Q: What did it mean to you to be elected a senior fellow?
A: I’m very humbled and gracious to the organization. That’s been my greatest professional achievement.
Q: You also serve as a facilitator with SHM’s Leadership Academy. Why are you so passionate about that program?
A: It gives hospitalists the essential tools they need to be able to roll up their sleeves and start tackling problems at their hospitals. It’s a great opportunity for anybody who is thinking about running a group or taking a leading role in a healthcare system.
Q: What is your biggest professional challenge?
A: It’s learning to be able to lead the next generation of hospitalists, to get them to be as enthusiastic about practicing hospital medicine as I am.
Q: Why is that so challenging?
A: If you have ever practiced in a traditional general internal-medicine practice (office-based), and then you become a hospitalist, you don’t want to go back to office-based. It’s more difficult to generate that enthusiasm for what hospital medicine is all about to people who are just coming on.
Q: Have you found a strategy that works?
A: It’s much easier said than done. It’s really about getting them energized and getting them excited about what they’re doing. Part of that is explaining it’s about more than just the patient in front of them. The hospital really is their site of practice, and there are opportunities for them to advance. If they want to do research or if they want to be involved with quality or patient safety, the opportunities are unlimited.
Q: Do you encourage the next generation of hospitalists to seek out committee assignments, research, or other opportunities outside of clinical work?
A: It’s definitely something for them to embrace. What’s important is crafting a type of staffing or schedule model that allows them to do clinical work but at the same time have a protected time to do their committee work.
In the old model I grew up with, doctors basically did committee work before they started seeing patients or after they were finished. There needs to be time carved out so they can be focused on that and don’t have to do it on the fly. … That’s what makes things successful with hospital medicine. There are programs across the country that (protect physician time), and they serve as a model for what I think our profession should be.
Q: What’s next professionally?
A: Right now, I’m thinking about what I want to be doing for the next 10 years. Is it going back and just doing clinical work? Is it continuing to be the clinical chief, or is it being involved with other things systemwide? I’ll certainly continue to be actively engaged on a national level with SHM, because that’s my passion. But after being a hospitalist for 16 years, I’m pausing and reflecting on what I’ve been doing, what my options are, and what I want to do for the remainder of the time before I retire. TH
Mark Leiser is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.