Building blocks to the road to Clinical Leadership: The Mindful Surgeon
In the dynamic world of healthcare, leadership skills are increasingly valued and sought-after. Whether you're a seasoned medical professional or an aspiring healthcare enthusiast, enhancing your CV for medical leadership can be a pivotal step towards career advancement. Doctors are naturally pushed into leadership roles simply because of their profession. As a doctor, you take responsibility for your patient’s health and well-being. Most doctors will work in a team-based setting, and although we work in a multi-disciplinary setting, we often take the ultimate responsibility for patient care. So, it is important for doctors to be involved in leadership from the beginning and to help drive positive changes in healthcare. In this article, I will talk about how to develop your leadership style and opportunities that will showcase your leadership skills and build up your CV.
Now you may think, Well, I am not leadership material. You are not wrong to think like that because, from early on, society has always put forward a certain persona when it comes to being a leader. A strong, tough, usually loud person who is always right and comes up with all the solutions, is most commonly a man, and depending on where you are, this can have a racial predisposition as well. A leader is someone who ensures their team has support and tools to achieve their goals. So, anyone can be a leader, regardless of gender, age, sex, ethnicity, or personality. A leader may not always have the answer, but he or she can work with their team to get one. So, it is important we take leadership into account in our lives and professions and put ourselves forward for those opportunities.
Leadership is a learned skill. A leader is not born but made. They are made because, by chance, by their position, or by their own volition, they have been put in a leading position from early on. So they gained experience and got used to seeing themselves as leaders. So we need to do that too. Apply for positions to lead or make projects by yourself that you can lead. This will teach you what your leadership personality is and, most importantly, how to manage the stress of being a leader. So, we will need to know how to manage stress on our own and on our team. You need to know how to manage emotions, get the most out of your team, and deal with difficult situations.
Leadership Development Toolkit
Study: Leading a hospital or medical organisation is different from leading any other organisation. You can get a formal degree in medical leadership. You can take courses and shadow your senior leaders. But overall, continue to learn about the various aspects of medical leadership. You can also do leadership courses, which teach you about your leadership personality and conflict resolution, read websites, and watch videos.
Self-assessment: Each personality leads differently. You need to have an idea about your personality traits, how you perform under pressure, and in what situations you perform well. You can get a free assessment online. This can give you some insights about your leadership and team management styles.
Apply for a leadership position: You may not have any leadership experience, but that shouldn’t stop you from applying. You might be rejected, but you lose more by not using and not giving yourself a chance at all.
Networking: Networking with your peers and seniors in your industry and desired field is vital. Conferences and social events are great for this. But you can also use social media sites like LinkedIn to follow or connect with anyone in the world. This will give you ideas about their career paths and also showcase your own achievements for the world to see.
Lead: Ultimately, experience is the best teacher, and the best students are those who reflect on their experience and learn from it. So put yourself in leadership positions. If you don’t have access to one, then create one. Do a critical appraisal of what did and didn’t go well. Whatever the outcome, if you learn to use the experience to make you a better leader, then that project was a success.
So read about leadership, get some experience, and approach this as a student, where your experience will teach you to be a good leader. Here are some effective strategies to improve your CV, making you a more appealing candidate for medical leadership roles, no matter where you are:
Team management: This is a critical skill and a highly valued one. You can show your leadership skills in various ways, like by arranging the rota of your clinical team, which is the simplest and most basic leadership role, and by showcasing your team coordination skills. You can also serve on the committees in your hospital, like the mess committee and the research committee. You can also show your experience organising cultural or fundraising events for your hospital. But remember, it must be something related to the hospital's clinical service function or well-being. For example, I was a member of the organising committee for trainees in my deanery.
Steering Committee: Serving as a committee member in your trust or speciality will also count as leadership experience. Being a member of the steering committee for developing clinical guidelines or pathways, patient welfare, patient safety, clinical governance, or staff welfare will show your team management skills, both as a team player and leader. Sometimes you can spearhead committees and create your own leadership role. For example, when I joined the NHS, which was many moons ago, there were no representations or guidance for international medical graduates in my trust or even on the web. So, I, along with a couple of my IMG colleagues, made a local International Medical Graduate Welfare type of forum in my trust. The Human Resources department was delighted to help because then they could point their new IMG recruits somewhere to go for guidance. Not to mention, this looks good for their profile as a helpful trust. This not only ticked my leadership box, but I also used this forum to run workshops like how to do clinical audits, which added to my teaching portfolio.
Lead for Education or Research: You can also be a lead for education, teaching, or perhaps doing research at your institution. Teaching, in my experience, is easier to set up, and you can do it anywhere in the world. If your current place of work does not have any organised teaching leads, then make a new role for yourself. For ideas about teaching, check out my blog post, How to Build Your Teaching Portfolio: The Mindful Surgeon.
Represent your speciality: You can be a trainee or student leader in a medical society of your specialisation. For example, I am the representative of my speciality in the Junior Doctor Forum of my current trust and in my deanery. Something like this is counted as an example of local and regional leadership. If you are representing your speciality or serving as a member of the medical society, this will count as a national and international leadership experience.
Lead quality improvement and audit projects: This looks really good on a CV, as it showcases all the essential skills of being a medical leader. This will show your problem-solving skills. Everywhere in the world you work, no matter what organisation, there is a quality measurement sector. It might not be as defined as in some developed countries. But this can also be your opportunity to spearhead this kind of project, which will look spectacular on our CV. You can also lead QI or audit projects for existing hospital services to see their efficiency, both clinical and financial. For ideas about what kind of audit you can do, read my previous article. The Power of Clinical Audit: Elevating Healthcare Beyond Borders: The Mindful Surgeon
You are involved in more leadership roles than you think in your day-to-day life. When you lead the ward round, when you give effective handover, when you are operating, when you are mentoring. These are just a few examples. Leadership is a fluid position, sometimes you have to lead alone, sometimes with a team. It is important that you understand that to lead effectively, you must also follow. Being a medical leader is a journey that combines clinical expertise with leadership skills, education, mentorship, and continuous growth. By following these steps and staying dedicated to your development, you can position yourself for success in medical leadership roles and contribute to the advancement of healthcare.
