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This month’s edition of Healthcare Review – OnlineTM is the second in the series "Leadership in Health".
In this edition, we consider clinical leadership from a UK perspective with two papers contributed from members of the British Association of Medical Managers.
Dr Jenny Simpson, Chief Executive, British Association of Medical Managers, examines the meaning of clinical leadership in the context of the National Health Service (NHS) in England. She reviews the stages in the evolution of the clinician leader role in the NHS, considers the expectations of clinical leadership and points to the important distinction between management and leadership.
Simpson reviews ways to increase the leadership capacity in the NHS. She sees this as more than simply developing individuals to be leaders, and that the development of leadership capacity in the NHS goes "hand in glove" with a shift away from processes and solutions in either the individual or organisation toward a focus on services.
Mr Tim Scott, Senior Fellow, British Association of Medical Managers, draws on 15 years’ experience considering the role of clinicians in the management of health care. He synopsises this experience in "14 (+1) truths about medical management" or the management of health care by doctors.
Within these "truths", Scott highlights the professionalism and the researcher perspective that doctors bring to management. He notes the need for doctors in management to learn about learning and to seek a wider range of learning techniques than they were perhaps exposed to in medical training. He highlights the inevitable political and local accountability that exists in management of the components of health care systems, and the need for medical managers to reconcile personal accountability with organisational or health care system accountability.
In his final "truth", Scott emphasises the need for medical managers to rapidly gain experience and a level of comfort in the rapidly emerging communication technologies.
The edition follows the first in the series in March 1999, which focussed on clinical leadership in New Zealand, both on the need for clinical leadership and issues surrounding clinical leadership. Papers considered the importance of clinical leadership in the health reform process in New Zealand and pointed to the need to recognise the valid role of management and Government, with all parties ideally working together to optimise service leadership.
The edition included a review of the types of issues in health leadership that led to the creation of the voluntary association CLANZ (Clinical Leaders’ Association of New Zealand) and an outline of the objectives for that organisation [Youngson R].
Another focus was on the need for alignment of clinical decisions with resource allocation decisions for effective reform, and the central role of health professionals in making changes to the health system to ensure that these changes deliver better outcomes for clients [Feek C].
Papers written from the perspective of Community and Mental Health Services, Auckland Healthcare, reviewed the key principles behind the co-management approach which has been implemented in various business units through the services [Cranstoun L, Yuvarajan R] and considered the role of clinicians and managers in service leadership at an operational level [Tozer G].
