One-to-one coaching for senior clinicians and healthcare leaders. EMCC-accredited. For the decisions and pressures you cannot take to your own team.
Keynotes, Workshops & Strategic Advisory
I help doctors and healthcare leaders keep their judgement when everything speeds up. Keynotes, workshops and advisory for healthcare boards, clinical leadership teams, and medical conferences.
Topics include:
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The Cardiologist's Guide to Pressure
What a cardiac arrest teaches about decision-making that no leadership textbook can. Why capable teams lose their judgement when the room speeds up, and what holds clarity in place. For boards and clinical leadership teams who lead in real time, not on paper.
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Red Teaming Healthcare
Most clinical and organisational failures are unchallenged assumptions, not gaps in knowledge. This session brings Red Team Thinking®, the structured dissent used by intelligence agencies and elite militaries, into the ward and the boardroom, using tools such as Assumptions Challenge™ and Pre-Mortem Analysis™, so teams find the flaw before the patient does.
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Finding Cognitive Oxygen
Most healthcare leaders are not short of resilience. They are short of Cognitive Oxygen® (COx): the room to think clearly under load. This session names why good people make poor decisions under pressure, what quietly drains a team's capacity to think, and how leaders restore it.
Beyond the stage
A keynote starts the conversation. The deeper work happens in the room, over time, with the people carrying the weight.
Team and board coaching. Psychological safety, decision quality, and teams that stay whole under load.
The Total Leader, with LMI-UK. A structured leadership development programme, delivered as Associate Director for Leadership Management International UK.
Red Team and advisory sessions. Codesign workshops, pre-mortems on real decisions, and clinical governance advice.
Inquiries
Frequently Asked Questions
Clarity on the Cognitive Oxygen® framework, executive coaching, and organisational consulting.
Start a conversationCognitive Oxygen® is the mental margin required to think clearly under immense pressure. It is a framework designed to help leaders pause, notice their environment, question assumptions, and hold complexity before making high-stakes decisions.
My coaching is for senior clinicians, healthcare executives, and leaders working in complex, high-pressure settings. It is for those who make hard decisions without losing sight of the people inside the system.
As a certified Red Team Thinking® Instructor, I use these specialised tools to stress-test strategies and uncover hidden biases. This approach ensures that teams are not just relying on consensus, but are rigorously challenging their own assumptions.
Yes, I work with executive teams and entire departments to build cultures of clear thinking and psychological safety. We implement structural changes that allow clinical and administrative leaders to collaborate more effectively under stress.
Most executive coaching engagements span six to twelve months, allowing for deep behavioural change and the integration of new cognitive tools. However, I also offer intensive, short-term interventions for specific crises or immediate strategic needs.
Yes. Having worked across seven countries, I speak and run workshops internationally. My talks centre on decision-making, resilience, and holding clarity when the pressure is at its worst.
Hear and read more
A little of the thinking behind the work.
Listen and watch
- What is Coping Costing You? | EP 239 | Leadership Sound Bites Podcast | Michele Smith and Dr Toomas Särev
- Cognitive Oxygen (COx), on REGENERATE with Captain David Gallimore
- Why Smart Leaders Still Get Stuck, on the SafeSpace podcast | Dr Mariam Pereira and Dr Toomas Särev
- Coaching, high-pressure environments and the NHS, with Jo Wright (Coaching Culture)
- Dr Sarah and Dr Toomas about Unlearning The Armour
Start a Conversation
Discuss how Dr Toomas can support your next event or executive team retreat.
Direct contact for KardioStar Ltd and professional inquiries.