https://doi.org/10.4081/qrmh.2024.11519

The four Cs of physician leadership: A key to academic physician success

Vol. 8 No. 2 (2024)
Submitted: 13 June 2023
Accepted: 30 May 2024
Published: 17 September 2024
Physician, leadership, Medical careers, development, success, qualitative
Abstract Views: 935
PDF: 112
Supplementary Materials: 3
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Authors

R. Thomas Collins II
tomcollins@uky.edu
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3387-6629
Division of Pediatric Cardiology, Department of Pediatrics, University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, KY, United States.
Neha J. Purkey
Division of Pediatric Cardiology, Department of Pediatrics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA; Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, Palo Alto, CA; Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA, United States.
Meenu Singh
Graduate School of Education, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, United States.
Alan D. DeSantis
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-7612-0505
Department of Communication, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, United States.
Rania A. Sanford
Office of Academic Affairs, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA, United States.

Leadership is increasingly recognized as important in medicine. Physician leadership impacts healthcare delivery and quality. Little work has been done to determine how physician leadership in practice aligns with established models in leadership theory. We conducted 40 semi-structured, 50-minute interviews of physicians who had achieved the rank of professor in our school of medicine and were serving, or had served, in leadership positions. We used an inductive content analysis approach to identify content categories, with leadership emerging as one such category. Subsequently, for the present study, we performed a secondary analysis of the data. To do this, we reviewed all transcripts, seeking to identify if and how participants discussed leadership in relation to success in academic medicine. Following identification of subcategories related to leadership, we performed qualitative content analysis. We then used a deductive content analysis approach to determine how participants’ discussions of leadership aligned with major leadership theories. Then, the principal investigator conducted a secondary inductive content analysis revealing leadership themes that were synthesized into a new model of physician leadership. Twenty-nine participants spontaneously discussed leadership and leadership-related topics as important to their own academic success and comprised the present study cohort. Participants identified contributors to leadership success that aligned with multiple major leadership theories, including leadership traits, skills, behaviors styles, and situational leadership. None of the leadership theories aligned completely with our physician leaders’ discussions, suggesting an alternate leadership framework was operating. Further analysis revealed a new model of leadership comprised of the “Four Cs of Physician Leadership”: character, competence, caring, and communication. Our participant group of academic physicians identified leadership capabilities as being important in their academic success. While they discussed leadership in ways that fit to varying degrees with the major leadership theories, their discussions revealed a novel, more holistic leadership framework. Further work will be beneficial to determine if this model of leadership is specific to physicians or is more generalizable.

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How to Cite

Collins II, R. Thomas, Neha J. Purkey, Meenu Singh, Alan D. DeSantis, and Rania A. Sanford. 2024. “The Four Cs of Physician Leadership: A Key to Academic Physician Success”. Qualitative Research in Medicine and Healthcare 8 (2). https://doi.org/10.4081/qrmh.2024.11519.
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