Preview Essentials Guide (PREVIEW) Essentials Guide to Medical Leadership & | Page 7

Chapter 1: Introduction
1.01 About this book
Medical leadership and management are of growing importance for today’s doctors and
associated healthcare professionals. This has been recognised by the various Royal
Colleges, with each advocating the relevance and importance of management training
during their respective speciality training programmes.
This book has been designed to provide you with the input of fresh ideas, encouraging
you to consider your current behaviours and the impact that you have: what am I doing
well and how can I improve? We shall explore the fact that this has relevance to all
doctors, whether or not you have a current officially recognised ‘management role’. Our
focus will be upon the leadership and management of people.
We use this book to support our one-day course, Essentials of Medical Leadership &
Management, where doctors have the opportunity to explore the subject matter
interactively with their peer group. You may wish to work through the book in the order
that it is written, or you may wish to dip into specific content as and when it interests you,
as a useful resource for future reference.
Oxford Medical Training’s Faculty of Tutors have developed and refined this material
over the years, drawing upon our collective experience. The reference section at the end
of the book will direct you to our sources, many of which were created with a specific
healthcare focus. As the topic is directly related to human behaviour and interactions,
we will also regularly look outside the field of healthcare to ensure the content is rich in
both breadth and depth. We will always consider the relevance to your role as a doctor
and encourage you to decide how you can best apply the concepts and principles.
A good place to start is by considering a recent team based activity in which you have
participated, whether this was in a leadership capacity or not. Consider the questions on
the following table in relation to these events, and then take the time to identify your
personal leadership-management strengths and challenges.
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