Healthcare executives look to bring the joy back to medicine

As health systems survey candidates for executive roles, experience, academic achievements and other measures of scholarship typically top the priority list.

Leadership qualities, “coachability” and emotional intelligence are often overlooked, particularly at academic institutions. That represents a fundamental flaw in the hiring process and the medical education system, which hardwires doctors to be self-interested and autonomous, said Dr. Peter Pisters, president of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

“Our search committees have been anchored in a series of biases that include an overemphasis on scholarship and an underemphasis on leadership capabilities, especially emotional intelligence,” Pisters told the audience during Modern Healthcare’s Workplace of the Future conference last month. “That has created real challenges.”

MD Anderson has brought in psychologists specializing in emotional intelligence and incorporated that metric into the selection process. It mandates implicit bias training to ensure objectivity. Like many systems, the academic medical center has also pushed for more diverse leaders and has cast a wider net to attract more applicants.

The full Modern Healthcare article can be viewed at this link.