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This month’s edition of Healthcare Review – OnlineTM is the first in the series “Leadership in Healthâ€.
In this edition, we consider clinical leadership in New Zealand, both the need for clinical leadership and issues surrounding clinical leadership.
Contributions consider the importance of clinical leadership in the health reform process and also point to the need to recognise the valid role of management and Government, with all parties ideally working together to optimise service leadership.
Dr Robin Youngson is Chief Executive and founder of the voluntary association CLANZ (Clinical Leaders’ Association of New Zealand), a national network of health professionals who share values and goals regarding the effective management of health services.
In his paper, Dr Youngson reviews the types of issues in health leadership that have led to the creation of CLANZ, and outlines the objectives for that organisation.
He stresses the role of clinical leadership in patient-centred reform and the important resource implications of clinical decision-making.
Dr Colin Feek, Chief Medical Advisor, Ministry of Health, highlights the need for alignment of clinical decisions with resource allocation decisions for effective reform. In his view, health professionals should be playing a central role in making changes to the health system to ensure that those changes are changes in care itself and not simply changes in the surroundings of care which do not necessarily deliver better outcomes for clients.
Dr Feek sees clear opportunities for clinicians to work alongside Government and the community to lead change to meet the societal needs driving reform. However, clinicians have struggled with the reform process and this has largely reflected a failure to recognise the agenda of change and, in some cases, a lack of willingness to change. Clinicians need to develop a picture of the health system and priorities that will meet community needs and not simply reflect the view of health professionals.
Lorrima Cranstoun, Manager, and Dr Rasiah Yuvarajan, Clinical Co-ordinator, Mental Health Services for Older People, Mental Health Services, Auckland Healthcare, consider the role of clinicians and managers in service leadership at an operational level. They review the processes used to establish and operate co-management by the head clinician and the service manager in Health Services for Older People, Mental Health Services, Auckland Healthcare.
They consider, from both management and clinical perspectives, the broad issues related to a clinician/management interface. Their paper details the approach used to ensure an effective ongoing joint management arrangement, and the advantages that this approach, which recognises both management and clinical skills in decision-making, offers.
Gaye Tozer, General Manager, Community and Mental Health Services, Auckland Healthcare, presents a paper which briefly presents the historical trends in management that have led to joint management by clinicians and managers in Community and Mental Health Services. The paper reviews the key principles behind the joint management approach that has been implemented in various business units through the services, and outlines the expectations of that approach.
The next edition in the Leadership in Health series will consider models of leadership in health used outside New Zealand.
