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All Physicians Lead Every Day…but we may not recognize we are leading.
If you ask 100 physicians to name a physician leader, they will uniformly name a department chair, hospital chief medical officer, or dean. In reality, the day-to-day life of every physician is a series of leadership events. Whether coaching a group of residents through morning rounds, taking an OR team through a five-hour surgery, or convincing a patient to try a new medication, doctors are in the business of leadership, that is: influencing thoughts and behaviors to achieve a desired result. But although we focus on their training and require physicians’ clinical skills to be top-notch, we don’t recognize leadership as a fundamental skill used by all physicians—and one that impacts team performance and patient outcomes. A few leadership-related courses are taught in most medical schools without an overarching leadership rubric, and many student doctors are too busy learning anatomy and physiology to give even those courses wholehearted attention.
Leadership matters in medicine. Good physician leadership results in better patient communications and higher-performing healthcare teams. Ultimately it leads to better health outcomes for patients. All Physicians Lead argues that the medical community will benefit from recognizing leadership as a core competency for all physicians—not just CMOs and department heads, but for all practicing doctors—and lays the groundwork for accomplishing this. It offers a “clinic” in leadership skills for the working physician and makes the case that a focused leadership training curriculum, grounded in good theory and research, should be an essential part of every physician’s lifelong training.
All physicians lead. Now let’s train them for it.