Define medical staff leaders' roles in writing

If you want to help a physician perform successfully in a medical staff leadership role, you must develop a written job description for that role. This is a basic function of establishing and communicating clear expectations.

Physicians are generally committed to doing a good job at everything they do; that’s part of what drew them to medicine in the first place. Once physicians know what is expected of them, they give it 110% effort—provided they buy into the expectation. If they don’t buy into it, or worse yet, don’t even know about it, there is precious little chance they will comply with the expectation. In fact, expecting physician leaders to fulfill their responsibilities without fully orienting them to their respective positions sets them up to fail.