For episode 43 of the National Health Executive podcast, we were joined by Dr Penny Kechagioglou, who is a Consultant Clinical Oncologist at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust. Penny spoke about the main challenges and opportunities in cancer care at the moment, as well as how should prevention factor in to policy decisions and the needs of the oncology workforce.

Penny said: “How do we strive for excellence? Not just good. There are three points here, so looking upstream – there is a lot of work happening that needs to be consistent across primary and secondary care, when it comes to prevention.”

Listen to the full episode to hear Penny’s thoughts and get a sneak peek of National Health Executive’s upcoming digital magazine, where Penny will detail the Charter for Oncology.

In episode 42 of the National Health Executive podcast we were joined by Steve Gulati who is an associate professor at the University of Birmingham as well as director of healthcare leadership at the university’s Health Services Management Centre.

During the podcast, we discussed the difference between leadership when he first joined the NHS in the 90s and to now, plus the main levers for these changes. Steve also highlighted the ‘well-known truths’ about NHS leadership which are seldom voiced as well as what changes he would like to see in the future.

“Leadership in those days was almost synonymous with management – it certainly wasn’t [like] the nuanced distinctions that you get today,” said Steve. “Allied to that, there was a concept that was more prominent of what I would call ‘stewardship’ rather than leadership.”

In episode 41 of the National Health Executive podcast, we were joined by Dr Angela Smith, research fellow at Bournemouth University, and Andy Oakey, research fellow at the University of Southampton, to discuss the viability of drones within the NHS transport system.

Angela and Andy talked about some of the misinformation about drones and suggested that drone travel is not quite ready for the NHS yet.

Angela said: “The eDrone project has been focused on NHS case studies, but what we have found is that the reporting around these case studies – the trials in particular – has led to some misconceptions about what the trials are achieving and the future benefits of drones.”

Andy explained: “If you actually look back at our project bids, we were sucked into this rhetoric of drones being the next big thing. The original idea was to look at where’s best to use them [drones], with a positive spin, but as we have gone into it we have learnt more and understood how there is a lot more than meets the eye.”