Shaina Drummond, MD, of UT Southwestern in Dallas shares the top six qualities that make physician leaders successful.
1. The ability to be flexible and innovative in an ever-changing healthcare market (learning how to do more with fewer resources while maintaining high safety standards).
2. Staying positive and providing solutions to problems in a disorganized and highly regulated healthcare system.
3. Recognizing that your role in medicine may not be totally clinical. In other words, there will be a need for physicians to take on more administrative and leadership roles that reduce the number of clinical hours spent with patients. Record numbers of physicians are seeking out leadership training courses and obtaining additional educational certifications (ie MBA, MPH, FACHE) to improve their leadership skills and business knowledge base.
4. Finding ways to incorporate user-friendly technology into your practice to improve efficiency, costs and patient care.
5. Recognizing if you are feeling “burnt out” and trying to find ways to bring professional satisfaction back to the practice of medicine. Physician burnout rates are reaching the 50 percent mark according to data from the AMA. This is a concern because high burnout rates among physicians can affect all members of the healthcare team as well as healthcare institutions. When large numbers of physicians are burnt out, data shows that this directly correlates with decreased patient satisfaction, decreased patient adherence to treatment plans, medical errors, high costs to institutions secondary to physician turnover.
6. Learning to lead outside of the clinical arena. Now more than ever, it is extremely important for physicians to frequently interact with hospital administrative staff by participating in various operational leadership and quality improvement committees. Physician input is invaluable when it comes to finding creative ways to decrease healthcare costs while at the same time maintaining high levels of quality and safety.
Learn more from Dr. Shaina Drummond at the 15th Annual Spine, Orthopedic & Pain Management-Driven ASC Conference + The Future of Spine in June 2017! Click here for more information.