Which is an Example of a Competency in Health Care Management?
Feb. 5, 2026
The question “which is an example of a competency in health care management?” opens the door to understanding the complex skill sets that drive excellence in today’s health care organizations. Health care managers, nursing leaders, and administrators need far more than basic administrative abilities—they require a sophisticated blend of clinical knowledge, business acumen, leadership capabilities, and technological fluency to navigate an increasingly demanding health care landscape.
From the bedside to the boardroom, health care leaders face unprecedented challenges: evolving regulatory requirements, workforce shortages, shifting reimbursement models, and the integration of artificial intelligence into clinical workflows. The competencies required to succeed in this environment have expanded dramatically, demanding continuous learning and adaptation from health care professionals at every level.
Direct Answer: Example of a Competency in Health Care Management
An example of a competency in health care management is effective communication and relationship management. This competency enables health care leaders to convey information clearly, build productive relationships across teams, and foster collaboration—all of which are vital for operational efficiency, patient safety, and high-quality care delivery. Communication competency includes active listening, translating complex clinical information for different audiences, providing constructive feedback, and facilitating difficult conversations that drive organizational improvement.
Why Competency Management Matters More Than Ever
Here’s the reality facing health care organizations in 2026: you’re expected to deliver exceptional patient care with limited resources, navigate constant regulatory changes, retain staff in a competitive market, and demonstrate measurable outcomes—all simultaneously. The competencies your health care managers and clinical leaders possess directly determine whether your organization thrives or struggles under these pressures.
But understanding which competencies matter is only half the equation. The real challenge is developing, assessing, and sustaining these capabilities systematically across your entire workforce. That’s where technology designed specifically for health care makes the difference.
Creative Health Care Insight (CHCI) is revolutionizing how health care organizations approach competency management. CHCI has created MyCHCI—a cloud-based platform designed by health care professionals specifically for health care organizations. What sets CHCI apart isn’t just innovative technology; it’s exclusive access to the frameworks that nursing leaders have trusted for decades, including co-designing their platform with Donna Wright, the undisputed authority on competency assessment in nursing.
If you’re part of hospital leadership as a Director of Nursing, CNO, or nursing professional development leader, you already know Donna Wright’s name. Her competency assessment model has shaped how health systems approach clinical competency for over 30 years. CHCI is the ONLY platform authorized to offer the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™—giving organizations exclusive digital access to the gold standard in nursing competency management.
The Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™: A Bottom-Up Framework
For over three decades, the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™ has been the gold standard in nursing professional development. Her frameworks have shaped how thousands of health care organizations approach clinical competency.
What makes The Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™ revolutionary is its fundamental shift in perspective. Wright noticed health care teams being inundated with generalized mandatory modules and computer-based programs that lacked connection to what professionals really needed to do their jobs each day. Her solution? A bottom-up approach built on three essential pillars:
The Three Pillars of the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™
Ownership: Everyone collaborates to identify what makes a competency program successful. This isn’t leadership dictating competencies—it’s health care professionals at every level determining what matters for excellent patient care in their specific roles and settings.
Empowerment: Teams are empowered to identify their own verification methods. Rather than one-size-fits-all assessments, the Wright model recognizes that different competencies require different verification approaches that reflect real clinical practice.
Accountability: Leaders create the vision and foster a culture of success, with a focus on supporting employees. In the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™, accountability flows both ways—leaders are accountable for creating conditions where staff can succeed, and employees are accountable for their own professional development within that supportive framework.
These three pillars directly address the core competencies that health care managers need. When health care leaders implement the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™, they’re building relationship management through collaborative competency selection, demonstrating leadership by empowering rather than controlling, and creating operational efficiency by focusing on competencies that genuinely impact patient outcomes.
The Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™ recognizes what every experienced nursing leader knows: competency isn’t binary. It exists on a continuum, and different clinical situations may require different competency levels.
CHCI: The Only Platform Co-Designed with Donna Wright
Before CHCI, implementing the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™ meant manual processes, paper-based tracking, and a significant administrative burden. Health Care organizations wanted Wright’s methodology but struggled with operationalization.
Donna Wright co-designed CHCI’s Ongoing Competency Component, ensuring the technology reflects the nuance and rigor of her methodology while operationalizing the three pillars. Now organizations can access Wright’s evidence-based approach through secure, web-enabled technology—maintaining the rigor while eliminating the administrative headaches.
CHCI’s platform enables collaborative competency selection across teams and departments. Health care managers, clinical educators, and frontline staff work together to identify and prioritize competencies that align with organizational goals, quality data, and actual workforce needs. The platform offers diverse verification methods, so teams choose approaches that make sense for specific competencies.
Core Competencies Every Healthcare Manager Needs
Beyond Donna Wright’s three-pillar framework, specific competencies emerge as essential for day-to-day management success. While various competency models exist, the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model’s strength is its flexibility—providing structure for health care organizations to identify and prioritize the competencies that matter for their specific settings.
Let’s explore some of those specific, essential health care competencies.
Communication: The Foundation
Effective communication sits at the heart of successful health care management. Managers must excel at both giving and receiving information, adapting their style to different audiences. This means conducting a systematic review, translating complex clinical guidelines into actionable protocols for staff, presenting financial data persuasively to executives, and explaining organizational change with clarity and empathy.
Modern health care communication increasingly involves digital fluency. Health care managers must navigate electronic health records, telehealth platforms, and real-time operational dashboards. CHCI’s cloud-based platform supports this reality by enabling health care professionals to access competency information and document progress from any secure, web-enabled device.
Leadership and Change Management
Health care leadership requires the ability to inspire teams during uncertainty and guide organizations through continuous organizational change. Effective health care leaders create and communicate a shared vision that aligns staff efforts with organizational objectives. They invest in coaching and mentoring to develop the next generation of health care professionals and help teams navigate the emotional dimensions of change while maintaining morale and performance.
Quality, Safety, and Regulatory Compliance
Patient safety and care quality represent non-negotiable competencies for health care managers. This means understanding quality improvement methodologies, interpreting quality metrics, identifying system vulnerabilities, and creating cultures where teams comply with safety protocols while feeling empowered to question practices that might compromise patient care.
CHCI helps organizations connect competency development directly to quality outcomes. When you can demonstrate how competency initiatives correlate with reduced medication errors or improved patient outcomes, you transform competency management from an HR function to a patient safety strategy.
Data Fluency: The New Essential Competency
Data fluency has evolved from a nice-to-have skill to a fundamental competency for health care managers. The ability to interpret operational dashboards, analyze workforce data, identify trends in patient safety metrics, and use analytics to support decision-making separates effective managers from those who rely solely on intuition.
CHCI’s platform provides the data infrastructure that health care leaders need. With customizable reports, workforce analytics, and the ability to track competency development alongside quality indicators, organizations can finally answer: “Are our competency investments actually improving patient care?”
Collaboration, Team Building, and Emotional Intelligence
Health care delivery inherently requires collaborative teams bringing together diverse clinical and administrative expertise. Health care managers must facilitate effective interprofessional collaboration, breaking down silos and creating psychologically safe environments where staff feel comfortable raising concerns and challenging decisions that might compromise quality.
Emotional intelligence has grown substantially as a critical competency. Health care managers must recognize their own emotions and those of team members, regulate emotional responses appropriately, and use emotional awareness to strengthen relationships. Workforce well-being has emerged as a distinct competency area—leaders must foster environments that balance operational efficiency with genuine commitment to team mental health and psychological safety.
Real-World Examples of Competencies in Action
Understanding competencies abstractly differs from seeing them applied in real health care situations:
Using Data Fluency to Improve Emergency Department Flow: A health care manager notices concerning patterns in emergency department patient wait times through operational dashboard analysis. Rather than immediately blaming staff or adding resources, the manager uses data to investigate systematically. The analysis reveals bottlenecks occur during the transition to inpatient beds, not during patient intake. By implementing targeted workflow changes, the manager demonstrates data fluency, critical thinking, decision-making, and interprofessional collaboration working together.
Navigating Ethical Challenges with Professionalism: When a health care administrator faces pressure to reduce staffing in ways that might compromise patient safety, professionalism and communication competencies become critical. The manager gathers evidence-based data on safe staffing ratios, documents how proposed cuts could affect patient outcomes, and presents alternatives that address financial concerns while protecting care quality.
Leading Through Technology Implementation: When implementing a new electronic health record system, a nursing leader must guide frontline staff through significant workflow changes. By involving staff in planning, identifying champions, creating feedback mechanisms, and maintaining visibility during the transition, the manager demonstrates leadership skills, change management competency, effective communication, and emotional intelligence.
Conflict Resolution in Interprofessional Teams: Escalating conflict between nursing staff and physicians over discharge planning requires conflict-resolution and relationship-management competencies. The manager facilitates conversations in psychologically safe environments, helps teams identify root causes, and guides collaborative problem-solving that improves workflow efficiency while keeping the patient’s perspective central.
These examples show competencies working together in real situations—exactly how CHCI’s platform approaches competency development. Rather than treating competencies as isolated checkboxes, the system recognizes that effective health care management requires integrated capabilities applied to complex, real-world challenges.
How CHCI’s Competency Suite Transforms Healthcare Organizations
Creative Health Care Insight’s Competency Suite is a secure, cloud-based competency management solution designed by health care professionals for health care organizations. This suite streamlines professional development, onboarding, and ongoing competency assessment while operationalizing Donna Wright’s three pillars of ownership, empowerment, and accountability.
Supporting New Nurses from Day One: Initial Competency Component
The CHCI Initial Competency Component transforms orientation processes with a communication and training solution developed by nursing education specialists. This comprehensive system boosts team morale, improves new hire retention, and supports both traditional and tiered orientation methods.
New health care professionals face tremendous pressure during orientation—mastering clinical skills, understanding organizational culture, and building confidence, all while managing transition stress. CHCI’s technology addresses this by aligning learning to individual needs through personalized pathways, strengthening new-hire confidence with clear developmental milestones, and giving preceptors tools to document progress systematically.
The Gold Standard: Ongoing Competency Component
Co-designed with Donna Wright, the Ongoing Competency Component is the only competency platform authorized to offer The Wright Competency Assessment Model™.It empowers organizations to select meaningful competencies while streamlining the assessment process. Customizable reports ensure compliance with regulatory requirements while allowing teams to prioritize competencies based on strategic goals, quality data, and current workforce needs.
The platform enables filtering and prioritizing competencies by groups, departments, or organizational needs—ensuring frontline professionals have a voice in determining what matters. Diverse verification methods reflect how competency is actually demonstrated in clinical practice. Leaders gain real-time visibility into organization-wide competency profiles through customizable dashboards, enabling strategic support for workforce development.
Health care leaders can finally answer critical questions: Which competencies predict better patient outcomes in our organization? Where are competency gaps creating quality or safety risks? How do our competency profiles compare across units or over time?
AACN Partnership: Critical Care Excellence Built In
CHCI was recently selected by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) as a preferred competency management provider. This brings AACN’s nationally recognized Competence Framework for Progressive and Critical Care directly into CHCI’s platform.
For organizations with critical care units, this means immediate access to competency frameworks developed by clinical experts specifically for high-acuity environments. The combination of AACN’s clinical rigor, Donna Wright’s bottom-up methodology, and CHCI’s secure, cloud-based system ensures critical care teams possess the specific competencies these demanding environments require.
TSAM® Implementation: Beyond Technology to True Mastery
CHCI is the only platform exclusively authorized to provide TSAM® Implementation Education and Consulting Services. Led by TSAM® co-innovator Dr. Ellen Joswiak, DNP, RN, NPD-BC, these expert-led workshops help organizations build sustainable, tiered, competency-based orientation programs.
The Tiered Skills Acquisition Model (TSAM®) recognizes that novice practitioners cannot master all required competencies simultaneously. Instead, it sequences skill development strategically, allowing new health care professionals to build foundational capabilities before progressing to more complex competencies.
Organizations implementing TSAM® see improved new graduate confidence and clinical readiness, reduced orientation time to independent practice, better preceptor satisfaction and engagement, lower early-career turnover, and stronger alignment between orientation and actual practice demands.
A Complete Ecosystem for Competency Excellence
Together, CHCI’s technology, exclusive access to the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™, AACN’s National Competence Framework, and TSAM® Implementation Services create a complete competency ecosystem built on the principles of ownership, empowerment, and accountability.
This integrated approach supports clinicians from hire to mastery while helping organizations improve quality, patient safety, and workforce stability. Health care managers gain visibility into organization-wide competency profiles, enabling targeted interventions. Frontline staff receive clear developmental pathways with meaningful assessments. Educators access tools that reduce administrative burden while improving documentation quality.
Why Competency Development Drives Organizational Success
Research consistently demonstrates that health care manager competencies directly influence hospital-level outcomes and overall health system performance. Managers shape work environments, allocate resources, set priorities, and create the conditions where frontline staff either thrive or struggle.
Healthcare administrators who excel at relationship management create teams with lower turnover, higher engagement, and stronger collaboration. Those with strong strategic planning skills position organizations to navigate regulatory changes successfully. Leaders with data fluency make better-informed decisions that improve both operational efficiency and clinical quality.
Perhaps most significantly, manager competencies directly impact patient care and patient safety. Leaders who understand clinical workflows make better staffing decisions. Those who communicate effectively ensure teams have the information needed to deliver care safely. Managers who facilitate collaborative teams create conditions where medication errors are caught before reaching patients.
The health care landscape will continue evolving, bringing new challenges requiring additional competencies. Organizations that view competency development as an ongoing strategic imperative—not a one-time training event—will adapt most successfully.
Building a Culture Where Competencies Flourish
Individual competency matters, but organizational culture determines whether those competencies flourish. Healthcare leaders must create environments where continuous learning is expected, competency gaps are addressed constructively, and professional development receives genuine resource commitment.
This starts with leadership modeling. When executives engage in their own competency development, seek feedback honestly, and demonstrate willingness to learn new skills, it signals organizational values clearly. Recognition systems should reward competency development and application. Staff who pursue additional certifications, master new skills, or help colleagues develop capabilities deserve acknowledgment.
Most importantly, organizations must connect competency development to their fundamental mission: serving patients and communities effectively. When staff understand how developing specific competencies contributes to better patient care, engagement increases substantially. Competency becomes meaningful rather than bureaucratic.
CHCI’s platform supports this cultural shift by making competency development visible, connecting it to outcomes, and reducing administrative burden so leaders can focus on what matters: developing people who deliver exceptional patient care.
Transform Your Competency Management with CHCI
Understanding which competencies matter is just the beginning. The real question is: How will your organization develop, assess, and sustain these capabilities systematically while connecting competency development to patient outcomes and operational success?
Creative Health Care Insight provides what no other platform can: exclusive access to the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™, AACN’s National Competence Framework, TSAM® Implementation Education and Consulting Services with Dr. Ellen Joswiak, and cloud-based technology designed by health care professionals for health care organizations.
What makes CHCI different:
- ONLY platform authorized to offer the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™
- Exclusive TSAM® Implementation Education and Consulting Services led by TSAM®co-innovator Dr. Ellen Joswiak
- AACN preferred provider bringing critical care competence frameworks directly into the platform
- Complete ecosystem combining consulting, education, and technology
- Cloud-based access from any web-enabled device with ultra-secure infrastructure
- Designed by health care professionals who understand your challenges firsthand
Whether you’re looking to strengthen orientation programs, implement evidence-based competency assessment, support critical care readiness, or create tiered skill development pathways, CHCI’s platform and expert consulting services help you achieve those goals while reducing administrative burden.
Ready to see the difference exclusive access to proven frameworks makes?
Schedule a demo of the MyCHCI platform and discover how organizations across the country are using CHCI to improve new graduate retention, strengthen clinical competencies, maintain regulatory compliance, and create systematic approaches to workforce development that drive measurable improvements in care quality and patient safety.
The competencies your organization needs aren’t static—they evolve as health care changes. Partner with CHCI to build sustainable systems that develop capabilities continuously, adapt to emerging challenges, and position your health care organization for excellence today and into the future.
Contact CHCI today to learn more about the Competency Suite, the AACN partnership, the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™ integration, and TSAM® Implementation Education and Consulting Services. Transform competency management from a compliance requirement to a strategic advantage.
Get Started with Creative Health Care Insight Today
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an example of competence in health care?
Competence in health care is demonstrated through applying knowledge, skills, and judgment effectively in real situations. A specific example: a nurse manager successfully implementing a new patient safety protocol that reduces falls on their unit. This requires multiple competencies working together—understanding clinical guidelines related to fall prevention, communicating changes effectively to staff, using data to track outcomes, providing constructive feedback during implementation, and adapting the protocol based on frontline input. Another example: a hospital administrator who uses financial data analysis to identify cost savings opportunities without compromising care quality, demonstrating competence in financial management, data fluency, strategic thinking, and understanding how operational changes impact clinical care.
What are some examples of competency?
Health care management competencies span multiple domains: Communication competencies: Active listening, clear written and verbal communication, difficult conversation facilitation, presentation skills, translating complex information for different audiences Leadership competencies: Vision creation, team motivation, change management, conflict resolution, coaching and mentoring, decision making under uncertainty, creating psychological safety Technical competencies: Clinical knowledge appropriate to role, data analysis capabilities, health care technology understanding, quality improvement methodologies, regulatory compliance expertise Business competencies: Financial management, strategic planning, project management, resource allocation, time management, and health care reimbursement understanding Interpersonal competencies: Emotional intelligence, relationship building, collaboration across professional boundaries, cultural competence, workforce development Each competency exists on a continuum from basic awareness to expert mastery. Most health care management situations require multiple competencies working together, which is why CHCI’s platform uses the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™, which recognizes competency as a continuum, not a binary pass/fail.
What are the 5 core competencies examples?
The Healthcare Leadership Alliance model defines five core competency domains, each containing multiple specific competencies: Communication and Relationship Management: Effective listening, building trust and rapport, facilitating team discussions, providing feedback, negotiating, and conflict resolution, writing clearly for different purposes Leadership: Creating shared vision, motivating and inspiring others, managing change, demonstrating emotional intelligence, developing talent through coaching, modeling ethical behavior, making difficult decisions Professionalism: Maintaining integrity and ethical standards, committing to lifelong learning and continuous improvement, demonstrating accountability, respecting diversity and inclusion, maintaining appropriate boundaries, and engaging in professional development Knowledge of the Healthcare Environment: Understanding regulatory frameworks, health policy, public health principles, population health, health care economics, reimbursement models, quality and safety systems, health care delivery organizational structures Business Skills and Knowledge: Financial management, strategic planning, human resources management, marketing and communication, information management and analytics, project management, risk management These five domains provide a comprehensive framework that organizations can use, and CHCI’s platform operationalizes these domains through customizable competency frameworks aligned with specific organizational needs.
What are the competencies of care management?
Care management competencies specifically focus on coordinating patient care across settings and ensuring patients receive appropriate services efficiently: Care coordination: Understanding patient needs holistically, navigating complex health care systems on patients’ behalf, facilitating communication between multiple health care providers, managing transitions between care settings, ensuring continuity of care Assessment: Conducting comprehensive patient assessments, identifying barriers to care access or adherence, evaluating social determinants of health, recognizing when patients need additional services, using standardized assessment tools appropriately Planning: Developing individualized care plans, setting realistic goals collaboratively with patients, identifying community resources, coordinating multiple services, adjusting plans as patient needs change Patient education and engagement: Teaching patients and families about conditions and treatments, developing culturally appropriate educational materials, motivating behavior change, addressing health literacy challenges, empowering patients in their own care Resource management: Knowledge of community resources and services, understanding insurance and reimbursement, managing within budget constraints, advocating for patient access to needed services, coordinating efficient use of health care resources Data and technology: Using care management software systems, analyzing patient data to identify high-risk individuals, tracking outcomes and quality metrics, and using telehealth effectively Advocacy: Representing patient interests, navigating insurance and authorization processes, connecting patients with financial assistance programs, and addressing systemic barriers to care access Effective care management requires integrating these competencies while maintaining focus on the patient’s perspective and improving both patient outcomes and system efficiency.