The leadership gap: is there a crisis of leadership in anaesthesiology?

Abstract

Medical educators and specialist colleges have always had concerns about the effectiveness of training programmes to produce specialists with appropriate skills at the fore. Typically these concerns have centred on the ability to perform tasks, unerstand key concepts and having exposure to a sufficient number of cases to produce expertise by deliberate, repeated practice.¹ However, other competencies of specialists are less well defined. How do we ensure that those who complete specialist training programmes are ready to support others, to communicate, advocate and lead the speciality? These skills have often been referred to as the ‘hidden curriculum’ – the skills, knowledge and attitudes expected of clinicians in a sociocultural sense, both by society and their own profession.²