Clinical Leadership and Engagement: No Longer an Optional Extra

Abstract

Effective clinical leadership and engagement are increasingly being recognised as important contributors to the delivery of high standards of clinical care and organisational performance. This chapter argues that it is no longer acceptable for a doctor just to be a clinical expert. Other competences, including appropriate management and leadership skills, should be integral elements of practice and thus need to be included as part of selection of medical students and doctors at all levels as well as incorporated within education and training.

This chapter outlines some of the key management and leadership competences all doctors at every level should attain. It also provides some advice on how best these might be realised during postgraduate training.

Whilst all doctors as practitioners require a basic tool-kit of management and leadership competences others, who decide to move into positional leadership roles, will potentially need some more advanced ones.

However, engaging doctors in the running, planning and improvement of services, in conjunction with other clinical and non-clinical managers and leaders, is critical to the delivery of high quality care. This chapter will discuss what good clinical engagement can look like and offers advice on how doctors can help create service and organisational cultures where patient-care is genuinely the number one priority.

…the quality of clinical leadership always underpins the difference between exceptional and adequate or pedestrian clinical services which in aggregate determine overall effectiveness, safety and reputation

—(Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS, UK) [1]