Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | P | Physician Executive

Management in residency training.

Article Excerpt
Effective management is essential to meet the challenges of residency training and medical practice. Medical management, time management, and management of the service are all skills developed by physicians during their training.

However, management in the sense more typically used in the business world--personnel management--is a skill that receives far less attention in residency. Its value is too frequently underestimated and the development of skills in this area too commonly disregarded in what is a very intense learning experience.

In failing to emphasize training in strong management skills, residencies may be leaving trainees ill-prepared to tackle the management challenges they will face in medical practice. It will serve residents well if some fundamental concepts of personnel and team management are better integrated into their training experience.

Regardless of the scope of a particular physician's work, be it in private practice, medical administration or academic medicine, practitioners will often be members of a team working together for a common goal. In reality, physicians are often leaders of these teams, for whom an ability to effectively manage people is essential.

There are three basic functions of a manager to incorporate into residency training:

1. Team building

2. Motivation

3. Effective feedback

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Team building

For teams to work well, all members of the team need to be working together. Though this sounds obvious, it is often a step of the process that is overlooked. Communicating the team's purpose, goals, resources and challenges is the first step in accomplishing this goal.

Physicians in training, from the day they begin their residencies, become members of numerous teams. As a residency class, they may look to each other for support. As a part of the entire residency, they often work together to promote changes to the program that improve...