Healthcare Leadership Development for a pandemic world – and beyond!

Oxford Saïd’s Dr Mark O’Brien and vastly experienced healthcare leader Dato Dr Jacob Thomas discuss the critical role of healthcare leadership development, in this recoded webinar

IEDP Editorial

Wednesday 22 December 2021

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The Covid-19 pandemic has created an additional layer of challenges onto the already complex adaptive system that is modern healthcare delivery. To its great credit—and to the benefit of humanity—the global healthcare system has responded with a wave of innovation in the development of vaccines, pharmaceutical treatments and alternative models for service delivery.

However, the pandemic has also exposed flaws, areas of weakness, and vulnerabilities that need to be addressed if healthcare systems are to navigate successfully through the rest of the pandemic and beyond. One such area of vulnerability is underinvestment in the personal and professional development of healthcare leaders to strategize, design and lead significant system change—as compared to other safety-focused, high-reliability industries.

In this webinar, Dr Mark O’Brien facilitates a discussion with Dato Dr Jacob Thomas on how we can prepare current and future leaders to drive system change that

Maximizes service and product innovation
Increases value creation
Enhances safety and reliability
Fosters healthcare worker well-being
Meets the Digital transformation challenge

About the speakers:

Dr Mark O’Brien is the Director of the Oxford Healthcare Leadership Program and an Associate Fellow of the Saïd Business School. He has been in healthcare since the mid-1980s—first as a Rural Family Physician in Australia with strong links in post-graduate medical education before co-founding the Cognitive Institute, an Australasian healthcare risk management Organization, serving as Medical Director, International Programme Director of Medical Education, and then Hospital Lead in the Risk Prevention division for the Medical Protection Society. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Queensland and serves as a Non-Executive Director of a large private hospital group in Australia.

Dato Dr Jacob Thomas is an emergency medical doctor with vast experience in hospital management, having served in various capacities at Subang Jaya Medical Centre, Malaysia, including as its executive director from 1998 till 2006. He is a is currently the Chairman of the Ramsay Sime Darby Health Care Group, a leading tertiary care medical group, reputed for its quality medical care and service excellence. Dr Thomas is a board member of the Human Health Education and Research Foundation, and was named chair of the Joint Commission International (JCI), Board of Commissioners, in January 2021—a non-profit standards agencies active in over 100 countries.

The Saïd Business School is Europe’s fastest growing business school. An integral part of the University of Oxford, it embodies the academic rigour and forward thinking that has made Oxford a world leader in education.