Article Text
Abstract
Background The format and content of leadership development programmes for physicians is a theme for discussion in the literature.
Objectives The aim of this study is to explore healthcare executives’ perspectives on physician leadership development, focusing on perceived benefits and negative effects associated with multidisciplinary programmes.
Methods We did a qualitative study based on data from semistructured interviews with 16 healthcare executives in US healthcare systems.
Results We found that one group perceived programmes targeting one profession as advantageous, promoting openness and professional relationships among peers. Other executives argued that multidisciplinary programmes could add value because they could bridge professional boundaries, strengthen networks and build leadership capacity throughout an organisation. Costs, timing, organisational culture and a lack of knowledge about how to run multidisciplinary programmes were challenges our informants associated with multidisciplinary leadership development programmes.
Conclusion This study identifies topics and challenges that can inform organisational policies and decisions about leadership development activities.
- clinical leadership
- learning
- medical leadership
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Contributors JCF designed the study, analysed the data and drafted the manuscript. IS analysed the data, contributed in drafting the manuscript and revising it. Both authors have approved the final version to be published and are accountable for all aspects of the work.
Funding This study was funded by the Commonwealth Fund (Norwegian Harkness fellowship 2013-2014) and The Research Council of Norway (grant number 232215).
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent Not required.
Ethics approval Human Subjects Committee of Yale University. The study qualified for exemption (IRB protocol number 1310012927).
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement Transcribed interviews.