There is a particular kind of confidence that comes only from having done something for a very long time and having done it well. The American Association for Physician Leadership carries that confidence — not as institutional swagger, but as earned authority.
Fifty years of educating physicians in the art and science of leadership. Fifty years of insisting, before it was fashionable or even fully understood, that physicians are not merely participants in healthcare delivery but its most essential architects.
And now, with this issue, something else: a Physician Leadership Journal that has been fundamentally reconceived to meet a profession at one of the most demanding inflection points in its history.
To understand why this moment calls for a transformed journal, it helps to understand the organization behind it — and how it got here.
From Alexandria to Everywhere: A Brief and Consequential History
In 1975, Roger Schenke founded what was then called the American Academy of Medical Directors, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia. The premise was straightforward: physicians needed formal leadership education, and no one was providing it. Medicine trained people to heal. It did not train them to lead departments, manage systems, navigate governance, or negotiate the complex intersection of clinical imperatives and organizational realities. Schenke and his colleagues saw that gap and stepped into it.
By 1989, the growing organization had adopted a new name — the American College of Physician Executives — and relocated to Tampa, Florida, in 1982. Over the following decades, ACPE built what would become the most comprehensive physician leadership development program in the world.
ACPE launched courses, credentialing pathways, conferences, and publications. It created communities of practice at a time when the very concept of a physician leader was still being defined. And it did so with a consistent conviction: that leadership is not a trait some physicians are born with, and others are not. Leadership is learned.
That conviction became the organization’s operating philosophy — embedded in every curriculum, every course, every issue of its publications.
In 2014, under the leadership of then-President and CEO Peter B. Angood, MD, and after extensive consultation with its membership, the organization rebranded again. This time, the name change carried strategic intent. The American Association for Physician Leadership (AAPL) was not just a new title; it was a statement about scope.
“Physician executives” had described a subset of physicians who moved into administrative roles. “Physician leaders” described something far larger — the full continuum of physicians who influence care delivery, shape organizational culture, advocate for patients and colleagues, and step into formal and informal leadership at every level of the healthcare enterprise.
The rebranding was not cosmetic. It reflected a genuine expansion of who AAPL serves and how. Today, the association supports physicians from medical school onward — in clinical roles, administrative roles, and everything in between. It has educated more than 250,000 physicians in more than 40 countries.
Its CPE credential, the Certified Physician Executive designation, has become a recognized marker of leadership excellence in healthcare hiring and promotion. And its suite of publications — the PLJ among them — has served as the profession’s intellectual commons, where the ideas shaping physician leadership are examined, debated, and advanced.
That is a remarkable legacy. It is also a foundation, not a ceiling.
Why This Journal, Why Now
Healthcare has rarely been more complex or more contested. The share of physicians working in practices they own has fallen below 47%, down from more than 60% just over a decade ago. Consolidation, corporate ownership, and health system expansion have fundamentally altered the landscape in which physicians practice. At the same time, burnout, workforce shortages, AI-driven transformation, and mounting pressure on outcomes and cost are reshaping what it means to lead a healthcare organization.
In that environment, the journal that serves physician leaders needs to be more than a trade publication. It needs to be a resource of genuine depth and practical value — rigorous enough to advance the field, accessible enough to support the working physician leader, and broad enough to reflect the full spectrum of what physician leadership has become.
That is the ambition behind the Physician Leadership Journal as it stands today: redesigned in scope, strengthened in content, and oriented toward the profession as it actually exists — not as it existed a generation ago.
This issue marks the debut of a PLJ that has been substantially broadened. Here is what readers will find.
What’s Inside: A Reader’s Guide to the Evolved PLJ
Association News. The PLJ has always been the official voice of AAPL, and that function is now more formally anchored at the front of each issue. Association news covers developments in AAPL programming, credentialing, advocacy, and organizational leadership — keeping members connected to the institution that serves them and informed about initiatives that affect their professional lives. This is not simply a bulletin; it is a window into the direction of physician leadership as an organized field.
Member Spotlights. Physician leaders work across an extraordinary range of settings, specialties, and organizational contexts. Some lead academic medical centers. Others run independent practices, serve as CMOs of regional health systems, or work in roles that didn’t exist 10 years ago. The PLJ’s member spotlight section brings those stories into focus not as superficial profiles, but as substantive professional journalism. These profiles explore how physician leaders arrived at their current roles, what they’ve learned, and what they wish they’d known. They are, in the best sense, peer education.
The CPE in the Marketplace. The Certified Physician Executive credential has been a cornerstone of AAPL’s mission since 1997. But the PLJ has not always given that credential — and the people who hold it — the dedicated coverage it deserves. That changes here. Each issue will include reporting and analysis on the CPE in real-world contexts: what it means to hiring organizations, how it affects career trajectories, what CPEs themselves say about the credential’s value. This section is, at once, a resource for those considering the credential and a recognition of those who have earned it.
Peer-Reviewed Research. The PLJ has published peer-reviewed scholarship for years, and that commitment deepens with this iteration. Each issue features original research and critically appraised articles on medical leadership and healthcare delivery, reviewed by an editorial board of Certified Physician Executives from around the world. Topics span the full scope of physician leadership — from organizational behavior and change management to health systems research, quality improvement, workforce development, and leadership competency. For physician leaders engaged in scholarly work, the PLJ remains one of the field’s most important publishing venues.
Review Articles. Not every important idea in physician leadership emerges from original research. Some of the most useful work in any applied field comes from synthesis — from scholars and practitioners who take the time to examine what the existing literature says about a question that matters to working leaders. The PLJ’s expanded review article section provides exactly that: rigorous, readable assessments of the evidence base on leadership topics that physicians encounter in practice. These articles are designed to be used, not merely read.
Inter-professional Leadership. This is perhaps the most significant addition to the PLJ’s editorial scope, and it reflects something important about the direction of healthcare. Physician leaders do not operate in isolation. They lead, collaborate with, and depend on nurses, pharmacists, social workers, administrators, technologists, and a growing cast of allied health professionals whose contributions are inseparable from the work physicians do. Effective leadership in this environment is, by definition, inter-professional.
AAPL has long understood this. Its Healthcare Administration Leadership & Management Journal, its Secrets of the Best-Run Practices guidance, and its Healthcare Insights content have all engaged the broader landscape of healthcare leadership beyond the physician.
The PLJ now joins that conversation directly, with a dedicated section exploring inter-professional leadership: how physicians lead across disciplines, how dyad and triad leadership models function in practice, how physicians and non-physician leaders build the collaborative structures that high-performing organizations require. This content draws on the same evidence base and practitioner wisdom that inform AAPL’s broader publishing portfolio — now integrated into the journal that physician leaders reach for first.
Guided by CRISP
AAPL operates under a philosophy called CRISP: Continuous Renewal through Innovation and Seeking Perfection. It is an apt description of how an organization remains relevant over 50 years of relentless change in its field. It is also an apt description of what this journal aspires to be.
Continuous renewal does not mean abandoning what works. The PLJ’s commitment to original journalism and commentary — the feature writing, the Q&As, the contextual analysis that has made it a publication readers trust — remains fully intact. What has changed is the journal’s willingness to be as expansive as the field it covers.
That field, in 2026 and beyond, encompasses physician leaders at every career stage, in every organizational context, grappling with challenges that range from the interpersonal to the systemic. It encompasses scholars producing research that deserves rigorous peer review and practitioners seeking synthesis they can act on. It encompasses the growing recognition that no physician leads alone — that the future of healthcare depends on professionals across every discipline learning to lead together.
The PLJ has always had a role in that story. With this issue, that role grows more deliberate, more structured, and more fully realized.
An Invitation
There is a phrase that is the philosophy at AAPL: Leadership is learned. Three words. It is a statement about human potential — that the skills and capacities that make a physician leader effective are not distributed by genetic lottery but developed through education, experience, reflection, and the willingness to keep growing.
For 50 years, AAPL has operated from that belief — that physicians can learn not only to practice medicine, but to lead organizations, shape systems, and influence the future of healthcare itself.
The Physician Leadership Journal exists in service of that mission.
In these pages, we hope readers will find not only information, but perspective; not only scholarship, but practical wisdom; not only commentary, but a deeper understanding of what physician leadership now requires.
Healthcare will continue to evolve. The demands on physician leaders will continue to grow. This journal intends to grow with them.
We are honored to continue that work with you.
The Physician Leadership Journal is the flagship publication of the American Association for Physician Leadership. Published bi-monthly, it is available as a member benefit to AAPL members.
Leadership is Learned.