconnect between leadership perceptions and staff perceptions of leadership. Uncovering the disconnect in the leader/follower perception differences can support successful leadership that translates into high-performing teams. In respiratory care, this is especially important, as staffing challenges and high levels of burnout plague the healthcare environment and associates’ careers. We aim to describe how respiratory therapists currently in leadership positions perceive leadership skills and behaviors. Methods: We performed a post-hoc, qualitative, analysis using an inductive approach to identify themes within the unstructured comments provided by the respondents to an IRB approved survey of respiratory therapy leaders sent in July 2023. The research team analyzed the specific comments from the respondents to generate broad generalizations and search for trends. Five researchers (JC, SS, KJR, JJ, and BS) conducted thematic analysis in 2 stages: open coding and axial coding. Results: The original survey yielded 124 survey responses and 54 free-text responses. Two independent analyses were conducted on participants’ responses: comments from questions regarding specific aspects of leadership were analyzed together, while comments from an open-ended response question were analyzed separately. Analysis of the comments related to specific areas of leadership resulted in 6 overarching themes: business competence, relationships, mentoring, strategic thinking, personal development, and clinical competence. Analysis of the unstructured, open-ended comments indicated that leaders were concerned about leadership challenges from both an organizational and personal lens. Conclusions: Themes from this post-hoc analysis identify areas of leadership growth as perceived by respiratory therapy leaders. While clinical competence was identified by the survey respondents as a relevant skill, several other attributes and skills, such as relationship-building and strategic thinking, were identified as important for effective leadership. Further research must be done to compare themes from RT leaders to themes identified by staff RTs and organizational leaders RT leaders report to fully understand opportunities.