COVID-19 has thrown social care in England into the spotlight in a way that nobody would have wanted. The death toll in care homes, in people’s own homes, and among care staff. The desperate early struggle to get personal protective equipment to carers that mirrored the problems in the NHS, but at times seemed worse. […]
Category: COVID-19 Pandemic
Cool boxes and care homes by Ammara Hughes
This is the third blog by Dr Ammara Hughes on Primary Care Leadership and COVID vaccination. Read the first blog here and second blog here. We love a protocol in the NHS. Our intranets and desktops are crammed full of them. Of course, we need them for robust clinical governance. The trouble is, by the […]
Why it’s important for India to have its own Centre for Disease Control (CDC) by Dipit Sahu
In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the Indian prime minister called for an early and total lockdown of the country on March 25th, 2020. The early lockdown in India was a promising step because a similar lock down in China had managed to control the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. The lockdown began to be […]
Going viral by Ammara Hughes
This is the second blog by Dr Ammara Hughes on Primary Care Leadership and COVID vaccination. Read the first blog here. Saturday 19 December Second Pfizer delivery awaited. It had been a long week with the anticipation and then successful delivery of the first 975 vaccines culminating on Friday. We had accepted the challenge of […]
Ready, steady…vaccinate by Ammara Hughes
We entered December 2020 with hope. We hoped we were about to come out of our second lockdown in England, and then, on 2 December, the UK became the first country to approve the Pfizer BioNtech COVID 19 vaccine. The press coverage was like a scene from Contagion. This new product, being handled very delicately […]
Creating tomorrow today: seven simple rules for leaders by Helen Bevan and Goran Henriks
This is the first of eight blogs that we will be posting on BMJ Leader over the coming weeks. We both lead change inside our respective health and care systems; Helen in the National Health Service in England and Goran in Region Jönköping County in Sweden. Together we have 70 years’ experience in leading change […]
Coaching Through COVID – The how of leading a team to enable growth out of crisis by Lindsay Wittenberg & Rachel Ellison
What are the leadership lessons from the success of this pro-bono emergency response intervention? Coaching through COVID was an experiment. It went from concept to initial design to the first person being coached, within 10 days – three days after the start of the first UK lock-down in March 2020. The numbers so far 260 […]
It helps to know “why” before you do “what” by Roger Kline
Following on from the powerful blog “After the speeches…” that outlined actions needed to reduce discrimination, we are delighted to publish part eight of a ten part blog series by Roger Kline with suggestions on how to tackle structural racism in the NHS. In the Second Wave of COVID-19 the NHS is committed to avoid […]
Backing the frontlines during COVID-19 by Amir Jehangir
When I qualified in August 2019 as a new consultant, I was confident that my training had put me in good stead to lead a team in acute medicine. Of course, there was no way to know that the expectation would be to lead far beyond my medical experience. To meet the demands of the […]
Don’t call me a hero… by Kate Atkin
The accolade of being a “hero” has sat uncomfortably on some people’s shoulders within NHS staff and other key workers. High accolades such as “hero”, “amazing”, “awesome” etc while intended to show appreciation, acknowledgement and praise are not always received in that way, and there could be an underlying reason… Maybe ‘heroic’ accolades invoke feelings […]