The AAPL Fall Institute: Day One, Positive Change

Physician leaders from throughout North America took a well-deserved break from their daily routines to gather in Scottsdale, Arizona for a week’s worth of education, refreshing, looking back, and looking to the future of physician leadership.

AAPL’s Fall Institute kicked off this week with more than 300 physician leaders, a mix of those who are well-established, and many emerging physician leaders.

Opening the morning, AAPL President and CEO, Peter Angood, MD, FRCS (C), FACS, MCCM, FAAPL(Hon), welcomed the attendees and spoke about the increased awareness and demand for physician leadership in healthcare on domestic and international levels. AAPL is responding by increasing the diversity and depth of its programs, products, and services as it continues to meet the market demand amongst ever-present competition. AAPL is still recognized as the global brand leaders in this realm. AAPL will continue to expand as well toward inter-professional leadership offerings.

AAPL Chair, Bruce Levy, MD, CPE, FAAPL, also gave a welcome at the Institute, and spoke about competition and the innovative approaches AAPL is taking to continue expanding its market presence and being the brand leader.

The Institute kicked off with a keynote address from Elizabeth Garner, MD, MPH, a seasoned strategic- and business-minded pharmaceutical executive and corporate board member with a career-long focus on addressing unmet needs in conditions and issues that affect women’s health and quality of life.

Born and raised in Nigeria, she brings a global view to her work in both the corporate and non-profit worlds. Garner is currently the Chief Scientific Officer of Ferring Pharmaceuticals US, a mid-size global company focused on reproductive and maternal health, microbiome and gastrointestinal therapeutics, and uro-oncology. 

In a recent podcast with AAPL, Garner explained her views and perspective.

“I saw myself as a physician by the age of 12,” she said. “I think that physician leaders, at least at the moment, are feeling disempowered in many ways. If I think back to medical school, we didn't really get taught anything about leadership. That was not a part of the curriculum really at all. It was all about just learning the diseases and the medicines, and that was really the focus. And for me, what that's led to is that as physicians move up, if you want to call it that, they haven't been able to maintain really the decision-making on how medicine is here, how medicine is done, how it's conducted.”

One area of focus for her is working with the American Medical Women’s Association, which is “focused on women physicians' lives, improving their lives, not only as it relates to their careers, but also the other aspects of life, their mental health. We spend a lot of time thinking about that. And basically overall, how do we make the lives of women physicians better? We, of course, are also very interested in equity.”

And women’s health. As she told us in the podcast, “I was frustrated in the ovarian cancer realm, which is where I spent a lot of my time as a GYN oncologist, that we just didn't have adequate treatments. So, I found myself doing all these surgeries, doing these really big operations on women with ovarian cancer, and then it would come right back despite my perfect operation.”

“I thought, ‘This is not okay. We need better treatments. We need targeted treatments, which I was already thinking about, interestingly enough, way back then before really targeted therapy became really a thing in oncology.’“

In her remarks, she shared her thesis, that more women at the top in decision-making positions leads to having the key issues facing women more likely to be addressed. This in turn leads to pay equity, which translates into an improved workplace culture, better health for women, and a better quality of life for women and families.

After Garner’s moving and inspiring remarks, and some critical networking along the way, the course work began. Thursday’s courses included Essentials of Health Law, Mastering Emotional Intelligence, Managing Physician Performance, Project Management, and Resolving Conflict.

Reviving the theme introduced in the keynote address, weekend courses include Women in Leadership, the CEO Academy, and the CMO Academy.

Thursday also included Vanguard program participants meeting to discuss topical and current issues. The Vanguard is an invitation-only day-long symposium for senior physician leaders.

AAPL also facilitated networking groups we now refer to as Communities of Practice, which is a group of people who share a common concern, a set of problems, or an interest in a topic who come together to fulfill both individual and group goals.

And, attendees seeking additional degrees learned about AAPL’s partnership with several universities including the University of Indiana Kelly School of Business, UMass Amherst, Carnegie Mellon University Heinz College, Thomas Jefferson University, and Arizona State University.

Once again, AAPL hosted its bookstore with extensive offerings including new publications:

• Next Level Healthcare Employees: Improving the Performance of a Good Team, by Laura Hills, DA

• Physician Leadership Matters: The Importance of Understanding the Regulatory and Legal Aspects of Healthcare, by Timothy E. Paterick, MD, JD, MBA, and Master’s in Physician Leadership and Management

• Every Story Counts: Exploring Contemporary Practice Through Narrative Medicine, by Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA, CPE

AAPL is set to publish The Catholic Church and Its Hospitals: A Marriage Made in Heaven? by Patricia A. Gabow, MD.

After a welcome reception, some time outside by the firepit, attendees were off to private dinners and a full day was in the books.