Physician Leaders: Shaping Healthcare Across the Globe

Abstract

AAPL President Peter Angood, MD, observes that the medical profession is currently in the midst of another major transformation. Historically, medical practice has passed through many phases of maturation, but modern mobility and communication has opened the possibility of leveraging the significant differences in the profession to create new paradigms of cross-cultural collaboration.

At its heart, healthcare depends fundamentally on the physician-patient relationship, and across most cultures, society continues to look at physicians as the natural stewards of the healthcare industry. That means we have entered an era of unprecedented opportunity to leverage scientific advances and cultural diversity to innovate in medicine and healthcare improvement as never before. The medical profession stands to gain much through diverse collaboration. Variations in viewpoints can lead to breakthrough solutions to historically elusive problems.

Revolutionary advances are in the offing for those who can accept the role of “leader” already bestowed on physicians in most cultures and embrace two fundamental concepts pointing to the way forward:

• Embracing the Here and Now. Embracing entails more than accepting the situation. It means purposefully looking for where we are and what opportunities are arising. Lean into your role as a leader and honor the role in others with a collaborative spirit. Grasp opportunities to see, explore, and connect with a new network more accessible than ever before.

• Embracing the Differences. Intentionally step out of your professional and personal comfort zone. Think outside your cultural and academic box to see potential benefits in others’ approaches to the same problems. Contribute and receive ideas from the broadest brain-trust in medical history with grace and generosity … and more than a touch of appropriate humility.

Expert Commentary

Everyone knows that the world has been shrinking throughout our lifetimes. What was once considered remote and inaccessible has become recognizable and even familiar. The language and cultural barriers that were impenetrable can be studied or interpreted in real time with technology. Voyages lasting months or even years are now flights measured in hours. Instant communications have erased the time-lag in our awareness of global events.

Various forms of collaboration in all kinds of industries, educational institutions and political alliances have developed far beyond what our great grandparents could have ever imagined. And as conflict and competition shift to cooperation and collaboration, leadership has naturally emerged. Peter Angood, MD, affirms the global village in his call for physicians already tasked with leadership in this country to take the next step and embrace international leadership as well.

Medical professionals have long been considered leaders in disparate cultures — from primitive shamans to highly credentialed educators. Angood rightly states that all physicians are therefore leaders, innovators, and shapers of the art and science of medicine. The most obscure doctor is the health leader of his or her patient panel. Leadership comes with the territory. Step up and contribute where you can when you can.

Source: Physician Leadership Is a Global Phenomenon, Peter B. Angood, MD, FRCS(C), FACS, MCCM, FAAPL(Hon), Physician Leadership Journal, May/June, 2025; https://www.physicianleaders.org/articles/doi/10.55834/plj.2136635013.