Don’t forget the students - we are the future of the NHS after all

As the importance of medical leadership continues to be embraced across the Health Service, it’s important to ensure that the pathways of medical development reflect this. While this is evident in some cases, with big steps being taken to professionalise medical leadership, it cannot be denied that when it comes to leadership development, undergraduate medical education has been left somewhat behind. Speaking from a position of insight as a student myself, I can say with confidence that the concept of medical leadership is still quite a foreign one to most medical students, and I believe this needs to change. But change starts by first asking the right questions, so I was delighted when I read the question posed by the FMLM Medical Student Group for the Student Essay prize of 2017:

“How should medical schools prepare students for leading the NHS?”

I’m no expert when it comes to essay writing, but I know a good question when I see one, and I love a good challenge, so I decided to take a chance and write an essay for submission.

When I first read the question, I was sure I had an answer; medical leadership is a big passion of mine, and having just completed a management intercalated BSc which focussed heavily on the topic, I felt I was well equipped to come up with great ideas on how to create leaders. However, I quickly realised after sitting and staring blankly at an empty document for three hours, that it’s not that easy. A medical degree is already a very loaded course, so trying to condense a whole BSc into it is completely unrealistic: I had to rethink my approach. Instead, I thought about what it is to be a good leader, and what good leadership looks like. The newly updated Leadership and Management Standards for Medical Professionals offered me an excellent framework, and following from this it was just a case of simple reverse engineering: understanding what I wanted the course to focus on, and working backwards from there. I was able to identify four key themes that I thought medical schools should hone in on, and propose four practical recommendations that medical schools could implement to help prepare students for leading the NHS.

My main aim when writing the essay was to keep it simple yet creative, but most importantly I wanted my ideas to be realistic; I sought to create a clear programme that would be engaging for medical students, but also achievable for medical schools. To do this, I focused on the learning tools that already exist within medical education and expanded on them to offer a leadership component.

After successfully formulating my ideas and putting them into an essay format I submitted my work, and was thrilled to be one of four students shortlisted to present to a panel of judges which included: Mr Peter Lees, Chief Executive and Medical Director of FMLM, Miss Clare Marx, President of the Royal College of Surgeons (England) and Miss Lotte Elton, FMLM MSG Essay Prize Winner 2016 and Final Year Medical Student at Newcastle University.

It was very exciting to present to such a great panel of individuals and alongside some other wonderful candidates. The opportunity to network with people who share an interest in this increasingly important topic was invaluable, and it was inspirational to hear some of the ideas that the other students had to share. 

Overall, the day went very well and I’m pleased to say I was fortunate enough to be awarded 1^st prize for the 2017 FMLM MSG Essay competition. Taking part has been a wonderful experience, and I hope to continue contributing to the work to integrate medical leadership into the undergraduate programme to ensure that students, as the future of the NHS, are not forgotten, but are trained to be leaders of the NHS.

You can download and read the winning essay here 

Join Elizabeth for the winning presentation - Wednesday 3 May 2017 from 6.30pm