It is difficult to disagree with the general argument that successful health reform requires a significant degree of policy capacity or that all players in the policy game need to move beyond self-interested advocacy. However, an overly broad definition of policy capacity is a problem. More important perhaps, health reform inevitably requires not just policy capacity but political leadership an...

The Neolithic was marked by a transition from small and relatively egalitarian groups to much larger groups with increased stratification. But, the dynamics of this remain poorly understood. It is hard to see how despotism can arise without coercion, yet coercion could not easily have occurred in an egalitarian setting. Using a quantitative model of evolution in a patch-structured population, w...

There is a trend in health systems around the world to place great emphasis on and faith in improving 'leadership'. Leadership has been defined in many ways and the elitist implications of traditional notions of leadership sit uncomfortably with modern healthcare organisations. The concept of distributed leadership incorporates inclusivity, collectiveness and collaboration, with the result that...

Background: In the last decade literature, inquiries and reports into the short comings in health services have highlighted the vital role of leadership in clinical practice and the impact on patient care and effective workplace culture. Given the important role of nurses as the largest therapeutic group in health systems, the question is how nurses acquire clinical leadership ...

BACKGROUND Leadership courses and multi-source feedback are widely used developmental tools for leaders in health care. On this background we aimed to study the additional effect of a leadership course following a multi-source feedback procedure compared to multi-source feedback alone especially regarding development of leadership skills over time. METHODS Study participants were consultants ...

PURPOSE The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine how clinical team leadership can facilitate a collaborative team and, in doing so, drive change in a health service. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH Ethnographic field work was conducted with a clinical team, comprised of 13 health professionals, in community health, in Sydney Australia. Utilising semi-structured interviews, data were co...

There is limited evidence concerning leadership in community nursing. NHS policy also fails to clarify and define what leadership is, though regarding it as key to developing safe and high quality care. This paper reports the findings of a research study that aimed to identify how leadership is perceived and experienced by community nurses, and to examine the interaction between recent policy a...

Leadership skills are essential for a successful career as a physician-scientist, yet many MD-PhD training programs do not offer formal training in leadership. The Vanderbilt Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) previously established a 2-day leadership workshop that has been held biennially since 2006 for students in the first and second years of the graduate school portion of combined MD...

BACKGROUND A recommendation in the Institute of Medicine's report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, challenges the nursing profession to enhance nursing's leadership role in health care redesign. METHOD This descriptive, correlational, cross-sectional study examined the self-perceived leadership behaviors of RNs enrolled in a clinical ladder career pathway. A self-repo...