I was scrolling through LinkedIn one evening, when I came across a great question posed by Ed Kennedy. The question was ‘do practice managers impact patient outcomes?’

Well as an ex-practice manager I thought absolutely they did, but it was something that I didn’t consciously think about when I was back in practice. I thought this was a great question for an episode of the podcast, so Ed joined me for a really wide-ranging conversation that showed just how almost everything a practice manager does impacts patient outcomes. 

Ed Kennedy is Managing Partner at a two-site GP practice in Hampshire, caring for 14,000 patients and leading a team of 60 staff. He has spent his career in healthcare, beginning in community pharmacy, moving into the pharmaceutical industry, and spending the past decade in primary care management. He has a Master’s in Health Economics, Policy and Management from the London School of Economics, with academic research focused on how leadership—particularly non-clinical leadership—affects health outcomes. His dissertation explored the role of Practice Managers in shaping patient care and system performance, an area often overlooked in health policy and research.

Ed is a Director of the Institute of General Practice Management, where he leads on national dispensing issues, and is committed to raising the profile and professional standards of practice management. He has a particular interest in the sustainability of general practice, workforce leadership, and evidence-based decision-making in primary care.

The Leadership in Practice podcast, hosted by Gary Hughes, is for Practice Managers and all leaders in general practice and if you are in this role, you’ll know how complicated and difficult it can be.

In each episode I’ll be discussing a business, management or leadership challenge, and I’ll provide ideas and tools to help you understand how you can be a better leader of your practice.

If you want to be a regular listener to the show the easiest way is to subscribe on
Apple Podcasts. Don’t forget to visit our website and follow us on LinkedIn for more great ideas and advice to help you become a better leader of your practice.

I believe every practice should have a managing partner. That should be the most senior non-clinician, probably the Practice Manager. I believe it’s to the benefit of the practice, the partners, the staff and the patients. Yet only a small number of practices have a Practice Manager Partner. In this conversation we explore the role of the Managing Partner and I hope it will give food for thought for those thinking about becoming a Partner, or inviting their Practice Manager to join the partnership.

Our expert for this discussion is Robyn Clark, a practice manager in South Gloucestershire and a director of the IGPM. She is an HR practitioner by background with experience of working in secondary care, mental health trusts and community health services, and is passionate about employee engagement, coaching and mentoring.

The Leadership in Practice podcast, hosted by Gary Hughes, is for Practice Managers and all leaders in general practice and if you are in this role, you’ll know how complicated and difficult it can be. 

In each episode I’ll be discussing a business, management or leadership challenge, and I’ll provide ideas and tools to help you understand how you can be a better leader of your practice. 

If you want to be a regular listener to the show the easiest way is to subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Don’t forget to visit our website and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for more great ideas and advice to help you become a better leader of your practice.

This episode is a must listen for Practice Managers, PCN Managers, Finance Partners, and anyone else who might be looking after the money. It’s a really helpful episode, that’s worth sharing.

Finance in primary care is complicated, and different to most other businesses. It can be a challenge even for the most experienced. Step Forward our guest for this episode, Katy Drew, a Chartered Accountant and ex Practice Manager who just gets it, and shares loads of easily understood and great advice.

As Head of Primary Care Development at Sandison Easson Specialist Medical Accountants she helps Practices to be resilient in the current climate through practical help and advice leading to strong financial management. 

Having spent part of her career in practice management she is keen to support managers in translating financial information so they are able to present data in an accessible and understandable way to GP partners. 

She is a motivational and enthusiastic trainer who inspires confidence in those she works with at both individual practice level and through courses and conferences The Leadership in Practice podcast, hosted by Gary Hughes, is for Practice Managers, Partners and all Leaders in general practice and primary care. If you liked this podcast you can find even more ideas and tools to help you improve your Leadership at www.leadershipinpractice.co.uk.

If you need help with a leadership challenge, I’d be delighted to discuss this with you and you can contact me at [email protected], or on LinkedIn.

If you want to be a regular listener to the show the easiest way is to subscribe on our website or at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite Podcast platform.

Is your own personal growth really important to you, and have you got a passion for developing your team?

I’d answer yes to both of those questions, but sometimes you hit a bump in the road that you’ll only get over with some additional expert help. Whether it’s for your own growth, or developing others, coaching should be in every leaders toolbox. Kristi Adams joins us to explain coaching and its many benefits, and shares a simple tool to help you when you’re coaching your own team.

Kristi's journey into healthcare started when she became a young carer at the age of seven. 

Kristi worked in the NHS for over 15 years. As her career developed, Kristi discovered a natural skill for listening and empowering people to discover their inner resources. In 2015, after having life changing coaching herself, Kristi founded Attigo Coaching and Development. 

Kristi is a CPD-accredited coach specialising in healthcare leadership. She holds a PCC credential with the ICF (The International Coaching Federation), is a Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner and DISC Practitioner. She coaches clinical and non-clinical leaders across the NHS, community, and voluntary sectors, providing them with much-needed time and space to pause, reflect, and plan. Kristi is a trainer at The Coaching Academy. She holds various coaching and training associate roles across healthcare and since 2017, has been a lead tutor and coach on the NHS Leadership for Personalised Care Programme. 

 Kristi is a Health Service Journal Award winner, at the forefront of healthcare service innovation. She trains leaders to re-design appointment systems, so that some patients are consulted in groups, as opposed to one-to one with their GP or nurse. The result is that patients wait less time to be seen and need to be seen less often.

The Leadership in Practice podcast, hosted by Gary Hughes, is for Practice Managers and all leaders in general practice and if you are in this role, you’ll know how complicated and difficult it can be. 

In each episode I’ll be discussing a business, management or leadership challenge, and I’ll provide ideas and tools to help you understand how you can be a better leader of your practice. 

If you want to be a regular listener to the show the easiest way is to subscribe on

Apple Podcasts. Don’t forget to visit our website and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for more great ideas and advice to help you become a better leader of your practice.

Agreeing our values is important, for a practice as much as it is for us as individuals.

Living our values is essential for primary care and is so connected to what we do in general practice and primary care networks. They are often identified and declared but rarely do we see evidence beyond this. That might be because it’s difficult to do, or it’s poorly understood, or it’s not known what to do once our values are identified.

On the face of it, it’s a straightforward thing to do, but there’s far more to it. Which is why we our values are often decided but not always visible. The further I got into a really enjoyable conversation with Jane Martin, the more I learned.

Jane Martin is the Founder and Director of Flow Consulting and is a communications and relationship expert Jane is a communications and relationship expert with over 25 years experience across a range of B2B, both client and agency side. Jane is a psychologist, psychotherapist, facilitator, NLP practitioner and coach, with a corporate background in publishing and pharmaceuticals. She has worked extensively both clinically and corporately over many years to help individuals and teams thrive.

Trained as a psychotherapist and psychologist, she holds an MSc (Dist) in Organisational Development.

Jane’s understanding of how we function as humans enables her to deliver fresh insights to her clients and challenge them to think beyond the obvious - believing that good leadership starts from within. This approach is underpinned by a strong commercial awareness to ensure practical application to a range of corporate roles, and creates a powerful learning experience for the delegates and return on investment for clients.

Jane works deeply and holistically with clients – bringing in her role as a qualified breathwork practitioner and in nature-connectedness to support clients to harness their natural and internal resources - physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual.

You can contact Jane Martin here:

[email protected]

Telephone: 07801 298929

The Leadership in Practice podcast, hosted by Gary Hughes, is for Practice Managers and all leaders in general practice and if you are in this role, you’ll know how complicated and difficult it can be. 

In each episode I’ll be discussing a business, management or leadership challenge, and I’ll provide ideas and tools to help you understand how you can be a better leader of your practice. 

If you want to be a regular listener to the show the easiest way is to subscribe on

Apple Podcasts. Don’t forget to visit our website and follow us on LinkedIn for more great ideas and advice to help you become a better leader of your practice.

You can reach us at [email protected].

Resilience is now a must have skill for leaders and managers in primary care, such are the demands and pressures of the job, In this episode we talk to Farnaaz Sharief, join in and you’ll be listening to a real expert on resilience. We learn how to navigate and build resilience, she teaches us how to look after the resilience of our team, and what to do when our own resilience is flagging.

At the end of Farnaaz’s brilliant, simple, and accessible advice, that is useful for everyone, we both give our usual podcast takeaways.

In the conversation we also reference some breathing techniques which you’ll easily find with a simple internet search, Here are two links to get you started:

Box breathing
Straw breath

The Leadership in Practice podcast, hosted by Gary Hughes, is for Practice Managers and all leaders in general practice and if you are in this role, you’ll know how complicated and difficult it can be.

In each episode I’ll be discussing a business, management or leadership challenge, and I’ll provide ideas and tools to help you understand how you can be a better leader of your practice.

If you want to be a regular listener to the show the easiest way is to subscribe on
Apple Podcasts. Don’t forget to visit our website and follow us on LinkedIn for more great ideas and advice to help you become a better leader of your practice.

In this episode we dive into the crucial topic of ‘purpose’. 

It’s an area that is not always fully understood, or embraced, and we explore what we mean by purpose, what it means for a practice or PCN, and what makes it more than just words on a wall. 

The conversation looks at how central principles are powerful and helpful in guiding and uniting us in today’s challenging primary care environment. We consider:

• What do we mean by a purpose and how is it different to a mission or a vision.
• Why is a purpose important to organisations in primary care and what benefits does having a purpose provide?
•  If you haven’t defined your purpose, how should you approach doing that

Through the conversation we also reference some great further reading:
Alive at Work by Daniel Cable.

Will it make the boat go faster by Ben Hunt-Davis and Harriet Beveridge

Belonging by Owen Eastwood

Start With Why by Simon Sinek

Simon Beesley is the founder of Growth Consulting, a purpose-driven company dedicated to fostering sustainable change in healthcare where he works with NHS Trusts, ICB’s, GP practices and PCN’s. With over 30 years of leadership experience across the NHS and private sectors, Simon specialises in empowering leaders to align their teams around purpose, fostering environments where people thrive. His work centres on leadership development, operational improvement, and creating cultures that deliver lasting impact for teams, patients, and communities.

Simon can be contacted at [email protected]

The Leadership in Practice podcast, hosted by Gary Hughes, is for Practice Managers and all leaders in general practice and if you are in this role, you’ll know how complicated and difficult it can be. 

In each episode I’ll be discussing a business, management or leadership challenge, and I’ll provide ideas and tools to help you understand how you can be a better leader of your practice. 

If you want to be a regular listener to the show the easiest way is to subscribe on
Apple Podcasts. Don’t forget to visit our website and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for more great ideas and advice to help you become a better leader of your practice.

I suspect succession planning and talent management are unfamiliar activities for many in general practice and primary care. Maybe they’re not on your radar, or you’re not sure what they mean or whether they’re relevant to a practice or primary care network. But I’ve found they can often be happening to some degree but without much structure or in a way that maximises what can be achieved.

The reality is that its absolutely something worth doing, whatever the size of your practice or PCN, and can have great benefits in terms of staff engagement, motivation, development and the sustainability and resilience of the organisation.

In this episode Chris Locke returns to discuss succession planning and talent management, and how they can work for you. 

Chris Locke has been working with organisations, both public and private sector for over 30 years supporting the assessment and development of managers, aspiring leaders and C-suite executives. His role and his passion is helping people realise their potential through a range of tools including coaching, psychometrics, training and facilitation.

If you would like to know more you can email him on:

[email protected] or sign up for his talent development newsletter at: realisingyourpotential.com/sign-up. 

The Leadership in Practice podcast, hosted by Gary Hughes, is for Practice Managers, Partners and all Leaders in general practice and primary care. If you liked this podcast you can find even more ideas and tools to help you improve your Leadership at www.leadershipinpractice.co.uk.

If you need help with a leadership challenge, I’d be delighted to discuss this with you and you can contact me at [email protected], or on LinkedIn.

If you want to be a regular listener to the show the easiest way is to subscribe on our website or at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite Podcast platform.

Primary Care Networks are now an important and established part of the primary care landscape but as Tara Humphrey points out in this episode, with multiple organisations coming together it takes a lot of time, thought, reflection and planning to try and build the relationships.

We can be certain that Primary Care Networks, in one form or another, are here to stay, so I wanted explore the complex relationships between primary care networks and practices. There is possibly no one better to have this conversation with than Tara and together we discussed: 

• The current status of PCNs
• What a really great PCN Practice relationship looks like
• What are the key ingredients 
• What you can do to improve a challenging relationship

We also each give our usual podcast takeaway to help you if you’re a practice or PCN struggling with your relationship.

Tara Humphrey is the Founder and CEO of THC Primary Care, primary care network specialists providing interim Primary Care Network management, PCN facilitation, consultancy, training and resources.

She is also the host of the Business of Healthcare podcast, a prolific blogger and social media contributor and has featured in an impressive number and range of publications, podcasts and webinars. 

The Leadership in Practice podcast, hosted by Gary Hughes, is for Practice Managers, Partners and all Leaders in general practice and primary care. If you liked this podcast you can find even more ideas and tools to help you improve your Leadership at www.leadershipinpractice.co.uk.

If you need help with a leadership challenge, I’d be delighted to discuss this with you and you can contact me at [email protected], or on LinkedIn.

If you want to be a regular listener to the show the easiest way is to subscribe on our website or at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite Podcast platform.

If you think you should only speak to your lawyer when something has gone wrong, you might want to think again. 

This episode with Edwina Farrell was a real eye opener. It left me in no doubt that your lawyer is there to prevent things going wrong, and to make it less costly if the worst does happen. 

Keep listening if you’re a Partner in practice, or a Practice Manager taking the lead on governance and legal matters, and you'll hear Edwina share a wealth of knowledge on:

• Partnership agreements to Property 
• Profit share to disrepute 
• And much, much more

We also each give our usual podcast takeaway to help you avoid these legal pitfalls.

Edwina Farrell leads the primary care team at Weightmans and advises GP practices, individual partners, local medical committees and those who work with them. She has a broad experience in the way in which general practice and its finance operates and as such is able to bring a holistic approach to GP partnership business, property and dispute work. She is a medical partnership expert and is widely recognised as a specialist NHS GP advisor. Her work includes partnership formation, retirement, mergers and other contractual arrangements such as partnership contract variations as well as some practice disputes. She has been involved with collaboration projects with health and emergency service providers and is widely known for negotiating robust and 'GP friendly' property transactions especially in connection with landlord and tenant matters. Edwina can be contacted here.

The Leadership in Practice podcast, hosted by Gary Hughes, is for Practice Managers, Partners and all Leaders in general practice and primary care. If you liked this podcast you can find even more ideas and tools to help you improve your Leadership at www.leadershipinpractice.co.uk.

If you need help with a leadership challenge, I’d be delighted to discuss this with you and you can contact me at [email protected], or on LinkedIn.

If you want to be a regular listener to the show the easiest way is to subscribe on our website or at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite Podcast platform.