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Dr Jeremy Rushmer, interim Medical Director at North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust, one of the 14 Trusts reviewed in the Keogh report, talks about the process and next steps from a trust’s perspective.

FMLM's view on the Francis report and improving culture through good leadership.

A little while back, I was looking at the regular e mail update from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Boston. Among their various initiatives of the week was an announcement about a training and learning programme on how to improve care for “frail elders”. Not “elderly”. Elders.

The headlines are, I know, driving you inexorably toward the next brainstorming meeting for some blue-sky thinking about the corporate challenges which face us all as we grapple with the big issues of the day.

Tempting as it is to begin crafting that next innovative piece of transformational culture-changing strategic work without further delay, can I just ask you to pause and reflect upon the nuts and bolts of the thing. It won’t take a minute, I promise. I ask mainly because we are all of us otherwise in danger of forgetting the rudiments.

 Q: I thought it might be good to reflect a bit on the Wimbledon Championship and think about what it might teach us about leadership?

A: Oh for goodness sake! Last time it was kindness, and this time its tennis! Don’t you think it’s all a bit obvious?

Q: What do you mean?

A: Oh come on…to win Wimbledon requires enormous skill and incredible amounts of work to prepare; tremendous self-belief, but also determination, resilience, the ability to set a strategy and focus relentlessly on its execution, and…

Q: It sounds….

I started in clinical leadership development and management in the 21st century and in those years have witnessed dramatic changes in the NHS which have culminated in the recent reforms.

Over the last 65 years the NHS has had to deal with a variety of external macro-environmental and internal pressures and although having managed to get through, it is always responding to these pressures in a reactive way.

We have got through and have reached the 65 year milestone which is to be celebrated, but reacting to change is not going to deliver us the next 65 years.

I was having dinner with a good friend yesterday who works as a doctor in a particularly challenged hospital. I’ve known him since I was a houseman and although we’ve taken different career paths we’ve been able to share many stories of highs and lows which have resonated with both of us irrespective of speciality. I know from personal experience that he is a compassionate and diligent clinician as well as being a loyal and proud family man.

Let’s start with the simple and obvious. The inception of the NHS was one of the most remarkable enactments of leadership for the common good, in the history of the United Kingdom, and arguably far beyond. So as the NHS reaches sixty-five, why on earth should we talk about it and leadership and death in the same conversation?

Whilst waiting to catch a train from Edinburgh to London, I overheard a pair of commuters talking about George Osborne’s spending review. More specifically they were discussing whether certain cabinet ministers would be jealous of Jeremy Hunt, heading a department that had had its funds ring-fenced. The current discussions regarding expenditure on healthcare are age-old.

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