Book Review

In October 2012, yours truly wrote the editorial for this fine publication, in which I called for a new way of thinking about leadership in the ambulance service. Fast forward to 2015 and yet another publication is set to hit the market, with a proverbial galacticos of contributors having been assembled from the ambulance service world.

A criticism which I have levelled at previous leadership/management frameworks (the difference between them, incidentally, needs to be clearer defined in the book) is that they fail to reflect the context in which they are being considered. Not so here, as the sting is immediately drawn by highlighting the unforgiving (and unsustainable) demand levels currently being experienced and the backdrop of austerity in which ambulance services are having to operate. This makes for staggering reading.

Some light is shed on how the service needs to modernise to adapt to this, but while presenting well-polished rhetoric, it does lack specificity: the role of leadership is unclear and I struggled to grasp the concept of ‘high levels’ of education based on the current level of Diploma on which the model is framed.