Making sense of leadership development: Developing a community of education leaders

In education literature there is a distinct lack of scholarly work on issues of leadership other than on functional leadership at lower levels or high-level individual leadership activity which dominates existing studies. This empirical research is based on the result of a merger of education providers within the North East of England. A crucial aspiration of the newly merged organisation was to provide an overarching innovative leadership structure to facilitate integrated leadership. The specific focus of this article is participants of a bespoke postgraduate learning intervention. The authors apply sense-making theory to identify how student-leaders undertaking a leadership development intervention developed to become a community of education leaders. The reflective accounts of the student-leaders indicated a combined approach of distributed, shared and collaborative leadership. Whilst the study was conducted in the UK, the concepts and ideas are likely to have international application

What should I do about my patient's gall stones?

The problem of benign biliary disease is one that causes significant morbidity and social economic strain in the western world. The classical treatment, cholecystectomy, has been challenged by various medical and surgical techniques in a seemingly random nature. The development of the treatment of gall stone disease is reviewed by analysis of published studies over the last 20 years. The advantages and disadvantages are discussed as an overview and summary of the current management of gall stone disease in the light of our knowledge of its malignant potential