SFEBES2021 Early Careers Session Broadening your Career Pathway - What else can you do with your skills? (5 abstracts)
CEDAM, Birmingham, UK.
Clinical interactions with patients are fulfilling and rewarding. We can make a difference to patients health and lives by tuning care and attention to their individual needs on a 1:1 basis. Frustrations sometimes emerge from clinicians due to perceived restrictions and limitations in the healthcare system that appear to perversely impact patient care. Those frustrations are often exacerbated by lack of transparency around how to resolve the system issues for the greater good; often the language is different, the organisations are unfamiliar and can appear bureaucratic. While remaining firmly embedded in direct patient care, taking a leap into senior NHS leadership roles can by enormously rewarding, where it is possible to positively impact patient care well beyond the 1:1 interactions in clinic. Detailed insights and awareness of the structures, drivers, agendas and language of national healthcare leadership allows ones influence to be felt and shape national policy to facilitate high quality patient care. The time is ripe for strong medical leadership at all levels within the stressed NHS environment. Endocrine services must have strong representation nationally so we remain with clear identity and in control of our own destiny as a clinical service.