Health care organizations require staff physicians to excel in multiple domains throughout
their careers. Staff physicians may need to navigate complex processes to advance
and maintain their clinical knowledge and skills, which are subject to continuous
change from factors internal to the institution or external regulatory factors.
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Furthermore, the process, knowledge, and skills for career development might not always
be well defined,
2
and institutional support might be poorly defined or entirely lacking in some instances.
Individuals are then left to make personal career decisions
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on their own, making it difficult to achieve their full potential.
Inadequately supported and disengaged staff members have higher levels of burn out,
reduced productivity, lower patient satisfaction, and poorer health outcomes, which
ultimately leads to reduced reimbursement and revenue and staff members leaving the
organization.
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,
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In contrast, individuals who feel well equipped to leverage their talent in the workplace
achieve better outcomes, are more engaged, and are less likely to leave. In addition,
organizational focus and investment in career and leadership development programs
can serve as a strong recruitment and retention strategy.
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Strong leadership is critical to operationalize leadership development into effective
programs.6, 7, 8 Many organizations are increasingly recognizing this need, and they
are investing in professional development programs for their physician staff members.
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,
8, 9, 10, 11 Whereas the number of organizations with leadership development programs
have increased in recent years,
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hospitals still lag behind (half of the 3000 surveyed hospitals have existing programs)
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compared with other sectors.
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,
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Furthermore, health care in general invests fewer resources in talent development
when compared with other industries, (25.5 hours vs 34.1, and $602 vs $1296 per employee
each year, for health care vs other industries, respectively).
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Herein, we describe the development, execution, and feasibility of a career and leadership
development program within our academic medical center to address this observed gap
and need for career and leadership development in health care.
RISE Program
An essential focus while curating career and leadership development programs is to
target a specific audience.
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,
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Effective established programs rely on augmenting opportunities for mentoring and
coaching, and enhancing competences such as navigating change, influencing change
through others, relational skills, and self-awareness. Furthermore, leadership has
a different meaning and opportunities across individuals and institutions. With these
perceived needs and best practices in mind, we created a career and leadership development
program whereby leadership takes on a broader meaning and encompasses professional
engagement and fulfilment. Our program focused on the professional who is more likely
to be excluded from such programs and may be experiencing more professional devaluation
and disillusionment—the mid- and late-career physicians. Many existing leadership
programs are focused on allied health staff (ie, managers), specialty practices, young
investigators, and early-career physicians. This program was uniquely focused on mid-
and late-career faculty within the General Internal Medicine (GIM) division, which
already had a well-structured career development program for early-career physicians,
with the purpose of addressing their needs and providing them with tools to enhance
their career development and satisfaction. The study was designed as a pilot and feasibility
program to understand the reception of such a program for colleagues engaged in a
busy clinical practice, to assess interactions, and ultimately to provide insight
into developing larger formal programs. Hence, we deliberately limited enrolment and
planned for a small sample size (N < 20).
The pilot program was developed by the GIM Faculty Development and Executive physician
leaders and administrative partners in collaboration with colleagues in the Section
of Institutional Leadership Assessment and Development. Strategies and tactics encompassed
sustainable approaches to enhance career development, leadership skills, and engagement
and integration of joy into work. Throughout programmatic development, we balanced
the knowledge that adults learn best when the educational outcomes are clear and integrated
into a relevant context for their use,
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,
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and focused on the fact that successful programs are structured, constantly improving,
and self-reflective.
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We also explored ways to develop long-term strategic plans and tools for workforce
development and alignment with institutional priorities, such as balanced score cards.
The resulting program, called “The RISE” program, focused on four constructs: Reflect,
Inspire, Strengthen, and Empower (Figure 1).
Figure 1
The RISE program in a snapshot.
The program took place between October 1, 2019, and January 31, 2020. It was designed
to allow for up to 20 mid- to late-career physicians to participate. Sixteen participants
enrolled and participated in one or more 90-minute sessions of the RISE program, which
comprised a series of 4 in-person, informal, and interactive sessions on a monthly
basis. Each session was facilitated and led by our physician leaders and our institution’s
leadership assessment and development experts. Participating physicians had greater
than 10 years of practice experience and expressed an interest in mentorship and coaching
for career development, enhancing engagement, and bringing joy to their work.
The sessions were scheduled after work hours. All attendees met in a private sectioned
area of one of two local restaurants. Before each session, there was flexible networking
time for colleagues to interact. Each moderated session focused on a specific theme
and included a variable didactic learning element with a predominant component of
facilitated interactive exchange of ideas. After each session, an optional post-session
survey was administered to gauge overall effect and satisfaction and to seek other
suggestions (Figure 2). The session topics were as follows.
Figure 2
Consort diagram representing number of participants and survey completion for each
session.
Reflect
The first session focused on reflection, using the framework of emotional intelligence
(EI). – According to Dr. Daniel Goleman, one of the foremost authorities on EI, strong,
direct connections exist between EI and business results.
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Research conducted at nearly 200 large, global companies has demonstrated that although
technical skills and cognitive abilities are important drivers of outstanding performance,
EI is twice as important as the other factors for job performance at all levels, and
increasingly so as one ascends in leadership.
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This session was facilitated by an expert who was trained and certified in EI. All
participants underwent an emotional quotient self-assessment before the session and
underwent a systematic guided activity of reflection on their current experiences,
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats during the session. The session
emphasized the importance of EI and focused on gaining better individual understanding
of EI skills in addition to practices to cultivate better emotional awareness and
regulation. All participants received a free book on EI as a resource to reinforce
the concepts discussed during the session. There were 12 attendees and 1 speaker for
this session.
Inspire
The second session focused on inspiration, using the format of storytelling to inspire
participants. The session included a leadership panel of 4 senior leaders from diverse
backgrounds, fields, and career stages within our institution to share stories, lessons
learned, the critical skills that helped them succeed, and how they overcame failures
or setbacks along the way. Each panelist subsequently answered questions from the
audience. The physician leaders on the panel discussed successful ways and resources
to align individual career development pathways with top institutional priorities.
Among a wide variety of topics discussed, other institutional educational and executive
board leaders shared navigation tips for academic rank advancement and provided practical
advice to manage against bias and harassment. There were 16 attendees and 4 speakers
for this session.
Strengthen
The third session focused on exploring one’s leadership style through the standardized
real colors assessment tool,
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followed by a real-time participation in collaborative negotiations. The assessment
tool helped participants to understand their strengths and opportunities, and they
were able to relate the findings on the assessment tool with their ability to negotiate
collaboratively. Other related topics covered in this session were demonstrating executive
presence and characteristics for leading with agility. This session was facilitated
by an expert in collaborative negotiations and leadership styles. There were 12 attendees
and 1 speaker for this session.
Empower
The final session focused on coaching and mentoring, the benefits of which are widely
researched and understood, but less commonly applied and accessible to physicians
throughout their careers.
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This session was facilitated by 2 certified physician and executive coaches within
our institution. They discussed and demystified differences among and the importance
of coaching, sponsorship, advocacy, and mentorship. Discussion was focused on understanding
the need, existing tools, ways to access timely resources, creating value in professional
relationships, and ways to be effective coaches and mentors to each other. This session
included a live demonstration of the appreciative coaching model, and there were coaching
opportunities created within the room via a “connections audit,” during which participants
were asked to review their current mentors, sponsors, and coaches and to identify
existing gaps. With this knowledge, participants then created an outline to identify
potential future professional connections and plans to fill the gaps. There were 10
attendees and 2 speakers for this session. Empower 2.0 is an ongoing peer coaching
program by physician dyads who participated in the final empower session.
Key Learning and Future Direction
Within the constraints of time and resources, we confirmed the feasibility of implementing
a career development program with successful launch of The RISE program, which had
10 to 16 attendees in each of the 4 sessions. In this pilot program, we were creative
about using existing expertise and institutional resources to minimize expenses and
to avoid time away from practice—both of which were looked upon favorably by our institution.
One of the most notable and rewarding aspects of the RISE program was the attendees’
enthusiasm for the program and their belief in its helpfulness for not only their
professional career building skills, but also their personal relationships outside
of work. Some of the comments from attendees included “wonderfully thought out and
forward-thinking process in 4 short meetings. I’m highly motivated to succeed with
my coach and others whom I mentor!” and “the meetings were helpful in skill development
and comradery—both important in professional growth.” The response rate to the optional
post-session survey ranged between 18.8% for the Inspire session to 33.3% for the
Reflect session. Each of the surveys comprised 7 questions and a comment field; 4
of the questions included Likert-scale responses (strongly disagree, disagree, neutral,
agree or strongly agree), and 3 questions had yes/no responses. The questions focused
on the following: agreement with the session objectives, confidence in the ability
to apply it, expectations of positive results and recommendation of the program (strongly
disagree to strongly agree), commitment, anticipating barriers, and the ability to
overcome said barrier (yes/no). The surveys themselves were not mandatory, and only
one mailing occurred. During a busy practice, it is easy for providers to overlook
an emailed survey, and unfortunately there was no follow-up survey sent to nonresponders.
Encouragingly, those who did reply were positive about the benefits of the program,
and this gives us confidence to pursue the development of a larger program.
Despite challenges in investing in professional and leadership development for busy
clinicians because of time limitations and other competing priorities, such as practice,
research, education, and life outside work, there is a strong perceived need for these
programs as demonstrated by our participants. This has also been described in a series
of exit interviews from a leadership program, wherein participants ranked the leadership
program according to its use of their time as 8.7 (range, 6-10) using a Likert scale
of 1 to 10 (with 1 being a complete waste of time and 10 being an excellent use of
time).
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At a time in an individual’s career where burnout and disillusionment may be high,
the RISE program reinstated their value and reintroduced enthusiasm and tools for
career enhancement and engagement among mid- and late-career faculty members. RISE
remains ongoing with peer physician coaching in dyads, and phase 2 will incorporate
recommendations from phase 1 in addition to developing novel metrics for physician
career development and performance via balanced score cards.
One of the limitations of this pilot program is the small sample size, which was deliberate
to understand the reception of such a program for colleagues engaged in a busy clinical
practice. We limited the enrollment to be a manageable size (<20 respondents), and
because the post-session surveys were optional, we could not control the small response
rate to the post-session surveys. To balance the pros and cons of the busy practice,
we chose after-work hours; however, the long hours in practice might have prevented
people from participating in an after-work program—especially since the sessions were
held in fall and winter months, and some attendees noted that it felt rushed. Environmental
factors (last 2 sessions during winter months with extreme weather and heavy snowfall)
precluded optimal attendance despite great enthusiasm and interest expressed by all
registrants. Finally, we do not have long-term outcomes because this research was
designed as a brief feasibility study without long-term follow up. Having established
feasibility of this small pilot program and observing the positive reception and self-reported
motivation among attendees, it is evident that a larger program needs to be implemented
with components of synchronous and asynchronous learning, utilization of virtual platforms
to eliminate environmental and time-related barriers, and additional clinical and
research resources to study the effectiveness of interventions via pre–post evaluations
both in the short and long term.