While the investigations and reports which have followed recent health care scandals in the UK have highlighted the very important issue of addressing organizational culture and the need for more effective leadership at every level, patients and their families have struggled to comprehend how such things can occur in a health service that is supposed to be the envy of the world.

This book has been written to address both the 'why' and the 'how', in the pursuit of excellence and accountability in health care leadership at all levels and in order to prescribe the most effective treatment for the problems that exist in the leadership of hospitals in the UK and beyond. Based on the principles that underpin 'good medicine' in the broadest sense, the text includes detailed assessment, diagnosis, review of the evidence and the application of the experiences shared by a group of senior successful health care leaders.