Skip to main content.
kumc.edu
About

Leadership Education and Development (LEAD) Program

Do you have what it takes to LEAD?

keyboard keys that spell out lead

Program Description

The Department of Anesthesiology Leadership Education and Development (LEAD) Program occurs over an 18 month to 2 year period, and offers senior level residents, and anesthesiology faculty exposure to a selection of topics and skills that will contribute to their professional development as leaders. Health care delivery and the roles of physicians are evolving, and there is a critical need for physicians to function effectively in complex organizations as advisors and leaders. The LEAD program is organized around a set of key topics to include:

  • interpersonal skills
  • leadership
  • innovation
  • quality/safety
  • information technology
  • operations
  • finance
  • management

These topics are presented in forums with supporting material that will link underlying concepts to practical skills.

What exemplifies a leader, and leadership?

  • A leader exhibits honesty, integrity, knowledge, trustworthiness and ethics.
  • Leaders demonstrate good communication and listening skills, and they are responsive, and empathetic.
  • Leaders are learners from their success, failure, assignments, books, classes, people, and life itself. They are passionate about their beliefs and interests, confident, and they inspire others.
  • Leadership directs others to achieve desired goals, and objectives.
  • Leadership shapes the future, is collaborative, and engages others. It also develops the next generation of talent for future success.

Program Director: Tim Krause, DO

Sponsors/ Champions of the Program

  • Anesthesiology Department Faculty
    Talal Khan, MD
    Tim Krause, DO

  • Anesthesiology Residents-in-Training
    Gina Hendren, MD
    Tim Krause, DO
    Chief residents
Program Topics

It is critical that leaders have affective, emotional skills that facilitate working with other people. They must have the ability to be self-conscious, understand others, facilitate communication, and collaborate in order to work effectively in a high stress environment, and achieve professional and personal fulfillment.

Objectives:

  • The basic fundamentals of Emotional Intelligence: Understanding Self, Managing Self, Understanding Others and Managing Others;
  • Increased awareness of your strengths, traits, beliefs, values and their impact on leadership;
  • Techniques for improving your ability to work through conflict and manage relationships;
  • Renewed confidence in your ability to lead and inspire others.

Topic Resources:

KU Presentations

Conflict is a normal, and even healthy, part of working relationships. Since relationship conflicts are inevitable in the healthcare environment, learning to deal with them in a healthy way is crucial for the individuals involved, team members, and patients. Leaders need to understand methods and strategies to manage and resolve conflict in a positive way.

Topic Resources:

KU Presentations

Medical schools train physicians to be autonomous and work independently, and do not usually set aside time to review the critical importance of other allied health professionals such as nurses, technicians, administrative staff, nurse practitioners and more. Physician leaders need to be aware of potential physician biases, and know how to work effectively with all healthcare team members. They must be able to trust the care decisions these providers make, and be ready to support them in developing their skill sets so they can deliver the highest quality care to patients. This requires an understanding of successful team-building strategies.

Topic Resources:

KU Presentations

Anesthesiologists are often required to manage a team, or select an individual or individuals to serve in this role. Anesthesiologists should possess the key traits and skills of a successful manager, and approaches to successfully employ those skills. They should understand the difference between management skills, and leadership skills.

Topic Resources:

Physician leaders must be knowledgeable on approaches to identify critical issues to examine, how to gather data and information, how to analyze data and information, and how to incorporate data and information in decision-making.

Topic Resources:

Communicating effectively in the workplace is what sets leaders apart. As leaders, our goal is to foster understanding, and our primary tool to achieve understanding is effective communication. Effective communication allows participants to properly exchange ideas. Communication strategies can be verbal, nonverbal, or visual, and leaders must be adept in employing these strategies.

  • Define the characteristics of profession-specific values and explore how different profession-based values can contribute to workplace tensions
  • Define the concepts of role overload, role conflict and role ambiguity as potential sources of workplace tensions
  • Identify the five steps of conflict escalation
  • Explore the four types of social support and discuss how to both seek and provide social support as strategies for preventing burnout and emotional contagion

Topic Resources:

KU Presentations

It is critical that physician leaders have an understanding of healthcare policies and regulations that define standards for safety, quality (MACRA and MIPS), satisfaction, access, service and reimbursement/affordability. This knowledge is integral for a leader to ensure an organization's ability to deliver high value care, and meet the regulations and expectations of governmental and commercial payors, and patients.

KU Presentations

Anesthesiologists should be knowledgeable of the key terms of Physician Employment contracts. Physicians in leadership roles should understand the fundamentals and strategies of contracting with hospitals for professional services, and basic principles concerning managed care contracting.

Objectives:

  • Think systematically about the process and outcomes of negotiation situations
  • Develop an analytical framework for reaching more effective agreements
  • Understand a predict key attributes of negotiator behavior
  • Prepare effectively for negotiations
  • Improve your confidence as a negotiator

Topic Resources:

Physicians must recognize the purpose of risk management in healthcare settings, the process surrounding risk management (identifying, analyzing, evaluating, treating, and monitoring risks), and recognize how physicians participate and interact with risk management responsibilities. They should also understand the role of malpractice insurance, and what it covers.

KU Presentations

Physician leaders should be well-informed of the legislative process, and activities and strategies they may undertake to advocate on behalf of their profession, and patients.

Physician leaders should understand key leadership traits, and the approaches and styles to communicate a direction/vision. They must be skillful to effectively lead others to achieve defined goals, inspire others, and help others grow personally and professionally.

Topic Resources:

Physician Leaders must be able to comprehend basic healthcare accounting and financial matters to include understanding and creating budgets, profit-and-loss statements, data trend reports, and how to create a business plan and the impact it may have on the organization.

Topic Resources:

Physician Leaders must have the ability of assessing things from a broader perspective, conceptualizing, predicting the future, and developing organizational priorities, and long-term plans.

Physician leaders must understand the complexity, and governing principles of OR management to: ensure patient safety; provide appropriate access; maximize efficiency.

Objectives:

  • Review strategies to increase OR efficiency on the day of surgery by reducing over-utilized OR time.
  • Examine how to increase OR productivity by reducing staffing, even if have under-utilized OR time each day.

Topic Resources:

KU Presentations

KU School of Medicine

University of Kansas Medical Center
Department of Anesthesiology
3901 Rainbow Boulevard
Mailstop 1034
Kansas City, KS 66160
913-588-6670