Professor Sheona MacLeod

Postgraduate Dean

There is increasing recognition that the organisations which are most successful in delivering high quality care are those which engage the expertise, enthusiasm and energy of their clinicians in management and leadership, as well as in clinical care. Training the future medical workforce to be effective managers and leaders is therefore an essential part of ensuring high quality care in the future. 

In medicine, we have developed excellence in clinical education and training over many years, and we know well how best to train, inspire and motivate healthcare professionals in their clinical responsibilities. The challenge in training now, is how to develop this excellence across all the broader professional responsibilities of the modern clinician, including leadership. Although we all recognise good leadership, many senior clinicians admit that their leadership journey was not enabled by any training on the key concepts, or by constructive feedback on the relevant skills. 

In developing a new model for leadership training in HEEM, we have chosen to draw on the clinical leadership expertise that we have recognised all across the East Midlands. We want to support the development of the skills that are needed to successfully train, as well as to model, good leadership. 

We hope that this opportunity to help us create the future leaders of the NHS will provide stimulating and rewarding personal and professional development opportunities for you.

Dr Adrian Brooke

Secondary Care Dean and Deputy Postgraduate Dean

The General Medical Council emphasises the importance of leadership and management development and it recommends that all  doctors in training have generic leadership and management skills as part of their professional development during specialist training. In doing so they recognise the importance of possessing these skills to enable doctors in training to navigate the changes proposed by the Shape of Training Review and Five Year Forward View across the NHS. 

This programme has been developed following feedback from doctors in training undertaking previous leadership and management courses and has been established locally after consultation with your colleagues. 

We hope that by learning the principles and skills of leadership and management through increased confidence and competence, collaboration and decision making you will be able to apply this knowledge and capability to your practice during your years here as a trainee and beyond. 

We recognise that not every doctor is a born leader or even wishes to become one. The programme has been designed to give you a set of skills that will suffice to help those who need the skill-set but perhaps don’t harbour an immediate ambition to develop the skills to a high level. For others, this course may ignite the appetite to develop leadership and management skills to a level that will help ensure future generations continue to receive the highest quality of healthcare. 

Finally, I would like to thank Dr Sonia Panchal, colleagues from Health Education East Midlands and the team of senior educators who have striven so hard to turn this project from an idea into a programme that I hope you will find both enjoyable and stimulating.