The criteria for the profession of health service managers.
Health Manager would have visited this theme on a number of occasions. The current issue takes a ‘ground-up’ approach and outlines a re-organisation of HMI into four regional committees which are now in place. The opportunities provided to health service managers by these committees are briefly touched upon and in reality the opportunities can be limitless, bounded only by our own accepted norms and status-quo.
There has never been a greater need for health service managers to honestly debate and challenge the accepted norms governing our own roles, from career planning through management development and training and onto leadership development. As managers we need to converge around these issues and articulate a vision that will bestow values on a properly developed profession of health service managers. This issue is not unique to us and is currently a matter being debated in like manner in a number of European countries.
What does make us different, however, are the extraordinary fiscal challenges facing this State and the consequences of these with which we are all contending on a daily basis. It is urgent therefore that, as health service managers, we are to the forefront in determining the criteria for the profession, its entry criteria and what status and entitlement (licence?) attaches to that? This ultimately is the best protection for managers, for the service and for the service users.
The Regional Committee meetings should serve as a sounding-base for such discussions.
Richard Dooley
PRESIDENT HMI
