Preview Essentials Guide (PREVIEW) Essentials Guide to Medical Leadership & | Page 11

Alarmingly, the Care Quality Commission’s annual State of Care report for 2014/15
indicated that three quarters of all hospitals and one third of GP services that had been
inspected had problems with safety. More encouraging was that, of 123 services which
were re-inspected within a year, 50% demonstrated measureable improvements. A
critical element of this change was identified as ‘Engaged leaders building a shared
ownership of quality and safety’.
1.04 Who are the leaders?
One statement in the Francis Report, that ‘the recognition that healthcare management
and leadership is, or should be treated as a profession’, could be interpreted to suggest
that this discipline the is responsibility of a select few.
Compare this with the statement in the previous section from Liberating the NHS which
emphasised the need for healthcare to be run ‘from the bottom up’. Professor Sir Bruce
Keogh, National Medical Director has communicated the importance of doctors playing
an active part in challenging and engaging to shape the future. In 2015, NHS Improving
Quality combined with Health Service Journal and Nursing Times to launch a campaign
to ‘Challenge Top-Down Change’. The campaign’s aims were to help NHS workers
understand the barriers faced when trying to implement change and, importantly, “to give
voice to solutions that work.”
‘…leadership is not restricted to people who hold designated management and
traditional leader roles, but in fact is most successful wherever there is a shared
responsibility for the success of the organisation, services or care being delivered’.
The NHS Leadership Academy Leadership Framework
Acts of leadership can come from anyone within your organisation. The concept of
shared and distributed leadership, which we will use throughout this book,
emphasises the responsibility of all staff to demonstrate appropriate behaviours. All
must contribute to the leadership process, developing and empowering the leadership
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