FMLM MSG Society of the Semester – April 2017

Birmingham Medical Leadership Society (BMLS)

 The Birmingham Medical Leadership Society (BMLS) has been going from strength to strength. This semester we have held two exciting events, as well as being involved in promoting and evaluating the new Healthcare Management and Leadership intercalation course at Birmingham. We were integral in ensuring this course was introduced at Birmingham and we are pleased the course has had a great first year and is expanding for the next academic year. We presented our work as a poster at the Birmingham Academic Medicine Society Annual Conference 2017, as well as doing an oral presentation on how students can develop their leadership skills. We have maintained our newsletter sent to our mailing list and strengthened our links with the Faculty at the medical school and with the Health Services Management Centre (HSMC), which runs the intercalation course. We are working with both groups to increase the medical leadership and management training on the MBChB curriculum, including helping with content and delivery.

 The BMLS has also worked with the HSMC to develop projects looking at the intercalation course. Not only will this benefit other medical schools looking to introduce an intercalation in medical management and leadership, it also provides interested students the opportunity to get involved with research and presenting posters, whilst being mentored by senior students.

 We have increased our engagement with the nursing community at Birmingham. We have seen an increase in nursing students attending our events, as well as signing up to our mailing list. This is exciting and we are planning to reach out to other groups such as dental, physician associate and physiotherapy students.

 Our first event of the semester explored leadership in primary care, and we invited two speakers who gave very different perspectives of leadership. It led to an insightful discussion on ethics and the future of general practice. We had a range of backgrounds represented in our audience, including medical students, social sciences students and local GP trainees.

 For our second event, Women in Leadership, we invited three inspirational women from a range of backgrounds in healthcare to reflect on their experiences of leadership and the challenges they faced and overcame. It was a fantastic event that provided advice for those looking to get into leadership and led to a discussion on what we need to do to help women be recognised as leaders and be given opportunities to take on leadership roles. We had positive feedback from attendees and the speakers, and we hope everyone could take something away from this event and reflect on their own experiences.

 For the next few months, we will be continuing our research projects and submitting abstracts for presentations at conferences, including 'Tomorrow’s Leaders, Today' in London on 28 June, and Leaders in Healthcare 2017 in Liverpool, 30 October – 1 November.

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