This issue of Chronicles of Healthcare and Narrative Medicine wishes to deal with good examples of leadership in healthcare.
We found from the research Life in Health Organisations available at www.medicinanarrativa.eu, in the narratives, that a point of fragility in the health service was that of the almost total absence of ‘recognition’ given to one’s collaborators. It is on that ‘almost’ that we focused our efforts, to try to interview examples, albeit amidst many difficulties of budget, resources and time, that we consider to be effective leaders.
Starting with that very sore point, ‘recognition’. We are animal beings, we forget this all too often, and what is more, mammals: and so the first glance as newborns of those who reacquaint us is our mother, or any other adult who looks at us and smiles at us, taking us in their arms. As Paul Ricoeur, philosopher of Recognition, writes, first of all, recognition is identification. It is the Other that is the reason why we exist, work, love: without the Other we could not even recognise our own love. And so in a functioning health organisation, the Recognition that arrives from the patient – as demonstrated in our research – is an excellent result, but not sufficient. That almost absent, on the part of the management can and must be transformed into almost present, to the point of being present. In organisations as fatigued and tired as those post Covid and an average age of doctors of 54, recognition remains an impressive and low-cost motivational lever. To realise that one’s co-workers are there, to praise them in public, to support them, to encourage their continuing education, to thank them for the time they are giving, to give them space to speak without the threat of unconscious retaliation.
This is the Recognition that, if implemented on a continuous basis, can also reinforce each employee’s self-awareness.
This is why we have included several readings in this issue on the very theme of recognition: Recognition is also Reciprocity. Ricoeur insists on identifying the engine of reciprocity of recognition in love and gift. It is this that is the real engine of organisations.
