Leadership and learning: building the environment for better, safer health care.

Abstract

Leadership in health care carries enormous responsibility. Effective leadership is crucial for good, effective, and safe care. It has recently been reported that a “breakdown” of leadership was partly responsible for the collapse of one of the UK's heart and lung transplant programmes and, by implication, a higher than expected death rate.1 2 The link between good leadership and the quality of health care is neither new nor surprising. Leaders function within the context of teams, systems, and organisations, and the delivery of good and safe care depends, too, on how well these teams and systems work. The message this carries to healthcare education is that, as well as learning about the care and management of individual patients, practitioners should acquire the skills to enable them to work effectively with others and to understand, care for and, when necessary, change the system of care.3 Not to do so is to put patients at risk of harm. The world does not fall neatly into categories of leaders and followers. All who work in health must understand the impact and implications of leadership; leaders exist at many levels—and especially so …