Leadership and Leadership Development in Health Care: The Evidence Base
A key challenge facing all NHS organisations is to nurture cultures that ensure the delivery of continuously improving high-quality, safe and compassionate health care. Leadership is the most influential factor in shaping organisational culture and ensuring the necessary leadership behaviours, strategies and qualities are developed is fundamental. But what do we really know about leadership in health care services?
The Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management, The King’s Fund and the Center for Creative Leadership share a commitment to evidence-based approaches to developing leadership and collectively initiated a review of the evidence by a team including clinicians, managers, psychologists, practitioners and project managers. This report summarises the evidence emerging from that review.
Key messages
· Leadership in NHS organisations needs to ensure direction, alignment and commitment to the core task of developing cultures that deliver continually improving, high-quality and compassionate patient care.
· Leadership needs to: develop inspiring visions that are put into practice at every level by leaders; identify clear, aligned objectives for all teams, departments and individual staff; provide supportive and enabling people management; develop high levels of staff engagement; support learning, innovation and quality improvement in the practice of all staff; and promote effective team-working.
· Leaders need to work together, spanning boundaries within and between organisations, prioritising overall patient care rather than the success of individual components, and to build a co-operative, integrative leadership culture – in effect collective leadership.
· Developing collective leadership for an organisation depends crucially on local contexts and is likely to be done best ‘in house’ with expert support, integrating both organisational development and leadership development.
· Experience in leadership is the most valuable factor in enabling leaders to develop their skills, especially when they have appropriate guidance and support. Focusing on how to enhance leaders’ learning from experience should be a priority.
· Evidence-based approaches to leadership development in health care are needed to ensure a return on the huge investments made.
RCN talks about the different types of skills or behaviours you can adopt in order to become a leader, and gives examples of how you're probably already a leader without even realising it.
Even though primarily aimed at nurses, it can easily apply to all healthcare professionals. https://www.rcn.org.uk/professional-development/your-career/nurse/leadership-skills
Leadership and Leadership Development in Health Care: The Evidence Base
The Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management (FMLM), The King’s Fund and the Centre for Creative Leadership (CCL) all share a commitment to evidence-based approaches to developing leadership and collectively initiated a review of the evidence by a team including clinicians, managers, psychologists, practitioners and project managers. This document summarises the evidence emerging from that review. The summary describes key messages from the review in relation to leadership at different levels of analysis: it includes a description of the leadership task and the most effective leadership behaviours at individual, team, board and national levels. https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/courses
The Edward Jenner programme is an open access, online learning package that will support you as you develop essential leadership skills; open to all, this programme leads to an NHS Leadership Academy award in Leadership Foundations. You will need to register via link to access its resources. https://www.leadershipacademy.nhs.uk/programmes/the-edward-jenner-programme/
Books
Leadership and Management in Healthcare by Neil Gopee and Jo Galloway
Practical Leadership & Management in Healthcare for Nurses & Allied Health
Professionals: for Nurses and Allied Health Professionals by Eleanor Sullivan
The Essentials of Nursing Leadership by Ruth Taylor and Brian Webster-Henderson
References
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Cummings, G. (2008). Factors contributing to nursing leadership: a systematic review. Journal of Health Services Research and Policy, 13(4), pp.240-248.
Cummings, G. (2010). The contribution of hospital nursing leadership styles to 30-day patient mortality. Nursing Research, 59(5), pp.331-339.
Feather, R. (2009). Emotional intelligence in relation to nursing leadership: does it matter? Journal of Nursing Management¸ 17(3), pp.376-382.
Frankel, A. and PGCMS, R., 2019. What leadership styles should senior nurses develop?. Hospital, 6, p.08.
Hutchinson, M. (2012). Transformational leadership in nursing: towards a more critical interpretation. Nursing Inquiry, 20(1), pp.11-22.
Jackson, J. (2009). Patterns of knowing: proposing a theory for nursing leadership. Nursing Economics, 27(1), pp.149-159.
MacPhee, M. (2012). An empowerment framework for nursing leadership development: supporting evidence. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 68(1), pp.159-169.
Malloy, T. (2010). Nursing leadership style and psychosocial work environment. Journal of Nursing Management, 18(6), pp.715-725.
Marriner, A. (2009). Nursing leadership and management effects work environments. Journal of Nursing Management, 17(1), pp.15-25.
The Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry (2013) Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry: executive summary. London: Stationery Office (Chair: R Francis).
Richardson, A. (2010). Patient safety: a literature review on the impact of nursing empowerment, leadership, and collaboration. International Nursing Review, 57(1), pp.12-21.