The role of leadership in academic medicine is changing, a constellation of senior leaders told rising stars from across the HMS community at the 10th annual conference of HMS Leadership Development for Physicians and Scientists. More than 50 instructors, assistant professors and associate professors convened April 3-6 for insights on institutional organization, finance, legal and regulatory issues, and communication. Moderator David Hackney, assistant dean for faculty development and professor of radiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, invited a panel of physician and scientist leaders to share lessons from their careers. Here are excerpts:
Administration: Find the unifying goal
“Search for the middle ground. Not just, ‘What can we say that no one will be mad about?’ but something more ambitious: ‘What is the shared overarching goal that basically everyone will accept as the trump card?’ Something that we all agree we should be trying to do, even if it means, frankly, taking a hit in our own work. Because in the absence of that overarching goal, everything devolves into gamesmanship, where everyone is just trying to protect their own portfolios.” —Thomas H. Lee, chief executive officer for Partners Community HealthCare and HMS professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital |
Research: Hear the hard message
“I had some very good mentors who encouraged me to do research. Anyone can make a poor choice of lab or a poor choice of research area. But when to cut loose — that’s what a mentor is for, to say ‘I don’t think this is working out the way you want it to.’ Because it’s a more competitive environment in terms of getting funding and getting the academic positions, I think the mentors are actually a lot more important now than they used to be.” — Eleftheria Maratos-Flier, HMS associate professor of medicine and director for academic careers and faculty development at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center |
Clinical: Lead by example
“You need to lead by example. If you expect the people in your teams or departments to be excellent clinicians, they have to have face time with you. You need to be on the wards. I think you attend, you make rounds everyday, you work with fellows around patients. Or you won’t have any clinical authority. You need to write papers, but can’t just be someplace writing papers. And you need to be, I think, quite good at what you do.” —Jane W. Newburger, associate cardiologist-in-chief, research and education and Commonwealth Professor of Pediatrics, Children's Hospital Boston |
Medical Education: Strengthen with change
“You have to be flexible. There has to be plasticity in your life. You have to be committed. There’s no getting around the fact that change and chaos are part of life. This is a very, very intellectually restless place, and change is one of the things that makes us strong and makes us great. And learning to live with change can be one of the more painful parts of growing in this field. Looking back, that is one of the things that I had to learn to do.” —Jules Dienstag, dean for medical education and Carl W. Walter Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School |
