Advancing excellence in leadership.

13 FROM ABERYSTWYTH to Adelaide, Birmingham to Brussels, the RCN’s highly successful clinical leadership programme continues to benefit health care organisation and delivery. Bolstered by a new team structure and a shared vision of ‘advancing excellence in clinical leadership’, this internationally acclaimed programme has several initiatives for healthcare staff working in both the public and independent sectors to access. The RCN clinical leadership team provides patient focused, needs led and evidence based programmes that are dynamic, inclusive and responsive and which aim to develop the leadership capabilities of health and social care practitioners and their teams. This is achieved in the context of day-to-day clinical practice, the organisational culture and the current policy agenda. The original programme was based on the findings of an RCN ward leadership project, an action research study exploring the leadership skills required to promote better practice (Cunningham and Kitson 1997). Now, more than 170 NHS trusts and 2,000 nurses and other healthcare professionals across England, Wales and Scotland have participated in the programme, which is also firmly established in Australia, Belgium and Switzerland with other countries expressing interest in participating. Beliefs and values The programmes delivered by the clinical leadership team incorporate the principles of transformational leadership and lifelong learning. They are founded on research evidence, as well as a value system that embraces the following beliefs: