Leadership and Management Essentials

Anna Connolly

Anna Connolly is an adjunct faculty member in the RCSI Graduate School of Healthcare Management. With a background as a chartered work and organisational psychologist and executive coach, Anna brings a wealth of experience to her role. She operates her own business psychology practice, offering coaching, training, and consultancy services on a national and international scale. Prior to specialising as a work and organisational psychologist, Anna held a senior managerial position at Ericsson, where she contributed to the company's Global Service Delivery Centre and Ericsson Learning Academy.

A four-week online learning experience awaits you. Each week is carefully designed to offer a blend of both direct and indirect, synchronous and interactive activities. These include live lectures, exercises, discussions, reading assignments, self-study sessions, formative learning assessments, and summative preparation tasks. 

Week 5 will focus on assessment, where you'll receive detailed feedback on your progress. Throughout the module, we will provide feedback at various checkpoints to help you stay on track and prepare for the final assessment. 

Our virtual learning environment (VLE) is designed to be intuitive, accessible and easy to navigate. A dedicated programme coordinator will be available to you, should you experience any technical difficulties, or have any specific questions relating to learning online.

• Week 1: Explore transitioning and understanding healthcare leadership and management (management, managerialism and managers), why does it matter, who does it involve?
• Week 2: Leading and managing teams and people (culture, communication, teams, conflict, motivation), psychological safety, structures and processes, resources, decision-making.
• Week 3: Dive deep into models of change, budgeting in healthcare, and stakeholder engagement.
• Week 4: Finally, in week four, explore the development and leadership of patient-centric safety cultures, drawing lessons from adverse events. Lead and oversee governance frameworks to enhance patient safety.
• Week 5: Develop your individual action plan based on your learnings. Continuous feedback and guidance will be provided throughout the module, aligning with formative progress milestones and the weekly focus on the student summative.

• Develop an understanding of key leadership and management concepts as applied to or enacted in health and related sectors (e.g. differentiating leadership, management, managerialism and managers). 
• Develop critical understanding of how organisation and change management theory and practice can be employed to alter working lives and human health (e.g. why leadership and management matter, who is involved, key roles).
• Develop critical understanding of leading teams in a healthcare context.
• Demonstrate the ability to develop service improvement proposals including the issues of budgeting and stakeholder engagement  in a contextually sensitive manner (e.g. reward assumptions and goal drives, competing priorities, financial constraints).
• Develop critical reflection and reflexivity so as to understand how their specific approach to leading, organising and managing impacts on people, processes or structures.

Assessment methods on our micro-credential courses can include written assignments, continuous assessment, and/or presentations.

Full details on the end of course assessment will be available to students on commencement of the course.

Students who successfully complete this course and pass all assessments, will receive an academic transcript and certificate detailing the academic award and credits received.

This is a postgraduate programme and those who complete this course will gain five European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) at level 9 on the National Framework of Qualifications (equivalent to level 7 on the European Framework of Qualifications). 

We are proud to be a recognised University of the National University of Ireland (NUI).

Recognition by ministries and bodies in other jurisdictions must be determined by the individual applicants.

Micro-credentials are awarded based on successfully completing a course and demonstrating the required learning outcomes through assessment. Micro-credentials are designed to be stackable – learners can accumulate credits from other specific micro-credentials to achieve a larger, major award, such as a diploma or degree.