Advising Hippocrates: Consulting to Medical Leaders

In my Advising Hippocrates program, I consult to physicians, senior executives and entrepreneurs in health care organizations, academic and medical centers, pharmaceutical, and biotech companies, and startups. I understand the complex leadership challenges physicians and health care leaders face, and can leverage innate leadership skills as well as skills that have been informally acquired during training.

Physicians have notorious difficulty in management and leadership positions. Though called upon to be leaders in many facets of their work (the OR, the ER, hospital administration and committee work, department chairs with board responsibilities, practices with partners and staff), few have received formal leadership or management training. Administrative leadership is often discounted, if not devalued, in medical training. Increasingly, physicians are called upon to be leaders in careers outside of clinical medicine in teaching, administration, pharmaceuticals and bio-tech, or have become entrepreneurs in related fields. Thrust into positions of power involving significant leadership responsibilities, many feel unprepared and experience high levels of stress, anxiety and interpersonal conflict. An increasing number of physicians, having made the transition from private practice to working within a corporate setting, find themselves completely mystified by what they discover. They are not used to working as part of a team in which negotiation plays a primary role. They may not be used to “leading up” or “leading down.” They often did not go into medicine with the thought of assuming a managerial position, let alone a CEO or senior executive position.