Day Two of AAPL’s Fall Institute Honors the Physician’s Journey

Day two of the American Association for Physician Leadership's Fall Institute honored the journey that physician leaders may find themselves on at various stages of their careers. The day began with peer-to-peer consultations that featured physicians in the early stages of their leadership training process.

“There’s a whole cadre of folks behind us who are just figuring it out,” said AAPL president and CEO Peter Angood, MD, FRCS(C), FACS, MCCM, FAAPL(Hon), as he opened the Vanguard Program.

The Vanguard Program is designed to provide high-level programming and networking to match seasoned physician leaders’ sophisticated degree of experience in leadership, education, achievement, and dedication to improving the industry.

To start the day, attendees in the Vanguard Program discussed challenges that physician leaders are facing in the wake of several Supreme Court decisions that are tied to healthcare, including the decisions to turn the Roe vs. Wade ruling on abortion back to individual states and those that limit gun control.

The discussion centered on whether physicians might one day face criminal charges for discharging healthcare practices that they had been trained to deliver. A major thrust of the discussion focused on proving whether a doctor would have had criminal intent.

In the case of opioids, for example, there is a distinction to be made, attendees pointed out, between those doctors who are treating pain and those who are creating “pill mills.”

With respect to abortions, one attendee asked: “If you have a (patient’s) pregnancy that is non-viable, what are we going to do about it? Women are afraid, they don’t want to wait for a spontaneous abortion, we are all scared. How are we going to train our future generations?”

One attendee pointed out that medical practice has long supported doctors who are doing what’s best for the patient in the moment. But the fear that doctors may eventually be criminalized for carrying out some procedures was present.

At least one solution was proffered in which physician leaders should assume an advocacy role in their states and in federal legislation.

In one case, an attendee pointed out that physicians in a state were able to help modify a law from the 1800s that provided no exceptions to abortions.

The Vanguard Program then turned to a philosophical discussion of ethics in physician leadership, presented by Dr. Ira Bedzow of The Aspen Institute.

"Ethics, is not a field of study. Ethics is a set of skills and the capacity for ethical action is like a moral muscle that can be trained and strengthened", said Bedzow. “Ethics is more than considering right/wrong or good/bad but how to engage fully with your own goals and values in an interpersonal situation,” he said.

(Related: Listen to The Aspen Institute’s Matt Wynia’s appearance on AAPL’s SoundPractice podcast).

In her session on developing emotional intelligence, Susan Childs, the author of AAPL’s newest book, The Emotionally Intelligent Physician Leader, pointed out that some patients just want the magic pill that doesn’t cost a lot and solves all of their problems.

And when they don’t get it, they could become verbally or even physically abusive. Childs spent the day teaching skills in developing emotional intelligence as a means to avoiding conflict and delivering more effective healthcare.

The day also included a case study in how a hospital system turned call pay into a recruiting and retention advantage.

It ended with sessions on speed mentoring and a popular lesson on how to get published.

The AAPL Publishing Team presented a two-part session on How to Get Published concentrating on strategies for developing a strong book proposal, and manuscript development and submission to the association's flagship member publication, The Physician Leadership Journal.

AAPL is proud of its cadre of authors and its role in developing future physician leaders through publishing.