Healthcare leadership: Shaping the future of medicine | with The University of Liverpool

In this episode we look at an online course that highlights the importance of interdisciplinarity training in healthcare leadership. Produced by experts in healthcare and management, it allows flexibility as well as global reach - with an emphasis on collaboration and input from leaders across various organisations

Participants

In order of first appearance:

• Emily Slade - podcast producer and host, Prospects
• Susan Buttress - director of postgraduate education, School of Medicine, The University of Liverpool
• Dr. Jennifer Johnson - program director of the MSc in Healthcare Leadership.

Susan Buttress

School of Medicine

Contact: Susan.Buttress@liverpool.ac.uk

https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-buttress-41423a55/

A physiotherapist by profession Susan has worked in a number of executive higher education and healthcare roles where her key to success has been in the engagement of others and making collaborative partnerships work. She has an MA in Healthcare Law and an MPhil from the University of Manchester and has worked extensively overseas engaging with Universities and healthcare organisations to create innovations in education that meet the needs of today’s leaders and practitioners.

'It’s been great to work together with Jenny in the Management School here at the University of Liverpool to create this unique study opportunity for those leading in our healthcare organisations. From both respective professional backgrounds, a willingness to challenge existing barriers and enthusiasm to be creative, the programme shows how new knowledge and skills in this area can be integrated to have a real impact on care'  

Dr Jennifer Johnson

Management School

Contact:  Jennyj@liverpool.ac.uk

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-jenny-johnson-7163229/

Dr Jennifer Johnson is Programme Director of M.Sc. Healthcare Leadership and is based in the Management School at The University of Liverpool. She holds a PhD from the University of Liverpool, is Chartered FCIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) and is a SFHEA  (Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy). She has won a university award for embedding employability into the curriculum and understands international educational transition, as a result of her doctoral studies.

‘Working with Susan from the School of Medicine has been wonderful. We have co-developed the programme and this interface between management and medicine is so important, as clinicians from many disciplines grow professionally and also inter-personally during the course. Students who have completed their programme with us have commented on how they have increased their knowledge, developed their leadership skills and also how their career prospects are flourishing as a result of their studies.’

Transcript

Emily Slade: Hello and welcome to Future You, the podcast brought to you by graduate careers experts Prospects. I'm your host, Emily Slade and in this episode we look at a program that's been collaboratively produced by both an expert in health care and an expert in management. It's an online course that allows flexibility alongside a global reach, with input from real leaders across various organisations. Let's find out more.

Susan Buttress: Hello, I'm Susan Buttress I am the director of postgraduate education in the School of Medicine at the University of Liverpool, and we're here today to talk about our experiences of our healthcare leadership programme, and how it might benefit you.

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: I'm Dr. Jennifer Johnson. I'm programme director of the MSc in Healthcare Leadership, and I work in the management school.

Emily Slade: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. If we'd like to begin, if you'd like to tell us how your MSc Healthcare Leadership programme is unique.

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: Well, we started with our co-design, didn't we, Susan, working with the management school and how the management school could interface with the School of Medicine. So we literally sat, Emily, with a blank sheet of paper, thinking about the wider healthcare arena on a global scale. And considering how management and leadership and clinicians could interface so we work between the two, literally, as I say, with no ideas at the beginning, and really on a journey of discovery to co design, the best possible programme for our healthcare professionals in the world at large.

Susan Buttress: I really think it's also a real marrying of two professional spaces of one of management and one of health professionals. And that really means that we get the rigor in the programme, it really helps to embed leadership knowledge and skills within how we manage healthcare organisations, and how leaders really take that forwards in their careers. So I think we've really produced something quite unique. That isn't usually prepared in this way. Usually, it's quite separate.

Emily Slade: Yeah, amazing. So you've had some really great feedback from this course. What are those who have completed it so far? What are they saying?

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: So lots of positive feedback, I think it's important to say that only about half the population of our students are from the UK. So we've got a big wide vista from all different parts of the world, and therefore getting a very large global community of practice, if you like. And I'll give you one example ahead of our allied health care professionals in a mental health, NHS Trust says, 'I feel very proud of myself to be able to complete the programme alongside work and family. It shows how productive I can be when needed most, I really enjoyed the learning and wished I could do more, but was limited on time.' And there's a real sense that people feel they're learning online, they're able to work in this international environment and vista And that that really helps them therefore, to develop this wonderful way of of working and studying at the same time, which is very hard for clinicians particularly.

Susan Buttress: We also have obviously other feedback from students we've got a another UK student who is worse working and had a family at home and has really been able to embed this into her work to progress her career. So it really works. For those that also, obviously our UK students who are working busy individuals adore are able to complete the programme alongside their work and family, our students also come back and say they feel really confident as a professional. So not only do they have kind of an external validation in terms of a Masters or some kind of postgraduate qualification, then also they feel a lot more confident in how they're able to manage within their organisation. There's also a, we have a biomedical scientist. So we also we have a whole range of professionals on this programme within management and across the whole spectrum of roles within within health. So we have a biomedical scientist that states that he has sort of much more people centered approach after having completed the programme.

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: Thank you, I was going to add to that as well as the head of quality and patient safety. And she particularly talks about the benefits from it. She has spoken at a major international conference, now, she's in a big stage a big presentation, she's been asked to do a PhD and take her took sort of studies forward if you like, but she's also been pushed to the next stage of her career as well. So she's finding very much as she has been pulled both in terms of her career choices, but also academically, and enabling herself to put herself on a bigger stage and get her name out there, which is very important as well, in this world of work.

Emily Slade: You've discussed reimagining healthcare, what do you hope to achieve from the results that you're finding?

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: Well, I think we could go back to the very beginning. There's something called the Lumen survey, and that's the leadership and undergraduate medical education. That's the national survey. And in that survey, 88% of medical students see this teaching where we're using the management and leadership training alongside the medical teaching as relevant, but only 18% of students believe it's well integrated into their curriculum. And actually, from this national research, it showed that only about 2% of timetable teaching in each five year undergraduate medical course, was about management and leadership. And to be honest, when we reimagine healthcare, it's this whole view that it isn't about a monologue. It isn't about a doctor or a nurse talking at the patient. It's a dialogue and for the patient to get better than needs to be this dialogical experience that needs to be the two people We'll be talking together. And some of the traditional models, if you like, can be very much more than love based. I don't know what you feel about that, Susan?

Susan Buttress: Yes, well, there are real benefits from studying with multiple professional groups, and also from a real global perspective. So sitting in that classroom with health professionals and other professionals, managers, leaders from across the globe, and we can really learn from each other. So there are examples of real kind of high resource countries learning from the lower resource ones. And so this is a phenomenon we call reset reverse innovation. And we can really see this within the classroom, when people are discussing how their health care systems work within their own countries. And we can really learn from e ach other. So it's actually quite unique. And we hope to obviously, we've seen a lot of examples that coming out in people's assessments and their feedback of experiences within their health care organisations.

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: And the importance of reaching beyond the geographical boundaries is important too, in healthcare education, so drain it, I'll talk about that. They attest that educators need to explore these global parameters. And again, part of our thinking and really talking to clinicians and practitioners, and healthcare workers, the hope was that they, they sometimes think, within their own environment, and it's very easy to be quite myopic, and inward looking. And what we did very intentionally was to think externally, it wasn't just about one healthcare system in one nation, it was much more about how can we co learn and collaborate internationally, which is a very important part of global health.

Susan Buttress: And there are real benefits of coming out of your own organisation and looking at it looking down on it from a completely different perspective. So it's, there have been real benefits from this. And this is what we mean by kind of reimagining healthcare.

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: And I think not wanting to be too critical, really, perhaps one view is that the NHS can be quite inward looking, that they teach themselves and they co teach, and they almost have an inward looking perspective. But looking at things externally enables them to come back into their own working environment be that the NHS will be that any other healthcare environment across any part of the world, they will see that world differently, because they've learned, yes, co learned from their participants, but also, they've been able to think in more of a kind of a broader vista, if you like them, perhaps they would have would have done so before.

Emily Slade: Absolutely, let's lean into that a little bit more, you've both created this programme together, let's talk more about how it benefits the students.

Susan Buttress: So from a professional perspective, then we have developed these professional boundaries. And as we've seen the healthcare move forwards in the last two decades than we've seen a blurring of those boundaries. And so there's a real kind of tendency as we were trained in our professions to really kind of work in those silos. So this programme helps us to really look at other people's roles and appreciate those roles within the whole system of health care,

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: I go back to the work of laboratory at al. And they talk about this hybrid role, the fact that we've got the clinical and the management leadership tasks, and they always separate in a sense, but they're brought together for physicians who want to get into the senior leadership roles, medical leadership roles, if you like. And that's a driver of attractiveness, they need to learn how to manage and how to lead people. I still think there's something more fundamental here, which is what you touched on there, Susan, that all too often, clinicians themselves are trained in their own very narrow parameters. So not only are they trained in one system, they are trained as physiotherapists, if you like or occupational health, whoever it might be, they're trained in their own individual arenas. And yet, they're then thrown into the system where they're expected to collaborate and co work. And I firmly believe that we need to be teaching this, I think we should be embedding so much of this into the curriculum. And I do think that what the work we've been doing is a management school. And our knowledge, if you like, could be so easily integrated into much of the medical school and indeed healthcare training per se. I think it needs to be far more so than it currently is.

Emily Slade: So this has been this program has been produced by an expert in health care and one in management. So what elements of the program was special because of that

Susan Buttress: We've had real leaders from a whole range of areas within the organisation. So we've had leaders presenting and providing teaching on this program and content from any Certus from radiologists, for instance, from the audit lay Innovation Center, we've had a whole range of experts and that really helps to demonstrate how this can be integrated into into real care.

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: And from our side, that's very much on your side. From the management school. We've brought in things like the healthcare finances example. Initially, I think many students are scared of thinking about finance. And indeed, Susan I went to a three day conference, an NHS conference I don't think we heard money or budget talked about once. And we thought this is really an important point of how we can feed into an entire system here. And so we do know that our students are benefiting from learning about finance, they're not having to create sets of accounts and ever having to become accountants, but they do need to understand how to effectively create and manage a budget, how to work with shortfall, how to create ways of ensuring that the needs of the most are dealt with in the in the most effective way. So healthcare finance will be a standout module for me, that I think is very important, but also understanding leadership and working in teams. Because every single person when they finish work, or finish their studies will need to go into that world of work and work in a in a collaborative team setting. And that's not going to be easy. It's not easy to work with differences. We know. We know from experience and the management school that we can train people to be an effective team player, we can train people to work more collaboratively. And I think these skills are very, very key and core in the modern world of healthcare.

Susan Buttress: So I think the real success is, is bringing all of this together. And I think we spoke a little bit about right at the beginning of of different professional worlds. Well, I think the whole blending of, of the of a medical world and a management world for creating a leader has really been produced within the product that we've moved, we've created. And it's shown in that obviously in the feedback that we've got from the students that we've had that have graduated and moved on within their careers, and we've had quite a number of students now that have moved on to different positions feel much more confident as leaders and have really been able to integrate this knowledge and skills from all of these modules within into their roles.

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: I think you make a very good point there as well, Susan, that, in our design of it, Emily, what we've done, we've thought about the end in mind. So the work based project they do at the very end is geared towards improving and enhancing their current work within their their their place of work. But in many of the assessment parts of the modules, they are developing knowledge and developing expertise where they're critiquing the current situation where they are, as well as exploring what's happening elsewhere, which might be a great place to learn from.

Emily Slade: If you'd like to take it in turns. And just tell me what the most exciting thing that you personally find about the course.

Susan Buttress: The most exciting part of this programme is the global aspect and learning within a group of health professionals of different professions, within management within health within science, that also come from across the world. So a real kind of global classroom that we learn from each other. And that really, really excites me because we learn about different systems that were not clearly inward looking. And we achieve much more through that.

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: I think my would be that cross faculty working to be honest, Emily. I've seen so many light bulb moments from the students when they've realised the importance of management and leadership in their clinician in their day to day life, if you like, but more importantly, as importantly, I think as universities we do tend to stick within our own faculty. It is very rare indeed that people move between faculties and certainly co create something with between faculties. And I think both Susan and I have realised ourselves that we speak different we began at the beginning thinking about we're speaking different languages we're not we're not even on the same page. And we've worked away now of working together so we are actually interfacing incredibly well both bringing together own individual expertise. To the extent that we are up for the final three of the university awarded innovation this year, which is a real accolade. Lots of people apply very few Ever get nominated? Manufacturing, I think in the entire management schools, only two and three in the entire school of medicine to give you an idea. So one of those in those cases in each of those cases is us. And that's because what we're doing is unusual in the university setting, that we are not sitting in our own individual domains. But we're really enabling ourselves to go outside of that, and co create something together in a very innovative way, which is making great inroads now for the students, which is very important, and really where we set out what we set out to do the beginning.

Susan Buttress: Yes, Jenny, that's right. And the students clearly have benefited from that. And we can see that as they move across in their careers and upwards.

Emily Slade: That's fantastic. Was there anything else that you wanted to touch on that you feel you haven't gone into enough of?

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: I think there's something very fundamental here, Emily, that we do need to think about. Why are we not teaching more? Why is it just 2% of our curriculum as an idea that, why don't we teach you more about the skills of leadership, about understanding ourselves, about working together in teams about management, because I've heard stories of nurses as an example, qualifying, and in a very short space of time being managed management of a ward say overnight, or something like that, or daytime short term management really being pushed at a very early stage of their career into management roles. And I'm a firm believer that, yes, it's important for all these students to learn their clinical skills, whatever their domain, but it's as important, I would say, perhaps a bit less important. But as important, I probably would say, to learn these management skills and to learn to work not just with your people in your team, but outside your team in the wider system. And indeed, to understand yourself, and how you're going to interface with those patients, because that happens from the start of your medical career, or your healthcare training.

Susan Buttress: I think I would say that, and it says, advice for people considering doing the programme, don't think because it's a Masters in leadership, that actually that's not for you, because you're a clinician is this whole thing about, I don't think that that's, that's for me, I can be a leader without having the knowledge and the skills, whereas actually, I think the evidence really does show that we need to kind of get out there and really understand what leadership is what type of leader that you are, how this can really be integrated into your organisation. And this, this new knowledge, can really help with their careers and work help with their professional work.

Emily Slade: Why is online learning so important?

Susan Buttress: So within today's health care organisations, there are so many busy healthcare professionals, it really helps to have an online programme so that it helps to manage their time, their study, within their role, and also within their family life. An online program also is really creative. So the one that we developed really helps to keep you engaged. But it also helps you to integrate your own health role into the programme, Jenny?

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: Yeah, I think there's also thing about global timelines as well. We wanted to create a totally accessible programme for people across the world and in different time, timelines, global timelines. And what this does, we have things called discussion boards, where people are able to put in their comments about a particular case study that we present them with. And it doesn't matter if you're commenting four or five hours, seven hours later, that will make any difference at all, we're gradually building up this discussion board between people from different global perspectives. And that's a key component of the role. But we also know that that very few healthcare workers work in a very standardised way. Many work, unsociable hours anyway, even if it was just looking at one country, it will be very hard to get people all together in one place at one time. Now, we do have some of the synchronous learning but most of the work is actually asynchronous. And everything we do is online. So for the student, then all the resources are there. It's easy access, and it's it can be at a time that suits them.

Emily Slade: Absolutely, no, that makes complete sense. Why is it important for people from different backgrounds of training? Why is it important that they learn to work together?

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: Because when they're in the world of work from day one, they will have to do this. And I think perhaps again, it's a shortcoming of some of the education that we're aware of where people are working and learning in silos, and they're not necessarily working, learning to work together. And it can create some sort of hierarchical system where maybe some disciplines feel more important than others. But when it comes down to it from a patient care perspective, every single person within that looking after that patient is important. We want that patient centric approach. And for that to occur, everyone from the the lowest paid individual within the healthcare system to the highest pay is important to that patient safety and that patient care. So learning to work in a cross disciplinary context is very, very, very important. And again, this is something that can be learned, but I do think it needs to be integrated more into some of the curricula that do exist and I'm aware that some universities have doing this and that's great practice. But all too often, each individual discipline is trained alone and learn alone, rather than necessarily co learning together. I don't know if there's anything you'd like to add, perhaps from your disciplinary standpoint Susan?

Susan Buttress: Yeah, so it's extremely important, isn't it that people learn to work together at an early stage in their careers. And certainly at Liverpool, we see some good practice of this. But of course, it is isolated. And as people move on and into their roles, once they qualify, then it is a real challenge. So I think that if we can equip students as effectively as possible with the right skills, and with the right knowledge, then I think they can really be hitting the ground running and able to manage the healthcare issues that arise.

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: And indeed, if if individual students understand themselves better, and they know how to more effectively how to work in a cross disciplinary team, and they can manage and lead and learning to lead, then they've set up for a career. And this is all about future proofing them, helping them with their resilience, they're going into often a very highly difficult environment, I mean, you could be nothing more stressful, I guess, then the working with the health of an individual trying to keep them as healthy as possible within the hospital or the or the GP domain. So I think it's it's such an important domain here. And I, the work that we've done, I think needs to be taken far, far greater and wider, which is what Susan is, and are seeking to do with a lot of the work that we've been uncovering and working with.

Susan Buttress: And I think many of the subject areas that we cover within this programme are also quite new to health professionals. So Jenny has mentioned the finance model module. And some of the other modules that have completely different theories that we won't have touched on and are often areas that we tend to avoid as health professionals. So think including those modules within this program is a really, really good way of enabling the students, enabling our health professionals to move forwards to understand how organisations work from a financial and also a kind of a people perspective. So I think it's a really broad range of skills, knowledge and skills that the students will gain from being on this programme. And of course, it's it really benefits them because they're integrating it into their workplace as they are working.

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: And I think there's a real sense of their personal and professional resilience, you're but you're building. And all of this helps with the individual, developing their own careers for sure. But also being personally resilient. Certainly when times get tough as invariably, they will do in this world of work.

Susan Buttress: And there's a real opportunity as well, at the end of the taught modules to complete a project to complete a dissertation, which will also will be in the form of a paper and also a poster that can be presented at a conference. So those are really good skills to gain from coming on this program, not only in terms of helping your care and the delivery of your care and leading the people around you, but also helping you personally in terms of gaining the evidence base learning research skills, and also enabling you to network.

Emily Slade: Thank you so so much for your time today.

Susan Buttress: Thank you. Thank you, Emily, we've really enjoyed talking to you.

Dr. Jennifer Johnson: Yes, thank you, I believe are some great questions. And hopefully there'll be some good questions back to us as well for anyone who's listening. Thank you.

Emily Slade: Thanks again to Susan and Jennifer for their time. If you have any further questions or would like to learn more about the course, feel free to drop them a message. Make sure you give us a follow wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're enjoying Future You, you can head to iTunes and leave us a review.

If you want to get in touch you can email at podcast@prospects.ac.uk or find us on Instagram and TikTok, all the links are in the description. Thanks very much for listening and we'll see you next time.

Notes on transcript

This transcript was produced using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. The audio version is definitive and should be checked before quoting.

Find out more

• Find out more about the Healthcare Leadership MSc.
• Introducing MSc Healthcare Leadership with the University of Liverpool Online.
• Discover graduate jobs in healthcare.