2019-Simon Moralee
The professionalisation of medical leadership: from where to what next?
Dr Simon Moralee, University of Manchester
Project summary: Management and leadership are increasingly a hybridised role in professional organisations, as professions seek toincorporate management and leadership competencies into their own bodies of knowledge. In health care, high profile failures (e.g. Mid Staffordshire) have been attributed to poor leadership and management; consequently, training anddevelopment in management and leadership is increasingly seen as essential for overcoming this, as well as somethingwhich clinicians cannot ignore or disengage from, but must embrace as part of their role as a clinician.
This project therefore aims to investigate the development and professionalisation of leadership within the medicalprofession. This will be achieved, firstly, through retrospective interviews with key persons involved in the creation of theFaculty of Medical Leadership and Management (FMLM) (alongside supporting documentary analysis, e.g. minutes ofmeetings). Secondly, it will also involve ethnographic methods to examine current developments in medical leadershipcreation and implementation, namely observation of current FMLM staff, as they carry out their work within the faculty'soffice environment and with relevant stakeholders, regarding the future design and delivery of leadership within medicalprofessional training and curricula. Building on research that was led and carried out by the principal and co-applicant in2018, this project will consider the role FMLM has played and continues to play in formalising leadership developmentwithin the medical profession in the UK, as well as the extent to which it has influenced and continues to influence thedevelopment of medical professional roles, identity, training and practice.