As a sector, Healthcare is built on the strengths and commitment of its clinicians, scientists and carers. Like pilots, engineers, designers, lawyers and teachers, these are highly skilled, highly trained professionals in positions of huge trust, and without them the sector would quickly come to a grinding halt.
But not many of them become the sector’s Chief Executives.
I’m clear in my conviction that the healthcare sector produces many fantastic leaders, from a wide range of functional backgrounds. And I’ve always been particularly struck by the clinicians and carers who bring their strong problem-solving skills, empathy, aptitude for clear communication, and comfort working both at pace and under intense pressure, to wider leadership. They can have a huge impact in commercial and public sector leadership.
But within the UK healthcare sector today, the traditional career pathways and prevailing culture do not always offer clinicians the opportunity, space, or encouragement to consider different career routes.
Healthcare, globally, is in serious need of transformation. Rising patient demand from aging populations has combined with post-pandemic backlogs of care to put significant pressure on healthcare service organisations – be they public, private or charitably-funded. And that pressure bears down on clinicians and carers, as well as the wider teams around them, every day. This year, Deloitte found that 90% of physicians in the developed world feel dissatisfied or burnt out, and, as the operational intensity of clinical practice deepens, an increasing number of clinicians step away from their clinical careers. Today, 44% of UK doctors have considered taking up full-time employment in healthcare in another country, and 37% have considered leaving their profession entirely.
So where are my reasons to be cheerful?! My new white paper – Groundbreaking Clinician Leaders: And why they give us reasons to be cheerful about the future of healthcare – addresses this conundrum, highlighting more than 20 clinicians who have carved out bold careers in a huge variety of leadership roles and are having powerful, positive, impacts on their organisations, and Healthcare more broadly. Building from interviews with those individual leaders, the white paper explores how we can re-think clinical career pathways to offer possibilities to others, broadening individuals’ perspective and experience. It holds out for the promise of different and hybrid avenues to fulfilling careers, and the innovation and leadership that can transform the sector.
We can reimagine clinicians’ potential career paths, creating opportunities for those who want to utilise their hard-earnt expertise in different, as well as clinical, contexts. Through people and operational leadership, innovation, improvement, strategy roles, consulting, investing, advising, and beyond, clinicians can make a wider contribution to the healthcare sector, and to the growth of healthcare organisations. I hope this paper encourages healthcare organisations to be thoughtful about the career paths they offer, and the cultures they build, as part of a route both to retaining clinical colleagues, and fuelling improved, thriving, organisations.
Currently, many clinicians’ job plans make space for teaching and research, improvement or innovation projects, even leadership and management. So can that be stretched further? What role can secondments, part-time placements, and Fellowship programmes play? How can interested individuals be equipped with leadership tools while remaining in practice? And how can the sector foster a leadership environment in which career-broadening experimentation is encouraged rather than tolerated, or, worse, actively squashed?
“How can the sector foster a leadership environment in which career-broadening experimentation is encouraged rather than tolerated, or, worse, actively squashed?”
In imagining different futures, role models – those who can showcase the sorts of hybrid careers that are possible – are always helpful. It was with that in mind that I built the list of clinician leaders profiled in the white paper, and of many others who spoke to me, who have carved out careers which combine a commitment to patient care with a passion for broader leadership.
Each of these leaders has made deliberate decisions to move beyond traditional career pathways in medicine, nursing, dentistry, physiotherapy, care, and animal health, and has demonstrated ambition, focus and courage in doing so. It’s been a huge pleasure to speak with these individuals, and to unpick some of what drove them to look beyond their clinical practice, and the factors that enable them to succeed today.
This group is, of course, self-selecting. They are leaders who have left full-time clinical practice and are leading, or contributing to the leadership of, a huge variety of healthcare organisations, predominantly in private healthcare, but there are notable examples in both public and non-profit-making healthcare. Some of the leaders included have entirely committed their careers to leadership. But many have built blended careers which allow them to continue treating or caring for patients on a part-time basis in parallel with their broader leadership role. Strikingly, all are clear that their clinical experience supports their leadership impact.
“Many have built blended careers which allow them to continue treating or caring for patients on a part-time basis in parallel with their broader leadership role. Strikingly, all are clear that their clinical experience supports their leadership impact.”
Many practising clinicians won’t want to follow exactly these paths – and it isn’t my intention to suggest they should. But every single one of these leaders is routinely approached by former colleagues who are intrigued by their careers and unsure their own current roles are fulfilling their aspirations – a fact that reflects wider concerns about the sustainability of traditional clinical careers.
In bringing together their stories in this report, I’ve been struck by the many common threads that link these leaders. In their own way, each person profiled here combines powerful motivations around helping others with significant curiosity, lively intellects, and strong personal drive. Many told me that spending time outside the UK was pivotal in their thinking about their professional trajectory. And almost all attributed their career moves to an interest in driving change on a larger scale than full-time clinical practice allows.
Looking ahead, building out these sorts of hybrid career pathways and extending some of the routes which took these individuals into their leadership careers could make a long-lasting positive impact across healthcare. Doing so could allow us to retain the expertise and sense of purpose of individual clinicians, while also giving breadth and stimulation that is motivating and professionally fulfilling.
These leaders’ careers also prove the huge benefits of investing in clinicians’ potential and providing sustainable and exciting pathways for them. Vitality is one business which has proactively prioritised building clinicians into leaders, and built best-in-class expertise in doing so. “Clinicians have a distinct ability to bring a voice to those who don’t have a voice in the room,” said Dr Keith Klintworth, Managing Director VitalityHealth, when we spoke on this topic. “We know we want clinicians in leadership roles in our organisation, and we’re committed to providing the roles, opportunities, and flex needed to retain them.”
“Clinicians have a distinct ability to bring a voice to those who don’t have a voice in the room. We know we want clinicians in leadership roles in our organisation, and we’re committed to providing the roles, opportunities, and flex needed to retain them.” – Dr Keith Klintworth, Managing Director VitalityHealth.
Offering clinicians opportunities to build their skills and interests away from clinical practice and care might feel counter-intuitive to many leaders whose most urgent priority is delivering today’s healthcare as safely and quickly as humanly possible. But my deep concern is that, unless we think seriously about designing more flexible, wider-ranging, potential career paths for clinicians – which allow nurses, doctors, vets, physiotherapists, and their clinician colleagues to explore their interests in technology, innovation, leadership, and even operational management, as well as the more traditional routes of teaching, research and private practice – our sector risks losing more clinicians, and their dedication and skill, on which healthcare depends.
This white paper explores my reflections on this topic in more detail, and spotlights clinician leaders in the UK who have broken the moulds of traditional career paths, highlighting their creativity, impact and sense of possibility. In a sector under pressure, these leaders give us a sense of optimism about what could lie ahead.
You can find the full white paper here. I’ll be very interested to hear what you think. If you’re a healthcare leader, does this make you think about the pathways through your own organisation? If you lead in a different sector, are there ideas here that read across for some of the groups of skilled colleagues in your business?
