Re: Clinical Leadership and Management in the NHS

We were interested to read your article about the leadership challenges faced by managers and clinicians in the NHS. ¹ As two trainees, one a manager and one a clinician, we have spent much time considering how to prepare ourselves for our future careers. We both wish to preserve our primary roles while being able to make a difference to patient care at every level.

We have each been fortunate to have been offered leadership development opportunities, through the London ‘Darzi Fellowship’ programme and the NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme. The challenge for us has been translating the theoretical learning and personal development into the ‘live’ environment of a Hospital Trust.

We very much agree that there is a need for training opportunities to help managers and clinicians develop meaningful working relationships. Efforts to improve clinical leadership through enabling clinicians to develop management competencies need to be balanced by helping managers to better understand clinical medicine. This will enable real dialogue between managers and clinicians at all levels so that services are developed with appreciation of clinical variation as well as wider resource constraints.

Based on the experiences of an innovative Paired Learning Scheme in Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, we have developed a programme to link new NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme trainees and Foundation Year Two trainees in London through a buddy scheme. From September 2011, trainees will be encouraged to learn about each others' role through conversations, workshops and shadowing. They will work on small projects that encourage reflection on what joint working can deliver.

Our own experience of working together has been incredibly positive. We are able to complement each other's work and as a pair have more credibility when approaching senior staff with ideas. Inspired by our successful partnership and developing friendship, we hope to inspire a future generation of medical and management trainees to learn to lead together from the very start of their careers.