The Elizabeth Garrett Anderson programme

The Health Services Management Centre (HSMC), working with Alliance Manchester Business School, and with additional contributions from the UK Improvement Alliance,   Eden & Partners, National Voices, and the Social Care Institute for Excellence  have been commissioned to support the NHS Leadership Academy to deliver the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson programme available to over 25,000 staff including doctors, nurses, Allied Health Professional, healthcare scientists and HR and finance staff.

Ned Hobbs, HSMC Alumnus

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Programme logo

HSMC along with our partners has been delivering the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Masters in Healthcare Leadership since 2013. The Anderson programme is commissioned by the NHS Leadership Academy and to date our partnership has delivered to 100 cohorts with 4100+ participants. Cohorts of participants come from three different areas: senior health and care leaders, NHS general management trainees and since 2022 we have now introduced an additional apprenticeship route.

The Senior Leader Apprenticeship route confers the Senior Leader apprenticeship award, and then progression onto a Master’s degree, and an NHSLA Leadership award.  Although still in its pilot phase it is clear it is enabling the development of closer links with employers. An additional key benefit has been its focus on increased inclusion, firstly because of the way it is funded and delivered locally and secondly because some local employers have explicitly decided to focus on learners from particular backgrounds.

Do you have team leadership experience? Are you ready to move up to leading larger functions or departments, more complex projects with a wider reach and/or leading other team leaders? Do you want to use your leadership skills to shake things up, challenge the status quo and find a better way of doing things? Then the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson programme is for you. The programme is fully accredited and leads to an NHS Leadership Academy award in Senior Healthcare Leadership and an MSc in Healthcare Leadership.

The benefits

The Elizabeth Garrett Anderson programme:

    • Allows you to learn from innovative, world-class healthcare experts and use ground breaking learning technologies to prepare for the challenges of senior leadership
    • Helps you to gain a deeper understanding of the patient experience
    • Will help you to strengthen your existing leadership practice through cutting edge theory and evidence
    • Will allow you to work more strategically with greater collaboration across large and complex programmes, departments, services and systems of care
    • Will bring immediate positive and productive changes to your team(s), organisations, services and patients in areas such as increasing staff morale, improving patient experience, effective service redesign, and providing financial benefits
    • Will improve your personal impact to help drive progress in your team(s) and inspire your organisation to build a culture of inclusive, patient centred care
    • Will allow you to build a powerful, regional and national support network of like-minded, influential leaders
    • Will increase your resilience to meet the demands of senior leadership within the challenging, transforming environment of the NHS.
    • Will let you graduate with a highly sought after leadership development qualification,   improving your career and promotion prospects across the NHS

To find out more

Find out more and apply online for the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson programme.

Case study: Dianne Graham, Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber NHS Trust (RDASH)

Dianne Graham has already recommended the NHS Leadership Academy Elizabeth Garrett Anderson programme to her managers at Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber NHS Trust. Dianne, who is Assistant Director of Mental Health, says the programme has so far been worthwhile and challenging.

“I think it is one of the best leadership programmes available and for me at this point in my career it has been extremely useful,” said Dianne, who started the programme in May 2014.

“I am really enjoying it. For me it’s a good mix of academia and practical application on leadership learning. I think the work-based assignments are thought-provoking – they enable you as a participant to really see the relevance of the learning in the workplace.

“As a leader I am more reflective generally. I put more effort into leadership rather than general management which I think provides more long-term impact and benefits patient care.”

Dianne says the EGA has increased her confidence and knowledge and has emphasised the importance of integrity. “The programme has been great for me. It has inspired me to provide value-based leadership, to focus on my leadership team and their potential and challenge activities that do not add value to patient care. It has helped me to collaborate with partner agencies as I am able to apply theory to practice and feel more confident in having certain conversations than previously.

“For example, since embarking on the programme I’ve challenged complex line management structures and requests for work that do not add value to patients. I’ve also had conversations with my leadership team about resilience and about maintaining a focus on improvements.”

Dianne feels she has always been committed to high quality patient care, and that has not changed. But she now has a heightened awareness of the importance of engaging patients in service development and in patient leadership. Although it is hard to combine the academic rigour and challenging schedule with a   demanding full-time job, Dianne feels inspired to continue her leadership development in future, and to help others to do so too.

“My plans would be to develop my coaching ability.  I would like to capitalize on my learning for the benefit of other NHS leaders.  The action learning sets in particular have supported this personal view.”

Leadership development impact evaluation

HSMC has led an evaluation of two national leadership development programmes – the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Nye Bevan Programmes.  This was carried out with the NHS Leadership Academy and was based on a survey that was administered jointly with a separate evaluation carried out by Frontlines Consultants.  The focus of the evaluation was on participants’ experiences of the leadership programmes and the extent to which these have  influenced their practice and improved their effectiveness as leader. Read the full report here.