Reflections on the Empowering Student Leadership in Healthcare Conference (ESLIH) 2024

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The Empowering Student Leadership in Healthcare (ESLIH) Annual Conference took place at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. This highly anticipated event attracted eager students from a wide range of healthcare backgrounds, all coming together to explore and discuss healthcare leadership. My name is Henna, and as both a medical student and an ESLIH student committee member, I’m excited to share what made this year’s conference a tremendous success, along with my key takeaways from a student’s perspective.  

The day kicked started off with our incredible keynote speaker professor Rich Withnall, the CEO of FMLM, who gave a warm welcome to everyone. He emphasised including and incorporating healthcare students in the future work of FMLM. As being a medical student myself with a keen interest in healthcare leadership, hearing about these opportunities excited me, as FMLM are taking more steps to include and engage students. This was followed by insightful talks from Dr Shehryan Khan, a recent graduate of the prestigious National Medical Director’s clinical fellowship scheme, and Prabheep Sidhu, who is the current deputy clinical director of pharmacy at Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust. They both gave invaluable advice about how to develop a leadership and management portfolio, which many students, including myself found useful as they gave practical top tips and tricks. 

Next up was the panel discussion on policy making led by Dr Mansoor Ali, Ashifa Trivedi and Paula Robble who discussed the difference between policy and guidance. This panel discussion promoted very insightful questions and answer session at the end which I thoroughly enjoyed. After the refreshments break was the first round of the exciting workshops. The students were spoilt for choice with a variety of excellent workshops to choose between which was a tough decision! Workshops ranged from 'Leadership and Management in the MDT' led by Aileen O’Hare, Dr Sammy Strong & Dr Temur Pasha, 'Student-Led Workshop' by Malik Takreem, Adan Khan & Olamide Oguntimehin and 'How to get an innovation through to market' facilitated by Alex Giles. 

Following this was a well-deserved, delicious lunch break and a chance to network! 

Now it was time for the well awaited poster and oral presentations. There were three insightful oral presentations showing students innovative research coupled with posters that showed originality and creativity. As a student, this made me reflect on how I, too, can get involved in similar projects and it provided me with great motivation to explore more research avenues. Next, we had the pleasure from hearing from Minna Eii the Chief Sustainability Officer's Clinical Fellow hosted by Southeast London ICB. She gave an insightful talk regarding 'Reducing carbon footprint as healthcare professionals'. This talk voiced the importance of taking practical steps to promote eco-friendly practices with the healthcare environment. 

Next commenced the second round of workshops as students had to make yet another tough decision between a 'Global Health workshop run by Dr Hammad Khan a Consultant Neonatologist and Medical Director at Humanity First UK and a student led workshop run by Rasi Mizori and Zafar Khan, who kindly stepped in last minute due to the scheduled speaker unfortunately falling ill. They delivered an interesting talk surrounding how to create your own personal brand online. 

After a short break, anticipation built up in the room as the 1st prize for the poster competition was to be announced. A huge congratulations to our winners Carl and Pettiann, who are currently third year medical students at King College London. They did an excellent oral presentation on their project “Redefining Care from the Bedside: The Impact of Patient Leadership”. 

Finally, to wrap up the day, our student chair for ESLIH 2023/2024, Idil, delivered a warm thank you to everyone for attending and contributing to the day’s success. All students that attended rated the conference 4.5 stars out of 5 overall. Feedback highlighted a strong interest particularly around the panel discussion and students left with “new ideas to consider around leadership”. 

As a student, my main take away from this conference is that leadership is accessible to everyone, and it is a continuous journey that is built day by day. No matter what setbacks arise, it is essential to focus on improvement and development. Now, I see each challenge as an opportunity for growth, rather than viewing it in a negative light.   

The ESLIH team would like to thank all the speakers and participants. They all brought enthusiasm, passion and insight, that fuelled an atmosphere of inspiration. This was a true success, and we are making plans for the next ESLIH conference, which will return in autumn 2025. We promise that next year’s event will be just as successful and inspirational, if not even better. Keep your eyes peeled – and see you there! 

Henna Ahmed
ESLIH Committee