EDUCATIONAL AND ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP;

Objectives: The aim of this study was to document the perception of postgraduate medical supervisors about the importance of effective educational/ academic leadership in promoting educational progress. Place and Duration of Study: Army Medical College and public sector medical institutes from May 2017 to November 2017. Study Design: Descriptive Cross-sectional. Subject and Methods: Open ended questionnaire data was collected from the 32 medical supervisors of postgraduate courses from both basic and clinical disciplines inducted in the study by convenient purposive sampling after taking informed written consent. The approval of the ethical committee constituted at Army Medical College, was officially taken. The supervisors were purposely divided into two groups. Group A (n=11) consisted of senior supervisors of more than five years of experience of supervision out of which 6 were from basic medical sciences and 5 were from clinical medicine. Group B (n=21) consisted of fresh supervisors out of which 6 were from basic medical sciences and 15 were from clinical medicine. It comprises of two phases First phase (survey questionnaire) spanned from May 2017 to November 2017. Second phase in process comprises of selective interviews of the supervisors. Qualitative thematic analysis of all the questions was done while one question was analyzed by quantitative analysis. Results: Experienced supervisors thought strong academic knowledge as key quality with good communication skills and continuous motivation for the leaders. They expressed that ineffective leadership can hamper the learning progress and demotivate the trainers. According to fresh supervisors academic training of trainees along with collaboration with other members is a milestone to be achieved and ineffective leadership results in many malpractices. None of the participants thought themselves as aggressive but claimed as assertive, supportive and very adaptive. They considered maintaining healthy relationship with students helps in constructive feedback. Conclusion: Strong academic knowledge with good communication skills and continuous motivation for the leaders was identified as a pivotal component for imparting quality education in the institution. Ineffective leadership was identified to result in hampering the learning process, demotivating trainers and malpractices. Maintenance of healthy relationship between trainer and student helped in constructive feedback.