Reluctent though I am to turn into one of those annoying people-of-a-certain-age who start every rant/blog with " When I was in clinical practice.." but.....
When I was in clinical practice if I considered my leadership skills at all (and I didn't) I would have assumed that because I was willing to bend the rules for my patients and support my staff if they did the same I was a good leader. I ran a trauma ward in an area with a large elderly population, often we admitted elderly women whose husbands had never had to cook or shop for themselves so we would 'fiddle' the menus so that we could feed them. We would allow people to have their pets bought into to visit them (although not small babies!). We'd let people visit outside of visiting hours, in fact as a ward team we did all sorts of things that I suspect ward leaders theses days are too scared or too down trodden to contemplate and as a consequence we were a team that had a strong sense of both our professional identity and our professional responsibilities.
I wonder why we see very little evidence of leaders like this in modern health care. Ward leaders seem less willing to go the extra mile for their patients, whether this is because they are less caring (I don't think so) is it because they are frightened about maintaining their registration or have other hospital become places in which the individual has not place? I hope when I fall into the hands of organised healthcare, somewhere to care for me
Continue the discussion this Thursday on #healthcarechat at 8pm GMT+1
When I was in clinical practice if I considered my leadership skills at all (and I didn't) I would have assumed that because I was willing to bend the rules for my patients and support my staff if they did the same I was a good leader. I ran a trauma ward in an area with a large elderly population, often we admitted elderly women whose husbands had never had to cook or shop for themselves so we would 'fiddle' the menus so that we could feed them. We would allow people to have their pets bought into to visit them (although not small babies!). We'd let people visit outside of visiting hours, in fact as a ward team we did all sorts of things that I suspect ward leaders theses days are too scared or too down trodden to contemplate and as a consequence we were a team that had a strong sense of both our professional identity and our professional responsibilities.
I wonder why we see very little evidence of leaders like this in modern health care. Ward leaders seem less willing to go the extra mile for their patients, whether this is because they are less caring (I don't think so) is it because they are frightened about maintaining their registration or have other hospital become places in which the individual has not place? I hope when I fall into the hands of organised healthcare, somewhere to care for me
Continue the discussion this Thursday on #healthcarechat at 8pm GMT+1
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