Overview
My research interest explores contemporary leadership in Welsh and English NHS surgical teams. I am particularly interested in whether this is hierarchical, non-hierarchical or a mix of these leadership forms.
Successive studies of performance failings in UK hospitals identify shortcomings in approaches to leadership. Traditional, hierarchical leadership may stifle raising of concerns about performance, including patient safety. The doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals who work in surgical teams have traditionally operated under such a hierarchical form of leadership.
However, legal restrictions on the working hours of junior doctors, and changes in medical training practices may have altered this form, but there are very few details that have been published about these possible changes in leadership.
I am interested in understanding how people’s experiences of contemporary leadership arrangements differ from the traditional surgical team model, and what may have brought the change about. This involved looking beyond anecdotal evidence and the visible organisational and working pattern changes. I did so by exploring how people describe what leadership of surgical teams means to them, what the key tensions are between their understanding, based on past experiences, and emerging work arrangements. Also, how staff adapt leadership to address, or work around, those changes and tensions.
Research
Teaching
Non-teaching positions appointed to:
Member of Executive Committee of Society for Studies in Organizing Healthcare (SHOC)
Wales DTP Student Rep for Cardiff University
GW4 Alliance NVivo materials development team
Co-presenter, Post Graduate Tutor or Teaching Assistant in the following modules:
MSc in Social Science Research Methods - Developing Core Research Skills (2021/22)
Diploma in Healthcare Planning - Research Methods (2021/22)
Diploma in Healthcare Planning (2020/21)
Public Leadership MSc (2020/21)
Challenges in Managing and Leading Organization (2020/21)
Ethics and Morality in Business BS3728 (2019/2020)
Diploma in Healthcare Planning (2019/20)
People in Organizations BS1529 (2018/19)
Organizational Behaviour BS2530 (2018/19)
Managing People BS2542 (2019/20)
Thesis
Thesis Title: Atmospheric work: a study of leadership of NHS surgical teams
The primary aim of my ESRC funded research aims to understand what changes in leadership members of UK NHS surgical teams have experienced in recent years. This is the first study to consider these changes through the lens of atmosphere.
This study responds to calls for research regarding surgical teams’ contemporary experiences of leadership, and how leadership varies in different contexts. The work uses a social constructionist methodology offering a comprehensive means of exploring collective, multi-faceted interactions amongst people and material objects, and the context those interactions occur in. This study adopts an interpretative approach to investigate visible and less visible aspects of leadership.
In this study I sought to understand how people’s experiences of contemporary leadership arrangements differ from the traditional surgical team model, and what may have brought the change about. This involved looking beyond anecdotal evidence and the visible organisational and working pattern changes. I did so by exploring how people describe what leadership of surgical teams means to them, what the key tensions are between their understanding, based on past experiences, and emerging work arrangements. Also, how staff adapt leadership to address, or work around, those changes and tensions.
1st Supervisor: Martin Kitchener
2nd Supervisor: Robin Burrow
Funding source
ESRC
