Why is a Cultural Intelligence and Inclusive Leadership Programme important for our Doctors in NELFT?

We find ourselves working in a multicultural society and in multicultural staff groups. The fact that we have multicultural staff groups is extremely important, as research indicates better outcomes when you have staff groups culturally representative of the client group.

This however raises important cultural issues within our client group and our staff groups.

All of this is very important for our Doctors, for several reasons. Doctors have been trained to remain “non-judgemental” of any aspects of their patients, but this is not always focussed on when referring to colleagues. We also very often in interviews find that doctors find it very difficult to express the concept of Equality and Diversity.

As senior leaders. many staff look at doctors as role models, and therefore it is important that doctors fully understand the concept and be able to work and lead effectively across diverse teams and cultural contexts.

In terms of patients, we are still seeing a lot of service and health inequalities in terms of individuals with certain protected characteristics and Doctors need to be able to understand the root causes and where possible, address these through accessible patient care.

It might come as a shock to you, but recent research shows that discrimination is still rife in the NHS, especially when it comes to staff. It is very important that our doctors as senior team leaders are leading Inclusively with Cultural Intelligence, to allow cohesive team working and a sense of value and belonging for all staff.

I would strongly encourage all our doctors to undertake this training. I have done this training, and it has provided me with a much better understanding of all the cultural aspects we are dealing with.

This training also underpins the Trust’s vision to deliver a Just and Compassionate culture for all of us to work in.