Leadership in health care.

The National Health Service (NHS) has to provide a dynamic and responsive health care system with a workforce that can cope with frequent organizational change. To achieve this, the NHS must have clinicians who can demonstrate leadership skills and act as role models at all levels of health care provision. The outdated health care service that works on strong paternalistic and controlling principles is in effect dead. The changes in the culture of the NHS have been driven by numerous factors including changes in society, and the decentralization of health care services. Others factors include the failing of the NHS to tackle system failures such as those identified by the Bristol enquiry and challenges in implementing complex and ever increasing changes within the health care system. ‘Let whoever is in charge keep this simple question in her head (not how can I always do this right thing myself, but) how can I provide for this right thing to always be done.’ Florence Nightingale (1969) Florence Nightingale’s words are interesting because she had clearly recognized the important concept of leadership by influencing the delivery of high quality care through delegation and empowerment. Donnelly (2003) states that achieving good leadership is more of a journey than a destination and is easy to recognize in action. Yet it is difficult to define the important characteristics of a good leader. A wealth of literature discusses different types of leadership and whether individuals are born natural leaders with intrinsic personality traits or whether they can be taught the key qualities required of an effective leader (Hawkins and Thornton, 2002; Austin et al., 2003). To be an effective leader requires a complex mix of attributes, behaviours and skills but most of all it requires an ability to reflect upon and evaluate yourself. The aim of this article is to provide the reader with an overview of some of the key concepts in leadership. This article will briefly discuss: 38