Tip of the week: Turn to past medical staff leaders to provide mentoring

The pool of former medical staff leaders represents a wealth of talent and experience that should not be overlooked as a resource when developing new leaders. Many of the individuals in this pool possess excellent leadership characteristics and have acquired extensive experience over many years on the staff. In many cases, they have experienced leadership challenges, such as participating in investigations, corrective action, and fair hearings; addressing impaired or disruptive physicians; resolving disputes between physicians and management; fighting medical staff apathy; and struggling to improve communication.

In many cases, these individuals were just mastering their leadership roles when their term of office expired. Therefore, the organization never had the opportunity to reap the full benefit of what they had to offer. This pool of talent can be marshaled for a wide range of purposes, including:

• Enticing new physicians to consider leadership roles
• Mentoring of current leaders
• Serving as chairs and resources to ad hoc task forces
• Comprising the membership of fair hearing panels
• Serving as mediators in disputes among medical staff members

This week’s tip is adapted 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 Fritz, MHA—now available at a reduced price!