New Health Leadership Centre targets effective capacity building for NHS chiefs

The future of leadership in the NHS is the focus of a new centre at Lancaster University Management School (LUMS). The Health Leadership Centre, which provides research, training and development for NHS leaders and managers up to Chief Executive Board level, is being officially launched today.

Dr Richard Smith, Director of the Ovations/National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, is the guest speaker at the opening hosted by the Lancaster Leadership Centre Director Professor Iain Densten.

Professor Densten said the Health Leadership Centre would work with NHS Trusts in the North West initially to ìincrease the capability and capacity of managersî. It will research and evaluate best practice leadership development for the health sector, run a series of leadership development workshops for senior managers, and act as a broker of leadership development advice and development.

ìThere is a need within the NHS to develop managers and leaders and provide a talent pool to improve succession planning in the sector,î Professor Dentsen said. ìOrganisations within the health sector are going through a period of change and it is the leaders themselves who can ensure that this change moves from a bureaucratic to a capable environment.î

The Health Leadership Centre is being supported by 14 affiliate NHS Trusts within the North West, and is already working in partnership with these organisations on leadership impact developments and research activities.

The affiliate partners are:

Blackburn with Darwen Primary Care Trust; East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust; Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; East Lancashire Primary Care Trust; Blackpool Primary Care Trust; Lancashire Care NHS Trust; Calderstones NHS Trust; North Cumbria Acute Hospitals NHS Trust; Central Lancashire Primary Care Trust; North Lancashire Teaching Primary Care Trust, Cumbria Partnership NHS Trust; North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust; Cumbria Primary Care Trust; and the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust.