Leadership in Surgical Teams - v.1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Contemporary Leadership Practices in Surgical Teams: a Leadership-As-Practice approach to explore forms of leadership experienced by healthcare staff in NHS surgical settings.
IRAS ID
270938
Contact name
Martin Kitchener
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cardiff University (Research Governance Team)
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Not applicable, Not applicable
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 2 days
Research summary
This exploratory research aims to obtain and process data to provide findings that may be used in the public interest. It will investigate leadership in surgical teams and who is leading them. The doctors, nurses and allied healthcare professionals who work in surgical teams have traditionally operated under a hierarchical, and often heroic, model of ‘firm leadership’(‘firm’ being the stable unit making up the surgical team). Firms were typically led by a single senior surgeon and included, amongst other roles, junior doctors undergoing training, during very long working hours. This model of leadership has been challenged by successive reports of leadership shortcomings in surgical failure reports, legal restrictions placed on the working hours of junior doctors, and less static teams as a result of altered medical training practices. While these challenges are well documented, little is known about what, if any, change has occurred to surgical team leadership in the wake of the anecdotally reported demise of the traditional ‘firm’ model.
The research will use a ‘leadership-as-practice’ approach, to explore the span of leadership activities before, during and after surgical interventions. It examines the resultant leadership effect in contemporary teams. The research aims to develop a theoretical framework of how leadership is experienced by team-members, which may facilitate learning, productivity and improvements in multi-disciplinary surgical teams in the NHS.
This encompasses researching potential leadership activities engaged in by any member of staff, rather than focusing on individuals in traditional hierarchical or appointed leader roles. It aims to contribute a balanced discussion, on which policy decisions could be made, of the practice of collaborative forms of leadership. In so doing, it addresses perceived weaknesses in the literature concerning non-hierarchical leadership, as overly positive and context-free.
REC name
Wales REC 7
REC reference
19/WA/0281
Date of REC Opinion
11 Oct 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion