DB'S MEDICAL RANTS

Internal medicine, American health care, and especially medical education

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Leadership – to serve or to be served?

Most readers know that I have leadership responsibilities, both in my job and in my society work.  Leadership comes with great responsibility.

Too many leaders lose their moral grounding.  They view leadership as their accomplishment and their opportunity.  They forget the most basic principle that leaders should serve those who they lead!

Two recent accusations of conflicts of interest should remind us of the dangers of leadership.  Patient Safety’s First Scandal: The Sad Case of Chuck Denham, CareFusion, and the NQF

and

Payments to CEO Raise New Conflicts at Top Health Quality Group

In both cases prominent leaders in medical quality and safety appear to be receiving financial benefit that could cloud their judgments.  In neither situation can we say that the apparent conflicts of interest actually changed their decisions, but we need to require that standard to find this situations uncomfortable and disappointing.

I submit that these leaders have not followed the precepts of servant leadership.  These situations do not occur when one truly puts those whom is leading as defining processes and expectations.  We in leadership must always ask how we can help our followers, not how we can help ourselves.

Each day I try to help our students and residents grow.  It is not about me, it is about them.  I fail sometimes.  Sometimes my actions feed my ego.  Most humans have difficulties with leadership.  Too many leaders in the public eye abuse that privilege.

Of course, the easy way to avoid this trap is to ask, if those who I lead knew about this activity, what would they say.  If the “followers” would critique me, I should not do that.

We should take the ethical high ground.  It is our job to serve, not to be served.

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