Our story
The NHS Clinical Leaders Network was founded in 2006 to create a better way to engage and empower frontline clinical leaders to deliver transformational change.
Following a successful pilot in the North West regional CLNs were established to enable clinical led transformation across all professions and disciplines.
The learning from the success of the CLN approach fed into the development of the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and in 2012 the role of the CLN retracted to make way for the new CCGs.
Since 2012
Since 2012 we’ve worked with clinical and care professionals hungry for change to:
- deliver our standard operating model of connecting, empowering and developing frontline clinical and care leaders
- provide thought leadership and expert guidance across organisations and systems
- convened an emergency panel to provide a response to the global pandemic (resulting in the Enhanced Mental Health Resilience Programme – shortlisted for a HSJ Workforce Initiative)
- deliver three leadership development programmes: Introduction to Clinical and Care Leadership Programme, the Emerging Frontline Clinical and Care Leaders programme and the Advanced Clinical and Care Leaders programme
- provide a safe space for the voice of clinical and care leaders across the country
- work collaboratively across organisations and systems, flexing our offer of support to their needs and strengths
- bring people together to tackle the big issues in health and care
OUR VISION and PURPOSE
Better Leaders improving care
The NHS CLN is a national, professional network for all frontline care leaders and clinical leaders. Our aim is to develop our members personally and professionally enabling them to lead and embed change across health & social care as compassionate and inclusive leaders. Our focus is to invest in health and care staff to support their careers and in turn deliver positive outcomes for the wider system.
Bringing people together to tackle the big issues
The NHS CLN strives to be a nexus between frontline leadership, national policy makers and local decision makers. We are a strategic partner who work alongside local, regional and national expertise supporting our members to innovate, deliver best practice and enable standardisation to ensure the best outcomes.
OUR ethos
Sustainable improvements cannot be delivered without genuine engagement of front-line clinicians and care providers. This is effectively achieved through learning, challenging and testing at a local level.
The role of the clinical and care leader is essential to deliver sustainable improvements and transformational change. They should be respected, supported and nurtured and provided with the right environment, support and tools to flourish.
Double Helix Concept: the power of partnership between the complementary skills, knowledge and experience of a managerial leader and a clinical/care leader delivers real, synergistic benefits.
We embrace the big issues and enable the spread of innovation by providing safe spaces for constructive debate, experimentation and robust data analysis to deliver real outcomes.