The Leadership and Management in Health Care course provides a greater understanding of how health care organisations work and the key role of health care professionals within it. This increased understanding gives the chance to become much more effective in initiating and managing change.
The course content is not dependent on knowledge of any medical or surgical specialty.
The five main academic components are:
- An understanding of the strategic domain of healthcare settings.
- An understanding of the operational domain of healthcare settings.
- An understanding of the interpersonal domain of healthcare settings.
- An understanding of how these three domains relate to one another and the principal tasks and roles of management and leadership in healthcare systems.
- Demonstrate some generic tools for leadership especially those related to teamwork and change and which help to make decisions in complex healthcare environments.
The module will illustrate the various ways in which finance, healthcare markets in different countries, organisational systems, and professionalism operate together. The relationship between these factors generates four basic themes:
- Healthcare systems and the way they work.
- Leadership and the tasks involved in creating quality healthcare.
- Ways in which managers and leaders can be more effective.
- Developing and implementing a plan for change including insights into how and why decisions are made.
Effective participation in the simulation exercise scheduled for the last day will require a good understanding of these four themes and how healthcare organisations work. The post-course assignment makes possible more critical reflection of the course material.
Offered by Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences and the Department for Continuing Education, the taught week is led by Dr Oscar Lyons.
Class sizes are kept small to allow full interaction with tutors. The first part of the taught week tends to be more didactic to develop better understandings of healthcare systems. As the week progresses there is more discussion with experts and the course finishes on the final day with a simulation exercise designed to put the new skills in to practice. Study before and after the course is supported by a rich virtual learning environment.
Faculty
Faculty to deliver the course come from a wide range of healthcare backgrounds including national policy decision makers, executives in primary and secondary care, government advisors, management advisors, frontline staff, patient advocates and other experts in healthcare. Faculty are chosen for their ability to link theory and practice so the guiding principle is to introduce some key theoretical concepts and then link them to actual examples of clinical and management practice.
Course content and faculty are adjusted each year to keep up contemporary developments in understanding the tasks and roles of leadership and management in healthcare.
Comments from previous participants:
"I loved the flexibility of the course. It allowed good, in-depth discussion with the faculty. I have learnt more about leadership and management in five days of this course than six years of working! Definitely recommended."
"I was pleasantly surprised at how approachable the faculty were. From very early on the lines between faculty and delegate were blurred and it was refreshing to be treated as a fellow colleague rather than mentor and student."
"The role playing scenario at the end of the week was a fantastic way of summarising and applying all that was taught during the week."