“The administration has to have a visionary leadership that recognizes that healthcare quality and safety is the way you do business,” says Dr. Bernard. “You have to be in an institution that is not just paying lip service to moving quality and safety. It has to be part of the fabric of the institution.”
The institution also has to be able to offer a variety of experiences, making this kind of training difficult in a nonacademic setting.
For those interested in pursuing this area of leadership, the natural first step is to meet with the CMO or CEO to explore whether the individual’s and hospital’s interests can be aligned.
“But you can’t force it,” warns Dr. Shulkin. “If that is not a natural fit, if the CMO or CEO doesn’t see their role as, or have an interest in, training faculty people; or if they don’t have the expertise to do it, it’s not going to be a good experience. In those cases, the hospitalist should look elsewhere. An increasing number of centers can offer this kind of experience for a year,” he says. “Then the hospitalist might return to their institution to take on a leadership role there.”
Creating a costly infrastructure to train a patient safety officer is not required. What is necessary is chemistry in the mentor-trainee relationship.
“This is the first time in my postgraduate career that I actually have consistently committed mentors who care about how I am molded as a physician and what my ultimate contribution to the medical field will be,” says Dr. Sivaprasad. TH
Andrea Sattinger is a medical writer based in North Carolina.