| Summary: | <p> Leadership implies followership, for without followers, there would be no true leaders. Followership has often been viewed in a negative fashion given the unidirectional nature of hierarchical power. Traditionally, a follower was assessed as unable to lead because of the assumption that a leader’s engagement is active and a follower’s engagement is passive. The word follower often advocates obedience and compliance in the minds of many and such a person may therefore be unfit for modern professional leadership discussions. However, assessing professional views of the term follower may provide insight for future leadership discussions, by understanding that followers get work done by working with other followers and leadership suggests the need for relational coordination with followers. This dissertation sought to advance the study of followership by examining the relational coordination of patient care through a study of hospital medicine. A hospitalist is generally thought of in terms of “service” (patient care), which is included in the literature on good followership. Hospitalists, as practicing physicians, are scientifically trained to possess the critical thinking skills that correspond to the Y-axis of Kelley’s Followership model. However, their training is to act independently without the intentional engagement (X-axis of Kelley’s model) of their interprofessional team members. This research detected a statistically significant relationship between relational coordination scores and followership types in the exemplary hospitalist followership type subscale of engagement with respect to other hospitalists and nurse managers. Additionally, there was a statistically significant relationship between relational coordination scores and followership types in the pragmatic hospitalist followership type subscale of critical thinking as related to case managers. Of the five followership types (exemplary, conformist, pragmatic, passive, and alienated), three types were eliminated from the analysis for the following reasons. For hospitalists, there were no conformist followers, there were no alienated follower hospitalists, and there was only one hospitalist who met the criteria for being a passive follower. As a result, it is more accurate to state that <i>this research found a statistically significant relationship in relational coordination of hospitalists who are exemplary and pragmatic followers.</i></p>
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