Enhancing Engagement in Medical Leadership

The Enhancing Engagement in Medical Leadership project is jointly led by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC) and the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement. This UK-wide project aims to promote medical leadership and help create organisational cultures where doctors seek to be more engaged in management and leadership of health services and non-medical leaders genuinely seek their involvement to improve services for patients across the UK. The project team has been working closely with the medical professional, regulatory and education bodies and health service organisations in promoting these goals.

As part of the project we have developed:

• A Medical Leadership Competency Framework which describes the leadership competences doctors need in order to become more actively involved in the planning, delivery and transformation of health services.  We are working with the General Medical Council (that includes the former Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board (PMETB) that merged with the GMC on 1st April 2010), Medical Schools, Medical Royal Colleges and Postgraduate Deaneries to embed these competences in undergraduate and postgraduate training.  We are also working with health care organisations across the UK to encourage the use of these competences in the health service for development, recruitment and appraisal.
• A Guidance for Undergraduate Medical Education - Integrating the MLCF has been developed to assist integration into undergraduate curricula.
• A Medical Leadership Curriculum (MLC) has been developed for the postgraudate phase of training.
• LeAD, e-Learning for medical leadership, is a free e-learning resource developed in conjunction with the Department of Health's e-Learning for Healthcare to support doctors to develop medical leadership.  It has over 50 innovative e-learning sessions that address the knowledge components of the Medical Leadership Curriculum based on the MLCF. 
• A Medical Engagement Scale which offers NHS trusts a greater insight to the level of engagement of doctors in their organisation and ways in which this engagement might be improved.

We have also undertaken several research projects including exploring the link between medical engagement and organisational performance, an international study of how doctors are prepared for leadership roles in other countries and how they are engaged in the management and leadership of the health service. In addition, we have undertaken a Medical Chief Executive study to better understand the factors that influence doctors to assume Chief Executive roles and identify how more doctors may be encouraged to apply for these positions.

Further information about these various aspects of the project are available through the links on the right-hand side of the page. You can also download our latest project update here.