Leadership through change
Dr Judith Smith from the Nuffield Trust and Professor Martin Roland from the National Primary Care Research and Development Centre headlined the autumn SDO Network chief executives forum meetings with an evidence based view of the potential opportunities and challenges for healthcare providers in a GP commissioned NHS as outlined in the Health White Paper 'Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS'.
The discussions were supplemented by presentation on new NIHR Service Delivery and Organisation (SDO) programme research into leadership, knowledge utilisation and the dynamics of clinical-managerial relationships from Professors Paula Nicolson, Ewan Ferlie and Ian Greener.
Full details, including presentations from the event are provided below.
Provider opportunities under GP commissioning
Dr Judith Smith and Professor Martin Roland both presented their interpretations of the evidence on how a number of GP commissioning and fund holding initiatives have affected UK health economies over the last two decades. Drawing on these experiences and examples from overseas, each identified where the potential challenges and opportunities lay for providers under the proposed system of GP commissioning consortia. See the presentations for full details:
Leadership for better patient care
Prof Paula Nicolson of Royal Holloway, University of London, outlined some findings from her soon to be published study which looked at the relationships between leadership and patient care and at how leadership is transmitted through health service organisations. The study identified some key characteristics about leaders in the NHS and highlighted the need for high levels of social and emotional intelligence to deliver improved patient care. See the full presentation:
Knowledge mobilisation in healthcare
At the southern forum, Prof Ewan Ferlie, of Kings College London, provided a brief synopsis of his recent literature review into the utilisation of management research in healthcare. The review identified 10 common themes among the literature on knowledge mobilisation which are outlined in his presentation. The forum then went on to discuss Prof Ferlie's current study which will explore three of these themes in more detail, as outlined in the presentation:
Clinical-managerial relationships
At the northern forum, Prof Ian Greener discussed how the findings of his, as yet unpublished, study into the effectiveness of clinical-managerial relationships in healthcare can be used to deliver more effective relationships for the future. Comparing the literature on hospital management and the success of the QOF, Prof Greener, outlined some lessons that can be learnt from that success to apply to hospital based clinicians and managers to support more effective working practices.
The NIHR SDO research programme
The NIHR SDO programme focuses on serving the research needs of the NHS management and leadership community, and building capacity to use research in decision making. This presentation, given by Kieran Walshe, programme director at the London meeting and David Steel, chair of the Priority Areas Panel in Leeds, gives an overview of the programme, some examples of how the research is used and concludes with some opportunities for managers tog et more involved witht he programme and its future direction.