Euroanaesthesia opens each year with the Sir Macintosh and Prof. Ibsen lectures, celebrating the legacy of these two pioneers in anaesthesiology and intensive care. These sessions provide an opportunity to honour professionals for their outstanding contributions and highlight their importance within the medical community.
To officially open the Euroanaesthesia conference this year, ESAIC welcomed Prof Stephanie Klein Nagelvoort-Schuit, of the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), to present “Leadership in healthcare in times of transition”.
The pace and complexity of change in recent years have placed extraordinary demands on healthcare leaders. For anaesthesiologists, this period has been particularly challenging. Shifting models of perioperative care, the integration of artificial intelligence into clinical decision-making, increasing pressures on workforce sustainability, and the aftermath of a global pandemic have all driven major transitions in healthcare. It is no longer enough to be a skilled clinician; today’s anaesthesiologist must also act as an advocate, collaborator, and facilitator within the operating theatre, across the institution, and throughout the wider health system.
Yet while change can be unsettling, it also presents unique opportunities for leadership. Anaesthesiology must now consider what effective leadership looks like in this environment, and why the speciality is both uniquely challenged and uniquely positioned to meet these demands.
Prof Nagelvoort-Schuit spoke about a mistake commonly made and that is designing change for the institution when the real unit of change is the team. He highlighted the fact that an excellent strategy can be formulated, outstanding training programmes may be delivered and organisations may be restructured. But if after completing that training, clinicians return to a team where nobody else has changed, those new skills disappear within a week.
Prof Nagelvoort-Schuit pointed out that at UMCG, they are in the midst of this AI transition, and the single most effective step that has been taken is not introducing a programme or policy. It was recognising that the strongest teams appoint one colleague as their local AI professional. Not a new recruit, but someone already within the team, given a clear role and the time to develop it. That is cultural change: it happens at eye level, between people who trust one another, in the place where the work is actually carried out. Structural reform creates the conditions, but if the culture within the team does not shift, the structure becomes an empty shell, he highlighted.
It is important for clinicians to become comfortable with discomfort. In the ICU, healthcare professionals assess, diagnose, and act, and within minutes, the monitor tells them whether they were right. That feedback loop is what makes clinical decision-making feel secure, even under immense pressure. Institutional leadership does not offer the same clarity. The most significant decisions about AI, workforce redesign and investment priorities often have feedback cycles of three to five years. It is not possible to know whether it was the right decision until long after the decision can be reversed. That requires a completely different relationship with uncertainty. It is not about eliminating uncertainty, but governing it: being transparent about what you know, what you do not know, and what you are choosing to protect even without definitive proof. This is one of the most difficult skills healthcare now demands of its leaders, and it is not something clinical training prepares you for.
Source: Euroanaesthesia 2026
Image Credit: iStock
