October 7, 2026 Salus Forum

I do think part of it is innate and I can only speak for myself. I can only share what my experience has been. But my question lately to my peers, my physician peers are: why is it that I’m so hungry to learn more about leadership and improve QI? (30:23) But why doesn’t everyone in my class want to do this? That’s one question I have for you. And then the second is because I’m so new, I’m just one year out of attending hood. I want to be that person who’s like someone you’re talking to at AHPM. Who’s the board trying to figure out initiatives or palliative care and spreading awareness in an underserved sense. What should I focus on activity-wise now to hone in on those skills?

Perry

Warren, you lit a fire here by pointing out the fact that understanding systems well enough to develop some insight on how they can get better is an important dynamic. Jenny highlighted it. It takes some time to do that. I think that’s going to be a challenge for the board that wants to assess these things, because like we’ve been saying, it takes a certain amount of time and experience to start seeing what direction things need to go and having a vision on how you can play a role in improving them. I think that that’s a significant challenge going forward.

I think that not everyone. Years ago, I wrote an article basically saying that primary care physicians were the best prepared to take a leadership role in healthcare. I used the argument that we had largely abdicated control of the healthcare system to the bean counters, politicians and financiers. Folks like that. What I’ve learned over many years is that primary care physicians have a more global view of what’s going on in these healthcare systems. And over time, their patient population teaches them the community health component to these issues.

When I was taking ACEP courses, I was struck that there were a number of physicians there who were narrow specialty surgeons. They were fascinated by the content they learned when a speaker would say, “now, when you speak to other people, you should look at them, so that they know you’re listening”. So not everyone who’s a physician is well prepared to lead others beyond that of a local clinical care team. I think the experience and the breadth part of it is really important.

Warren, you noted that there is some basic content that needs to be included educationally. We can argue about the division between leadership and management, but if you don’t know how to manage something, you’re not going to be able to lead anybody doing it anyway. I think those are really important points that this group has been talking about now. I just want to make sure that I highlighted all those different pieces that we’re talking about all at the same time.