Pakistani, US firms sign MoU to create leaders in health care

The Institute of Leadership Excellence (ILE), Pakistan, and American consulting firm Franklin Covey have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the training of healthcare professionals and improving leadership qualities of healthcare leaders in Pakistan to improve service delivery in the healthcare sector, enhance patients’ satisfaction at hospitals and help Pakistani hospitals become patient-friendly facilities.

Franklin Covey is a US-based international consulting and training firm that was established by the author of the world’s all-time bestseller “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, Stephen Covey. The company provides training and consultation services to people from different sectors, industries and areas across the world.

Speaking at the MoU signing ceremony, the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Indus Health Network (IHN), Dr Abdul Bari Khan, called for employing “leaders instead of managers” to run the healthcare facilities and lead the health sector in Pakistan, saying that lack of leadership had ruined the entire healthcare sector in the country.

“The poor state of healthcare in Pakistan is due to lack of leadership. Instead of managers, we need leaders to run the healthcare facilities and the entire healthcare sector in the country,” he said while speaking at the MoU-signing ceremony between Franklin Covey and the ILE for the training of Pakistani physicians and healthcare professionals at the Karachi School of Business and Leadership on Saturday.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s senior leader Andleeb Abbas and a certified Franklin Covey master trainer in Pakistan, Steven Fitzgerad, general manager of the Franklin Covey, US, international patient safety expert Prof Dr Paul Barach, ILE executive director Dr Zakiuddin Ahmed, Frakling Covey Pakistan representative Maryam Wazirzada, Haroon Qasim, Syed Jamshaid Ahmed and others also spoke, while a large number of senior physicians, surgeons and academicians attended the ceremony.

Speaking as the keynote speaker at the ceremony, Dr Abdu Bari Khan felicitated the ILE leadership on bringing Franklin Covey to Pakistan and said that by training and producing leaders in the healthcare sector, many of the issues in the area could be resolved in the country where both the public and private sectors had miserably failed to provide services to the people.

Citing the establishment of the Indus Health Network, he said it was like a dream to provide quality health services to the poor people free of charge, but within a short span of a few years it had evolved into a network of 12 hospitals across Pakistan with an annual budget of $130 million, where hundreds of thousands of patients were treated annually in a paperless environment.

PTI MNA and Core Committee member Andleeb Abbas said that although healthcare institutions are facing a financial crunch at the moment, still there are some which are performing extraordinarily and providing best healthcare services to people due to the presence of highly skilled, trained and gifted leaders proving as a blessing for the poor people of Pakistan.

“In this economic crunch, especially in the healthcare and most importantly in the hospitals, leadership matters even more. There are some leaders who are able to create smiles on the faces of poor patients and their attendants despite facing the financial constraints. We require such leaders at all of our healthcare facilities to steer these institutions out of crisis,” she said and congratulated the ILE on signing the MoU with Franklin Covey to train Pakistani healthcare professionals to learn skills for effective performance of their institutions and departments.

Eminent patient safety expert Prof Dr Paul Barach spoke about adverse events at healthcare facilities and discontent doctors who were committing suicide even in countries like the United States.

He added that the world was facing an epidemic of “unhappy doctors and nurses” who needed help, support and training to cope with the day-to-day stress and problems they were facing.

Steven Fitzgerald, in his presentation, spoke about the services offered by the Franklin Covey in the area of leadership training, and said in the area of healthcare, they had worked with many healthcare facilities in the United States of America and other countries of the world where patients’ satisfaction improved to a large extent following the training of their leaders by the Franklin Covey experts.

He hoped that the memorandum of understanding signed between Franklin Covey and ILE would be highly beneficial for not only the healthcare providers but would also improve the service delivery and patients’ satisfaction at the healthcare facilities in Pakistan.