Monday 7 July 2008

Leadership

Do you consider yourself a 'leader'? Increasingly, the NHS are looking to clinical psychologists to be leaders, so much so that BPS guidelines are soon to be including leadership skills as a core competency. I have mixed feelings about this development. Personally, I didn't pursue this career to be a 'leader' I came to work in a therapeutic way with clients in distress. My assumption is that the more time I spend leading, the less this I will have to work in this direct way with clients (and this is borne out in my observations of supervisors with leadership responsibility).

Despite this, I can see that clinical psychologists are relatively well paid in comparison to other health professionals in the NHS and it is only right that we should justify this in the form of extra responsibilities in the cash strapped NHS. Besides, when less qualified individuals can deliver CBT at half the cost, why would service providers choose us to do so?

A final thought is an optimistic one. If Clinical Psychologists are leading services then surely this will mean the NHS will become more psychologically minded? The medical model prevails but with services being led by clinical psychologists willing to step up and speak out, who knows where they could lead the NHS of the future.

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