Who Me? An Inclusive Future for Health Systems Leadership

Abstract

Our future health and disability systems require leaders prepared to lead integrated, consumer focussed services. These leaders need to engage with current paradigm shifts occurring in global health care and focus on delivering interprofessional services (Marinelli-Poole et al., 2011; Markham, 2015). There is a legacy of medical and nursing professions dominating system leadership roles over Allied Health Professions (Gauld & Horsburgh, 2015). To foster an effective and equitable leadership culture, we need to equip our workforce to lead a health system fit for contemporary society. In this presentation I will report on a study which explored the experiences of Allied Health clinicians who have already stepped into health systems leadership roles. This study sought to understand what factors and experiences enabled them to progress into these leadership roles. By analysing the shared experiences, we hope to learn what change is required to support more Allied Health clinicians into health systems leadership. Three themes have emerged from the qualitative analysis of data shared during semi structured interviews. Reflexive thematic analysis, visual doodling, and the software, XMind and NVivo, were all used to organise and help with data analysis. The three emergent themes are, 1.) Where do I fit? 2.) Where do we fit? 3.) Where is there space at the table? I will discuss these themes within the context of our national health system and what their implications might be for the future of health leadership development.