The challenge

When they write the history of the last twenty years of the NHS, what will they say about the medical profession? Justifiably, they should make a lot of technological change and advances in treatments… but then they always do which allows the majority of us to sit back and bask in the reflected glory of the relatively small number of pioneers.

If they were to stray perceptively into the fiscal challenges faced by health services the world over, will they say that the medical profession rose valiantly to the challenge and applied its massive collective intellect and energy to provide and promote the solution which guaranteed the fundamental principles of the NHS for the next generation? Or will they say that the profession repeatedly punched below its weight?

Cometh the hour, cometh the UK Medical Royal Colleges and the Academy: will their timely backing for a Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management provide the critical focus for medicine to more than rise to the massive leadership challenge which engulfs us all… answers on a postcard please… or should I say 'comments at the bottom' these days? Their foresight has been endorsed by a huge (over 2,200) response to an on-line questionnaire seeking advice as to how to set up the Faculty, what should it do, what should be its organisational form, its membership benefits and, trickiest of all, its business case.

I believe that the fundamental purpose of the Faculty is to enhance health and healthcare through better leadership, management and teamwork. I believe we achieve that by supporting positional medical leaders to be ‘the best they can be’ and by maximising the leadership, management and team-working skills of all doctors. This would be a Herculean task were it not for the intercollegiate nature of the Faculty. Instead of building an empire, it needs to work with and through the Colleges and Faculties, adding value to the considerable activity already taking place, stimulating new activity and bringing a new focus. The prize for success is only the best healthcare system in the world bar none!

This will not be achieved by ‘the few’ in an ivory tower. It needs the concerted effort of you all to help shape its form and function. The challenge of ‘the few’ is how to engage optimally with you, swell the membership rapidly and be a truly modern organisation. The survey told us it needs to be credible, responsive, flexible, inclusive, non-hierarchical… but did not tell us how. I am being educated daily as to what a blog is… my understanding so far is that it can help rapidly with suggestions to some of the types of questions I have posed. Time will tell so, over to you.