ABSTRACT

Smith presents a fairly persuasive argument that suggests the way in which performance management through targets has not really facilitated the link to medical leadership. As C. Ham and H. Dickenson comment in their review of medical leadership, engagement and organisational performance, very few measures of engagement are to be found that meet robust psychometric criteria. The Medical Engagement Scale was then given to a sample of all doctors in these trusts as well as a smaller sample of senior managers who were asked to estimate the level of medical engagement they thought existed in their trust. A more detailed statistical analysis also reveals a large number of significant relationships between the medical engagement index and other independently collected performance markers. The data on engagement and its link to performance reinforces the crucial role of leaders in creating the appropriate cultures for medical engagement to flourish.