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Redefining the Limits of Medical Education: Business Skills Required
For a firsthand look at how the nation's looming doctor shortage is impacting medicine, visit a typical family practice. During annual checkups, many patients receive treatment from a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant, not a doctor.
Doctors still treat patients, of course, but many are taking on the added responsibility of being team leaders. This shift to team-based medical care isn't necessarily bad for patients: it can lower costs without a substantive change in the quality of care. But to be effective leaders, physicians need to borrow skill sets from other disciplines, specifically the business practices of executive training programs, argues a team of University of Pittsburgh doctors in an article published in the November edition of Academic Medicine.
The paper, entitled "The Physician as Team Leader: New Job Skills Required," examines which crossover skills are useful to medical doctors (M.D.'s). Academic Medicine selected the paper - written by lead author Carl H. Snyderman, a professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose, and throat) and neurological surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and colleagues David E. Eibling, professor and vice chair for education at UPMC's Department of Otolaryngology, and Jonas T. Johnson, professor and Eugene N. Myers chair of the UPMC Department of Otolaryngology - for publication in response to the journal's 2011 Question of the Year: "What Improvements in Medical Education will Lead to Better Health for Individuals and Populations?"
"The era of 'one patient, one doctor' is coming to an end, and so today's trainees will practice in collaborative teams rather than individually," wrote the UMPC physicians. "In such a model, the physician assumes the role of team leader, managing the activities of multiple physicians and other health care providers. The physician is a facilitator and communicator, and must make decisions about the allocation of health care resources, evaluate the evidence for best practices, and monitor quality of care."
Snyderman, a July 2011 graduate of the Executive MBA Worldwide program at the Katz Graduate School of Business, says an MBA helps doctors to understand complex issues in human resources, health care economics, marketing, and decision making. For him, EMBA training prepares him to take on more senior roles in health care and helps him to better understand the larger societal issues of health care.
"The Executive MBA program was a diverse experience. It gave me a big-picture mentality, showing me how things are interconnected in health care and beyond. This helps me to care for patients, because I can better understand the business side of medicine," Snyderman says.
Snyderman is working with John T. Delaney, dean of the Katz School and the College of Business Administration, and Anne Nemer, the assistant dean for executive programs, to create an MBA group for MDs. The group would be open to doctors outside UPMC and to graduates of business schools other than Katz.
Snyderman is the codirector of the Center for Cranial Base Surgery at UPMC. As a surgeon, he has removed tumors and treated a myriad of other conditions involving the brain and areas next to the brain. He is recognized internationally for helping to develop the Endoscopic Endonasal Approach. In this form of minimally invasive surgery, surgeons go up through the nose to reach the brain, and avoid more invasive approaches through the skull or face.
"What makes this surgery so challenging is that we're the pioneers, so we had to teach ourselves how to do it. We had to develop new tools and instruments. At first, we faced lots of criticism from the medical community, but adoption of these techniques is now widespread," Snyderman says.
Snyderman was able to complete his MBA studies while maintaining a busy surgical schedule. He says that an MBA program is a natural continuation of education for doctors.
"In medicine, we're used to lifelong education; it's part of what we do to maintain our skills. Obtaining a business education is now part of that, and similar to a medical education, it is not an end, but a beginning."
