An extensive consultation exercise led by The King’s Fund and the Royal College of Physicians with hundreds of doctors across England last year identified a lack of medical leadership.1

“There’s no easy way to sugar the pill—according to the doctors who took part in this consultation exercise, medical leadership (with a few notable exceptions) was conspicuous by its absence,” it said.

These findings seem to be supported by Professor Aidan Halligan’s (former Director of Clinical Governance for the NHS) reflections on clinical leadership last year. Talking about his work across seven different trusts—which were all dealing with the consequences of a lack of clinical leadership—he said: “In every service, I noticed underlying themes of poor leadership, professional isolation, ineffective systems and processes, disempowerment and poor communication. The underlying team issues included an “everyone knows” culture, active covering …