PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Steve Gulati
AU  - Christiane Shrimpton
TI  - A long and winding road: non-traditional routes into medical leadership
AID  - 10.1136/leader-2021-000528
DP  - 2022 Sep 01
TA  - BMJ Leader
PG  - 168--170
VI  - 6
IP  - 3
4099  - http://bmjleader.bmj.com/content/6/3/168.short
4100  - http://bmjleader.bmj.com/content/6/3/168.full
SO  - BMJ Leader2022 Sep 01; 6
AB  - Introduction Clinicians enter the medical profession through a variety of routes. This paper explores how non-traditional routes into the medical profession can follow through into subsequent medical leadership practice, influencing issues of confidence, self-image and assumptions about leadership as a concept.Method The first-person reflections of a doctor who entered the profession and the National Health Service from the German system and with a non-standard background are considered. We then discuss how those involved in leadership education can use diversity as a developmental tool. The article starts and ends with personal reflections and observations from a Consultant Opthalmologist, interposed with insights from the pedagogy of leadership development by a University academic.Conclusions We conclude that medical leadership development can be enriched through recognising the value that non-traditional routes in clinical leadership can bring, and that educators can use the leverage of difference and diversity to create positive loops of development activity.