Ask the expert: What should you tell potential leaders about the burdens, challenges, and risks of assuming a leadership role?

Assuming a leadership position has its burdens, as anyone involved in medical staff affairs will attest. It is important to be open with physician recruits about the challenges and risks inherent in leadership roles. Clearly articulating these concerns helps new and potential leaders adequately plan for the stresses involved and keeps them from being "sand bagged" by unanticipated burdens. Unless you adequately prepare these possible leaders, they may quicly resign from elected for assigned positions as a result of frustration, panic, or discouragement. Once burned, former medical staff leaders may be hard to entice back into leadership roles in the future.

Those new to leadership will need to be reminded of the time commitments involved. This should be done as accurately as possible, recognizing the very different time commitments posed by vaious leadership positions. They should be walked through the effect that this dedication of time is likely to have on patients, practice partners, practice staff, family, and any other commitments they may have. When predicting time commitments, consider the time necessary to learn new skills or to become informed about issues with which new recruits may have little familiarity, such as budgeting, strategic planning, conflict resolution, etc. Physicians new to leadership will also need to be told the potential effect on referrals to their practice.

If the physician has generally experienced only collegial and professional interactions with fellow medical staff members, it may come as a real shock how emotional and vitriolic some medical staff issues become when being addressed by physician leaders. They must understand that personal and professional attacks can sometimes be a consequence of principled and thoughtful decisions made by medical staff leaders.

In the extreme, lawsuits can be directed at such leaders. The potential recruit should be given a thorough understanding of the many effective legal protections that exist for medical staff leaders. These include statutes that provide immunity from damages, insurance carried by the hospital, and indemnification provisions for those taking on these important roles.

This week's question and answer are derived from How to Recruit and Develop Physician Leaders: A Strategy for Medical Staff Leadership Development by Richard A. Sheff, MD, CMSL; Todd Sagin, MD, JD; and Albert L. Fritz, MHA.