Clinical leadership in
contemporary health care
The importance of effective clinical leadership in ensuring a high quality health care system that consistently provides safe and efficient care has been reiterated in the scholarly literature and various government reports.6–8 Recent inquiries, commissions, and reports have promoted clinician engage-ment and clinical leadership as critical to improving quality and safety.9 As one Australian example, a key priority nursing recommendation of the Garling Report was that Nurse Unit Manager (NUM) positions be reviewed and significantly redesigned “to enable the NUM to undertake clinical leader-ship in the supervision of patients […] to ensure that for at least 70% of the NUM’s time is applied to clinical duties.”8