How real leaders lead – showcasing the best of trainees’ BTBC projects

In November 2015, of the 37,700 junior doctors balloted by the BMA, 98 per cent voted to take industrial action. The correlation between this overwhelming decision and regular reports from trainees of feeling undervalued and overworked, with little control over personal or working lives, cannot be ignored.

We are left with the question: how did this highly motivated, highly capable and highly dedicated group come to be in this position, and how do medical leaders at all levels build and move towards a positive and highly engaged workforce?

In this vein, Health Education England (HEE) and FMLM have been collaborating on the Better Training Better Care (BTBC) programme, which is built on key recommendations from Professor Sir John Temple's ‘Time for Training’ and Collins’ ‘Foundation for Excellence’ reports.

In contrast to a quality improvement narrative that often relies on clinical outcomes by clinical means, BTBC focuses on projects, designed by trainees, that improve education and training of the workforce. This would lead to members of the workforce across the multi-disciplinary team (MDT) feeling more valued, motivated, able to learn, and happier, and therefore in a position to provide better care to patients, and potentially saving money for organisations through greater efficiency and fewer adverse outcomes.

This should not be surprising.

Junior doctors operate on the shop floor of healthcare organisations and are consistently dealing with systems that can improve. They, with their fellow shop-floor MDT colleagues, are best placed to recognise the need for change, but often do not carry the knowledge, experience, credibility or power to evoke that change quickly, effectively, if at all. More often than not, they do not have the time, or the energy, to break down the barriers to change.

The BTBC initiative has shown that organisations, senior clinicians and managers have the ability to help enormously with these barriers to change, encourage and support projects and individuals by promoting a change culture. They have set excellent examples of how other organisations can follow suit.

To showcase the best of the BTBC projects, FMLM and HEE are hosting a half-day stakeholder/expert meeting on 2 March, Better Training Better Care – how real leaders lead, bringing together trainees, consultants, medical directors and leads of healthcare organisations, and creating the space for working together to produce the achievable solutions that we know are possible.

This event stands out as there is a clear, refreshing emphasis on genuine, pragmatic, achievable solutions, rather than theoretical ideals, and most importantly, a strong message to learn from each other’s successes and realistically evoke change.

Never has it been of greater importance for the healthcare leaders of today to engage and motivate the healthcare leaders of tomorrow.

Hopefully, this event can go some way to empower a cohort of junior doctors who are currently feeling uninspired and undervalued, to becoming engaged, positive and inspired leaders who can feel proud of their contribution to healthcare and protect our future workforce.