The chief executive of the King’s Fund, Chris Ham, discusses how to improve engagement between medical leaders and their teams, as well as how doctors can be encouraged to take up leadership roles

Chris Ham on engaging doctors in leadership roles post Francis by HSJ News

The Francis report highlighted a “failure of clinical leadership and professionalism” among doctors working at Mid Staffordshire. There have been several attempts to put medical leadrship at the foreforont of change and development within NHS trusts.

A new survey reveals 10 and 20 per cent of consultants are involved in formal leadership roles in most trusts, with clinical directors typically committing around 20 per cent of their time to these roles.

As a rough approximation, this means that no more than five per cent of the time of consultants is allocated to leadership roles. This is according to the new research from the King’s Fund and Birmingham University, funded by the National Institute for Health Research.

The study also shows an engagement gap exists between medical leaders and their followers.

How do we get more doctors taking up medical leadership roles? How can we make these leadership models effective in driving quality and innovation? Chris Ham, chief executive of the King’s Fund talks to HSJ about how these gaps can be bridged to deliver the NHS of the future particularly in rising to the Francis report.

Find out more

Topics

Many trusts weak on medical leadership, research finds