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“Becoming” a doctor involves the acquisition of medical knowledge, skills and professional identity. Medical professional identity formation (MPIF) is complex, multi-factorial and closely linked to societal expectations, personal and social identity. Increasingly, doctors are required to engage in leadership/management involving significant identity shift. This paper aims to explore medical professional identity (MPI) and MPIF in relation to doctors as leaders. Selected identity theories are used to enrich the understanding of challenges facing doctors in leadership situations and two concepts are introduced: medical leader identity (MLI) and medical leader identity formation (MLIF) and consideration given to how they can be nurtured within medical practice.

A rapid conceptual review of relevant literature was carried out to identify a set of relevant concepts and theories that could be used to develop a new conceptual framework for MLI and MLIF.

MLIF is crucial for doctors to develop as medical leaders, and, like MPIF, the process begins before medical school with both identities influenced, shaped and challenged throughout doctors’ careers. Individuals require support in developing awareness that their identities are multiple, nested, interconnected and change over time.

This paper draws on concepts from wider literature on professional identity, in relation to how doctors might develop their MLI alongside their MPI. It offers a new perspective on MPI in the light of calls on doctors to “become and be healthcare leaders” and introduces the new concepts of MLI and MLIF.

Doctors play a central role in leading improvements to healthcare systems. Leadership knowledge and skills are not inherent, however, and need to be learned. General frameworks for medical leadership guide curriculum development in this area. Explicit discipline-linked competency sets and programmes provide context for learning and likely enhance specialty trainees’ capability for leadership at all levels. The aim of this review was to summarise the scholarly literature available around medical specialty-specific competency-based curricula for leadership in the post-graduate training space.

A systematic literature search method was applied using the Medline, EMBASE and ERIC (education) online databases. Documents were reviewed for a complete match to the research question. Partial matches to the study topic were noted for comparison.

In this study, 39 articles were retrieved in full text for detailed examination, of which 32 did not comply with the full inclusion criteria. Seven articles defining discipline-linked competencies/curricula specific to medical leadership training were identified. These related to the areas of emergency medicine, general practice, maternal and child health, obstetrics and gynaecology, pathology, radiology and radiation oncology. Leadership interventions were critiqued in relation to key features of their design, development and content, with reference to modern leadership concepts.

There is limited discipline-specific guidance for the learning and teaching of leadership within medical specialty training programmes. The competency sets identified through this review may aid the development of learning interventions and tools for other medical disciplines.

The findings of this study provide a baseline for the further development, implementation and evaluation work required to embed leadership learning across all medical specialty training programmes.

Doctors are seen as key to embedding health improvement and patient safety initiatives and there has been much international debate over how best to engage doctors in healthcare leadership and management. This paper explores the current focus on leadership development programmes for doctors through taking a comparative approach to initiatives in New Zealand and the UK. It also considers the challenges to embedding leadership development programmes at all levels of training, education and continuing professional development and highlights some of the implications arising from the two approaches.

In 2007, Birmingham City University (formerly the University of Central England) and the West Midlands NHS Strategic Health Authority developed and implemented the LEAP (Leadership, Education and Partnership) project. The project extended and developed further a successful leadership development programme, which had run in the West Midlands for healthcare educators working in both higher education (HE) and NHS organisations.The LEAP project aimed to develop genuine partnership and collaborative working among health and social care education providers from a range of HE and NHS organisations in the West Midlands. This paper describes the leadership programme approaches and activities, the underpinning leadership and management theories and concepts, and the way in which these were woven together in the leadership development programme. Examples of some of the theoretical models and frameworks used in the programme, and reflections on how these helped to develop participants' knowledge, skills and approaches to collaboration and partnership working are also detailed.

Women remain under-represented in leadership positions in both clinical medicine and medical education, despite a rapid increase in the proportion of women in the medical profession. This chapter explores potential reasons for this under-representation and how it can be ameliorated, drawing on a range of international literatures, theories and practices. We consider both the ‘demand’ for and ‘supply’ of women as leaders, by examining: how evolving theories of leadership help to explain women’s’ leadership roles and opportunities, how employment patterns theory and gender schemas help to explain women’s career choices, how women aspiring to leadership can be affected by the ‘glass ceiling’ and the ‘glass cliff’ and the importance of professional development and mentoring initiatives. We conclude that high-level national strategies will need to be reinforced by real shifts in culture and structures before women and men are equally valued for their leadership and followership contributions in medicine and medical education.

In this introductory chapter, I discuss the rationale for this edited collection and the contribution it can make to advancing knowledge of gender inequalities and promoting social justice in the medical profession and medical education. I provide a short overview of and critique of popular debates in the medical community in the United Kingdom and I also discuss briefly research about women’s careers in the United Kingdom and globally. The introductory chapter provides a description of each chapter and its contribution to scholarship about gender, careers and inequalities in Medicine/Medical Education.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

In 2007, Birmingham City University (UK) and the West Midlands National Health Service (NHS) Strategic Health Authority developed and implemented the leadership, education and partnership project. The project aimed to develop genuine partnership and collaborative working among health and social care education providers from a range of higher education and NHS organizations in the West Midlands region of the UK. Neither the partnership label nor the most robust of partnership contracts will make a partnership succeed. That is something only the people within the partnership can do. This project demonstrated that partners who are already collaborating, or are predisposed to do so, are more likely to build and sustain a partnership that really delivers.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.