Need for Empathetic Leadership in Indian Healthcare System: An Exploratory Study Probing Patients’ Satisfaction

Abstract

The current healthcare landscape in India is jeopardised with multiple challenges, varying from resource constraints to ensuring quality patient care. A critical aspect of leadership, Servant Leadership, which emphasizes on empathy, ethical conduct, and selfless approach, presents an evidence-based framework for enhancing patient satisfaction. The existing literature highlights a substantial research gap in exploration of healthcare quality and patients’ outlook on care delivery. Therefore, the need to explore relationships between servant leadership and patient satisfaction cannot be overemphasized, especially in context of high-populous, developing countries, like, India. Consequently, the primary objective of study is to examine the critical impact of the construct, servant leadership on various aspects of the construct, patients’ satisfaction. The contextual set-up of the study is Tier 3 cities, in India, thus exhibiting all the regulatory challenges and resource constraints. Further, the study utilises Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to examine the proposed hypotheses.