Leadership
Welcome to our collection of resources on leadership in healthcare. Have a suggestion for a new resource or want to share some feedback? Let us know here.
Highlighted resources

Leadership in the NHS: A commentary by Roger Kline
Inclusion: essential leadership prerequisite or optional extra?
In healthcare, leadership is decisive in influencing the quality of care and the performance of hospitals. How staff are treated significantly influences care provision and organisational performance so understanding how leaders can help ensure staff are cared for, valued, supported and respected is important. Research suggests ‘inclusion’ is a critical part of the answer.

Developing allied health professional leaders — an interactive guide for clinicians and trust boards
This interactive guide describes the common features of the AHP leadership journey, by combining insights and evidence from trust chief executives and chief AHPs. Its primary audience is aspiring AHP leaders and those with responsibility for developing the AHP workforce.

Coaching & Mentoring Handbook: NHS Leadership Academy
This handbook explains more about coaching and mentoring. It is here to support the development of all coaches and mentors, and those with whom they work, to help you as you grow, learn and thrive at work through effective partnerships.
Highlighted Leadership Videos
How to turn a group of strangers into a team.
How often do we find ourselves working with people we have never met before in healthcare? As a leader how do you optimise these teams? This Ted talk gives you some tips and ideas.
Our fight for disability rights, why we still aren’t done.
As healthcare leaders we have a responsibilty to improve our system to be more inclusive. This talk reminds us how the fight for disabiliy rights is far from over and as healthcare leaders we must act on this to better the system.
Blog posts
Building a leadership culture fit for the future – NHS England
Dom Hardy, director of primary care and system transformation at NHS England, is leading the implementation of the NHS Long Term Plan’s commitment to create integrated care systems across the country. As he explains, change starts at the top.
Leadership in the NHS -Jon Rouse
The NHS Long Term Plan was released in January with a clear thread leading from the ‘Five Year Forward View’ toward more place based, integrated care. There is an acknowledgement within the plan that workforce challenges are some of the biggest issues facing the NHS in the coming years and that ‘how’ we deliver services in the future will need to be significantly transformed.
With this in mind the leadership of not only our health and care services becomes key if we are to deliver the quality, access, prevention and cost outcomes we are seeking. Here in Greater Manchester we are going one step further to look at leadership across our wider public services…
Latest news and research
- Work team identification associated with less stress and burnout among front-line emergency department staff amid the COVID-19 pandemic
- Evolution of leadership theory
- Cultivating not gatekeeping: a key leadership role in the creative process
- 10 minutes with Professor Amiran Gamkrelidze, Director General of the National Center for Disease Control and Public Health of Georgia
- Ten minutes with Jamiu Busari, Consultant Paediatrician and Dean, Horacio Oduber Hospital Academy, Aruba
- 'Quaranta giorni leadership test: time to transform healthcare
- Overcoming the legacy of marketisation: Chinas response to COVID-19 and the fast-forward of healthcare reorganisation
- Put me on the front line: doctors who have recovered from coronavirus should treat patients with COVID-19
- 10 minutes with Kelly Garside, Team Manager, Community Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, Oxford Health Foundation Trust
- Seeing and managing the icebergs
- Organisational crisis resource management: leading an academic department of emergency medicine through the COVID-19 pandemic
- Developing a 'Doctors Assistant role to ease pressure on doctors and improve patient flow in acute NHS hospitals
- Beware of the pendulum swing: how leaders can sustain rapid technology innovation beyond the COVID-19 crisis
- Development and implementation of a structured leadership programme for junior doctors
- Multiprofessional leadership development: reflections from a doctor in training

The development and maintenance of this patient safety content is made possible by an award from The Health Foundation. BMJ retains full editorial control over content, peer review, editing, and publication.