Physician leadership development at Cleveland Clinic: a brief review

Abstract

Objective: We aim to describe the rationale for and spectrum of leadership development programs, highlighting experience at a large healthcare institution (Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio, USA). Conclusions: Developing leaders is a universal priority to sustain organizational success. In health care, significant challenges of ensuring quality and access and making care affordable are widely shared internationally and demand effective physician leadership. Yet, leadership competencies differ from clinical and scientific competencies and features of selecting and training physicians—who have been called “heroic lone healers” —often conspire against physicians being effective leaders or followers. Thus, developing leadership competencies in physicians is critical. Leadership development programs have been signature features of successful organizations and various Australian organizations offer such training (e.g. The Australian Leadership Foundation and the University of South Australia), but relatively few health care organizations have adopted the practice of offering such training, both in Australia and elsewhere. As a United States example of one such integrated program, the Cleveland Clinic, a large, closed-staff physician-led group practice in Cleveland, Ohio has offered physician leadership training for over 15 years. This paper describes the rationale, structure, and some of the observed impacts associated with this program.