Leadership skills teaching in Yorkshire & the Humber – a survey: uncovering, sharing, developing, embedding

Abstract

Medical leadership is a hot topic, but it is not known yet how to teach this most effectively. A working party of educators in Yorkshire and the Humber (Y&H) studied the leadership domains, as set out in the Medical Leadership Competency Framework and from this distilled a set of 'trainable' leadership skills, which were felt to be important to teach during general practitioner (GP) training. A questionnaire was sent out to a large GP educational community (educators and trainees) within Y&H to establish the following: (i) whether the distilled skills were thought to have face validity when applied to the concept of leadership, (ii) what was the relative importance of these skills in relation to each other and (iii) the degree to which these skills were already being taught in practice placements and at General Practice Specialty Training Programme (GPSTP) teaching sessions.Educators reported more teaching and training occurring than trainees reported receiving, and the relative importance of the skills sets were different between educators and trainees. It was evident that leadership skills are currently being taught, but that making training explicitly 'leadership', and raising the importance of leadership skills in GP, may address some of these imbalances. Educators requested guidance on how to teach these skills effectively and commented that many existing opportunities for leadership teaching and training are not well recognised or used. Routinely and regularly offering the chance for trainees at all levels to be exposed to leadership skills by role modelling, making use of everyday opportunities in practice to teach and encouraging trainee involvement in projects and opportunities to practice new skills can facilitate the acquisition and celebration of mastery of generic leadership skills.

Leadership Development Strategies in Interprofessional Healthcare Collaboration: A Rapid Review

“…Regarding the content on which the training focused, it appeared that aspects related to the importance of teamwork (including a variety of teamwork elements, as well as collaboration across disciplines) received high priority in 25 of the 42 studies. 12,[47][48][49][50][52][53][54][56][57][58]62,65,66,68,71,73,[76][77][78][79]81,82,84,88 This was an expected finding given the focus on leadership, as leadership often involves teamwork. The aspects related to teamwork included conflict resolution, communication skills in teams, problem-solving, setting a joint vision and motivating others towards such a vision, roles and responsibilities of team members, time management and resource management.…”

“…47,53,66,70,72,76,85,86 In total, 14 studies did not specify whether the research reported on a new or on an existing program. 7,12,49,50,56,57,59,76,78,[81][82][83]88 Most of the studies did not report on the length of training, although there appeared to be variability ranging from intensive-three and a half day courses 53 to courses spanning over two years. 54 Different training strategies were used, of which interprofessional teamwork (ie, working in teams across disciplinary boundaries) was the most prominent, and was mentioned in 13 of the 42 studies.…”

Twelve Tips for Curriculum Sharing and Implementation: Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

“…A review of the literature revealed few articles specific to unyoked institutions sharing educational, curricular products. While much has been written about sharing educational best practices through large databases and public dissemination (Ellaway et al, 2014, Dogra et al, 2015, William et al, 2016, Fowler & Gill, 2015, little is known about externally imposed, collaborative partnerships explicitly created to facilitate the sharing of curriculum.…”

Making a difference

“…[2] The challenge however of 'teaching leadership' is laid bare by a study from Yorkshire and Humber by Fowler and Gill. [3] Educators reported more teaching and training in this area than trainees reported receiving and educators and trainees questioned whether leadership can really be taught. Perhaps we should not be surprised.…”