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Health Care Educators: New Directions in Leadership Development
Health Care Educators: New Directions in Leadership Development
Introduction
Leadership development is a competitive advantage
for the U.S. Army, General Electric, PepsiCo, Federal
Express, Johnson & Johnson, and other Fortune 500
companies whereas health care has lagged far behind.
Physician leadership development, in particular, is a
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(CCA) was established in 2006. The academy is predicated on developing health care leaders with specific
emphasis on physician leadership education using a
competency-based curriculum with value-added components, including CME and MBA transfer credits.
Since inception, the academy has implemented a new
and multifaceted approach to curriculum that includes
didactic learning, experiential opportunities, and executive coaching. This combination of instruction and
methodology effectively prepares aspiring physician
leaders for new opportunities and is automatically
linked to each physicians annual professional review.
In an organization where physicians are hired based on
a 1-year contract and performance includes clinical as
well as nonclinical achievements, leadership development is a value-added component of the clinics culture
and learning environment.
Instructional Challenges
Many physicians who are currently in leadership position are doctors over 50 years old, typically males,
who were trained in an era when (a) autonomy was
rewarded; (b) quality was an individual standard; and
(c) costs were ignored in favor of patient care. These
physicians are now functioning in a decentralized, fragmented, chaotic system of ever increasing costs, tests,
and devices.
In order to bring calm to the chaos, we need a new
kind of health care leader in every system and at every
level of the organization. These new leaders must
organize physicians into teams with nurses and other
providers, practice serving leadership, measure performance by patient outcomes, reward with financial and
behavioral incentives, adopt continuous improvement,
embrace lean techniques, and communicate effectively.
Creating a new kind of health care leader requires
institutional support at the highest levels. Teaching and
learning must become part of the regular workday
and not an early morning, lunch hour, or after-work
event. Pedagogy and instruction must be customized for
the individual, culturally sensitive, and driven by internal faculty. Internal practitioners and respected leaders
must be invited to teach and share their knowledge
with colleagues and encouraged to develop their own
faculty skills. The curriculum must be a combination
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Leading in
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Cleveland Clinic
Academy
Professional Development
S Y M P O S I U M
Emotional intelligence
Professionalism
How we conduct ourselves as caregivers in our interactions with patients and society
Change management
Communication
Business acumen
Regulatory environment
Medicolegal issues
Managing physicians
Clinic awareness
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Conclusion
As Bohmer (2011) contends, the only real hope for
improving health care delivery is for the old guard to
launch a revolution from within and redesign themselves. If health care educators desire to contribute to
the redesign, they must educate leaders to lead in a
time of chaos, risk, and uncertainty. Educators must
seek to develop a new breed of health care leaders who
are emotionally intelligent individuals and willing to
challenge the process in order to bring about change
and improved patient care.
Cleveland Clinic Academy is a best practice in leadership development. As a best practice, the academy
has been developing a new breed of leaders through
competency-based curriculum and integrated programs
focused on leadership, management, communication,
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