Emergency Physicians Emerge as Healthcare ’s Management Specialists

We have always been clinicians, but modern emergency physicians have also become the most skilled managers in the healthcare system. It’s time we capitalize on those talents and proactively learn from the management industry. History’s great achievers—Napoleon, da Vinci, Mozart—have always managed themselves. That, in large measure, is what made them great, according to Peter F. Drucker, father of modern management theory. This principle is especially relevant to emergency medicine today. The founders of our specialty and the wave of emergency physicians that followed them have carved us a unique position in the house of medicine. We have reached a stage where managing our specialty and its next steps carefully are critical to great achievement. It is hard to imagine that less than 35 years ago we did not have primary board status with the American Board of Medical Specialties. At that time, other specialties questioned whether emergency physicians offered truly unique skills. They suggested that our skill set was merely a partial collection of those of several different specialties. However, the skills to intubate a patient in respiratory failure, resuscitate a neonate, diagnose and treat a heart attack, and deliver a baby do not by themselves an emergency physician make. It is the ability to lead a team successfully through simultaneous medical, surgical, psychiatric, and social emergencies while managing the clinical and administrative activities of the ED as a who...
Source: EPMonthly.com - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news