Being a better leader doesn’t just happen because you went to medical school and trained for a long time.
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September 2015That’s the reasoning behind the Leadership Training Program for otolaryngology residents at Vanderbilt University, said Roland D. Eavey, MD, SM, the program founder and director of the Bill Wilkerson Center for Otolaryngology and Communication Sciences at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.
“The word ‘doctor,’ in Latin, means ‘leader’ and ‘teacher,’” said Dr. Eavey. “However, in medicine, we need to consider ourselves as leaders and to be leaders, but we receive virtually no training in leadership.” When you finish residency, you head to a medical practice. The nurse manager on the floor likely has an MBA in leadership training, and the pharmacist on the team may have served in the Army, leading hundreds of troops with a multi-million dollar budget, he added. “Why should the brand-new physician automatically be a leader, when his or her colleagues have formal leadership training, and the newly-minted physician merely has an MD?”