RCGP Leadership Programme: Better Leaders, Better Doctors
Would you like to give general practice a voice in shaping the
future of UK health care?
Do you want to be better able to:
- provide leadership in your own practice?
- engage effectively with key players in the fast changing health
care environment at both local and national level?
- actively engage with the College to strengthen vision and
self-belief within the profession?
- explore new opportunities for yourself and your practice
that make the most of changes taking place in the NHS?
- develop leadership in others?
Would you like to improve your skills in:
- negotiating effectively with local managers and national policy
makers?
- promoting and prompting change in local hospital
services?
- influencing opinion amongst fellow GPs?
- analysing your own impact on situations and devising strategies
for being more effective with others?
- managing people, relationships and resources?
Would you enjoy contributing to
debates on, and understanding more about:
- why good doctors and good leaders need many of the same
aptitudes and skills?
- the nature and future of general practice?
- the future of the NHS?
- international health care policy and practice?
- and more?
Then the RCGP Leadership Programme may be just what
you are looking for.
The format of the programme
The RCCP Leadership Programme is a radically
different learning opportunity for GPs in a number of ways:
- it focuses the learning experience on the issues that matter to
participants, their organisations and their communities.
- it is independent of NHS management
structures and enables GPs to think for themselves about which
aspects of NHS policy they want to support and which to
challenge.
- it offers ongoing support over a twelve month
period and is deliberately designed to challenge perceptions,
awareness and assumptions – participants have described it as a
life changing experience
In the course of the programme participants
work through four stages:
- Finding my own leadership style: becoming
more effective within my practice and PCT;
- Leading locally: analysing and influencing
the agenda in the local care economy;
- Influencing the national picture: exploring
the drivers of national policy and the means of influencing these;
and
- Choosing my own leadership role: exploring
choices for shaping both my own career and the future of the
profession.
Participants engage in four residential weekends, four
further tutorial days and four to five hours of additional learning
per week. The programme provides opportunities to meet and debate
with a number of leading figures from the fields of health care,
government, industry and leadership development. There is also an
online coaching element with each participant having an ‘on-line’
tutor from the core faculty to provide confidential feedback and
support.
Who is it for?
The programme has proved useful to GPs who
have taken on roles such as Practice Based Commissioning
leads, chairs or members of PECs, clinical governance leads,
examiners, GP trainers, appraisers, GPwSIs, members of
collaboratives, LMC members, and those involved with GP education.
It has also proved valuable to those taking on new and emerging
roles and to those who simply wish to become better leaders and
better doctors. Participants will be selected based on a
written application form and an interview during which you will be
required to reflect on a case study or equivalent, in a group
setting. We will look for your ability to make the most of
the programme and to contribute to the learning of
others.
The programme team
The team offering the programme are drawn from a consortium
consisting of Centre for Leadership Studies at the University of
Exeter, the OD Partnerships Network and the
Peninsular Medical School Postgraduate
Health Institute. This unique tripartite collaboration ensures
that the team working with GP participants will have:
- An intimate knowledge of the dynamics of the NHS and General
Practice;
- An in-depth understanding of the roles of General Practice and
primary care nationally and internationally.
- A proven track record in Leadership Development in both the
public and private sectors including a unique and innovative method
of on-line coaching and support.
- Excellence in post graduate education in General Practice.
The programme will thus be current, relevant, academically
rigorous yet enjoyable, and highly credible within the profession
and the wider NHS.
All over the UK changes in healthcare and in
the NHS have led to requests for GPs to take on additional roles
such as commissioning, and also to new career opportunities.
These changes could easily lead to a splintering of the
profession and the loss of an understanding of the importance of
the generalist role.
To ensure that the skills and values of the
general practitioner continue to underpin and influence the nature
of care available within the UK heath care system, GPs need a
strong sense of their own identity, a good understanding of the
pressures for reform, and an ability to influence both local and
national agendas.
The profession therefore needs to develop a
new generation of leaders who can engage with the issues, the
players and the politics. If you want to contribute to and
help to shape the profession’s response to these changes, if you
want to achieve better health services locally, or if you want to
explore how you can shape your own career to coincide your
interests and values with the new opportunities opening up, then
this programme will enable you to do so.
The RCGP itself takes an active interest in
the programme and graduates from the programme will have the
opportunity to influence health care policy through the college as
well as through other relevant organisations.
If you would like to discuss this programme with one of the
programme team please contact us using the email addresses below
and we will arrange a mutually convenient time to have a telephone
conversation.