The NHS Confederation believes that strong leadership and management in the health system is extremely important. In the current political and economic climate there is close scrutiny of NHS leadership and management, and NHS leaders are dealing with increasingly complex roles in an ever-changing service. The evidence suggests that good leadership has substantial impact on patient satisfaction and quality of care. Conversely, poor leadership has been identified by Healthcare Commission failure investigations as a major factor in where things go wrong.
Darzi's Next Stage Review has highlighted leadership as a core theme. A Leadership Council has been set-up responsible for over-seeing all matters of leadership related to the NHS, the Confederation has representation on the Council. There are a number of specific proposals for identifying and developing strong leadership throughout the NHS, including: new development programmes for boards; a focus on clinical leadership; and the introduction of a Leadership Quality Certificate.
In this context the Confederation's on-going work on leadership is highly important. Our work to date has called for increased clinical involvement in leadership and management at every level - from frontline services to top level management. We have also looked behind the image of middle management as the weak link to find out exactly who middle managers are and what they do. Another key part of our work has been to challenge the media myth of an army of costly managers taking over the NHS.
In response to the new post-Darzi initiatives on developing strong leaders, we feel it's important to form a diagnosis of the challenges facing NHS leadership. In early 2009 we will be publishing an analysis of the challenges faced by NHS leadership, and running a series of seminars and publishing a series of papers, to explore the issues in-depth.
We actively work with members to capture ideas on leadership. We hold specific seminars and meetings to inform our policy positions - invitations either appear in our email bulletin Interchange Alert or are sent out individually.
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Last reviewed 3 Dec 2008