Interview with Dr. Peter Angood – 456
In today's Classic interview from 2022, Dr. Peter Angood explains why a great way to build leadership skills is to join the American Association for Physician Leadership (AAPL).
Peter has been the AAPL's President and CEO since 2011. He began his professional journey as an academic critical care surgeon.
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Peter worked in academic settings at Washington University, Yale University, and McGill University. He has written more than 200 articles and is a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, the American College of Surgeons, and the American College of Critical Care Medicine.
He previously served as The Joint Commission's first patient safety officer, the National Quality Forum's senior patient safety consultant, and the chief medical officer of GE Healthcare's Patient Safety Organization.
American Association for Physician Leadership's Benefits
The 50-year-old AAPL was founded to empower physician leaders and managers. The evolution of healthcare has evolved and grown increasingly complex. And it is imperative that physicians assume leadership roles in all aspects of healthcare.
The range of services offered by the AAPL is quite impressive:
1. Strong and in-depth information sources (journals, newsletters, and archives);
2. Webinars, Podcast Series, and 85+ educational courses;
3. The Certified Physician Executive Credential; and,
4. Access to advanced business degrees with 6 universities and master's degree specializations.
Importance of Certified Physician Executive
The CPE provides certified physicians with practical insights and a strong healthcare network. Acquiring the designation also requires at least a full year of meaningful experience in leadership and management work. Recruiters now recognize the value of the CPE and often list it as a desired credential in job candidates.
…some of the search firm consultants out there, if they're honest with you, they'll tell you they would rather have a candidate with a CPE than a candidate with a master's program. – Peter Angood
Summary
Joining the AAPL will help surround you with other physicians already working in management and executive leadership roles. By networking with other members, you will find mentors and coaches to help you follow your leadership path. And if you pursue the CPE and or fellowship, you will distinguish yourself as a recognized physician leader.
NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode.
EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.
Links for Today's Episode:
- American Association for Physician Leadership
- How a Great Physician Executive Combines QI Expertise with Strategic and Operational Skills – 198
- Are You Ready to Become a Certified Physician Executive? – 219
- 5 Steps I Took to Be a Hospital Executive – 175
- Advice for an Emerging Physician Leader – 032
- Dr. Peter Angood's email address: pangood@physicianleaders.org
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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 456
What Is the Best Way to Empower Physician Leaders?
- Interview with Dr. Peter Angood
John: I've spoken about the AAPL many times on the podcast over the past five years mainly because it was a big part of my career transition. I was working as a physician advisor and a little bit of medical directorships and joined the AAPL. And eventually it really helped me to pursue my job as a chief medical officer for a hospital. I thought I would devote an entire episode to this topic today, the American Association for Physician Leadership. And who better to have on as a guest than the president and CEO of the organization, Dr. Peter Angood. So hello, Peter, it's nice to have you on the podcast.
Dr. Peter Angood: Hey John, thank you so much. And I very much appreciate the opportunity and I look forward to our conversation.
John: This should be fun. We're going to give it about 30 minutes or so. There's so much. The organization is really very complex and has a lot of offerings, but before we get into the details of the AAPL, how about just a thumbnail sketch of your background and how did you end up there at the organization?
Dr. Peter Angood: Oh gosh, thank you for the opportunity. I'm a surgeon by background. I spent a better part of 25 years in the academic side doing trauma surgery, surgical critical care. And both of those are multidisciplinary and very systems oriented. So, as I got into mid-career, I found myself thinking more and more about how to create larger scale systems change as opposed to patient-by-patient hospital by hospital.
I was very fortunate as I made that shift, I became the first chief patient safety officer at the joint commission. And that was just one of those career opportunities that really opened my eyes to a lot of the intricacies of our industry and how complex healthcare is actually. I looked after all of the safety initiatives at the joint commission and we did a lot also internationally as well as a bunch of work with the world health organization. Again, that national international exposure was wonderful.
I did that for a number of years and then shifted over to the national quality forum and looked after their safety initiatives and NQFs are all about measurement and how do we get better measurement tactics inside of healthcare. I spent a very brief bit of time with GE Healthcare looking after their patient safety organization.
So, a little insight to the for-profit side of life, but those experiences, John, made me really appreciate that it's all fun and fine to be doing policy development and deployment and all that sort of stuff. But those organizations often didn't have enough physician insight as to really how to deliver care. Take GE for example, a multi-billion-dollar international organization and their true appreciation of how healthcare is delivered from a physician perspective, if you will, was absent.
After those experiences and my ongoing desire for trying to create larger change, I was looking for an opportunity to work in that gap zone, if you will, where I'm still involved and aware of what's going on at that policy level, but also strongly connected to the front line. And I was very fortunate to be chosen as the successor CEO. AAPL at the time was the American College of Physician Executives. The organization is nearly 50 years old now, and I've been here about 10 years and it's been just a wonderful journey in the organization. Truly does sit right in that gap so it influences the policy side, but also very strongly tied to the frontline.
John: Yeah. It's grown, it's morphed over the years. And so, we're glad to have you there. It's been awesome since you've been there these last 10 or so years.
Dr. Peter Angood: Out there. Yeah.
John: Yes. Why don't you give us in a nutshell what the AAPL is? If someone is listening that never heard of it or maybe has heard of it, but has really not looked into it. What is it? What does it do? How does it help physicians with their career advancement?
Dr. Peter Angood: Sure. Well, as I mentioned, it's nearly 50 years old as an organization and the originating CEO, Roger Schenke was a clear innovator in his own right back in the day. And he ran the place for 35, 37 years. And almost I think created the whole concept of physician executives, physician leaders.
While he was running the ship, wound up with a strong constituency of physician leaders who mostly were mid-career, mostly looking at administrative roles in hospitals. And the pinnacle was you get to be a CMO. And yet healthcare's continued to evolve, as you said, in the opening, healthcare's very complex as an organization and so we've become more complex. And as we've been transforming the organization from Roger's beginnings, we really took a different philosophy and that is our society as a whole really continues to look at physicians as leaders.
And the medical profession is still by and large, strongly trusted, and the medical profession is a lead profession. I've taken the philosophy at some level, all physicians are leaders and how do we help physicians embrace that? It's like a responsibility, but it's also a privilege. And so, we're really all about that leadership development, but also professional development along the entire trajectory of a career.
We've expanded and diversified the variety of things that this organization offers. So, we've got very strong and deep information resources. We run a couple of journals, a number of newsletters. We've got a great archive. We've got webinars. We have our own podcast series, had some great guests on that, but then as well, we've obviously continued to expand our educational offerings. We have 85 plus different courses. We have our certified physician executive credential, which is an industry recognized credential. And then you can continue on to become a fellow of the organization. And that's not an automatic, you got to earn the fellowship, all those sorts of things.
And then as well, we have partnerships with five universities and offer seven different master's degrees in there. We've got a large community as you might well expect, and we've got a terrific technical platform to support all of this, the information resources, the education, the networking, the community.
And what a lot of people don't appreciate is that we also do a lot of institutional organizational work. As those of us who are physicians know there's a long-spotted history of the medical staff versus the general administrative staff of hospitals. And they don't always get along. But with the employment trends in about a half of physicians are now employed, many of them by hospitals and health systems, what we're finding is that those institutions are looking for ways to better integrate and engage and to get physicians into leadership roles. And the traditional HR offices are not necessarily all that good at that.
And so, we are working with a good number of institutions. We probably put on 350 - 400 programs a year with different types of organizations to help them with not only the physician leadership pieces, but how to better manage with their medical staff and that whole interface as well. And that's been just wonderful.
And then, yeah, there are a couple of pieces within the international arena. There are not that many countries that have similar organizations such as ours. There are maybe 12 or 14, and they all tend to view us as that best organization, sort of best of breed type of thing into that. And we were just doing some analytics on some of our website stats and purchasing stats. And could you believe this, John? There were 135 countries represented who had been poking around on our website and trying to sort things out. Physician leadership is strong, we're strong and it's just a privilege to be in that role where people want to learn more about it. It's a new era for physician leadership. It really is.
John: Yeah. Things are always evolving. And yeah, I think I've definitely spoken with physicians from other countries and they're looking for assistance in thinking about what direction their career should go and how to get more exposure to leadership and management principles and working together with teams and so forth.
Now, the last thing you mentioned in that whole long litany was working with these organizations. Now I'm kind of thinking some of that with the medical staff is like dealing with let's say burnout and resilience. Does that get into that? Because that seems to be something that's in big demand.
Dr. Peter Angood: Oh yeah. And all those of us that have been in this profession, we all know burnout was happening before the pandemic. The pandemic has brought it forward. The stats are horrible. And yet the way I view it, physicians are resilient as a breed. We got these incredibly long education tracks and then that whole startup of your practice. And so, to walk around telling physicians to be more resilient is kind of a lost cause in my mind.
John: You are talking my language there. We are already resilient.
Dr. Peter Angood: We are.
John: To deal with these other issues.
Dr. Peter Angood: And that's the point, John. It's those other issues, the systems and processes that create frustration that then lead down to the anxieties and the stressors and take this job and shove it kind of attitude that shows up sometimes. And our approach is really kind of in a few different ways. One is clearly there are some individuals who are truly burnt out and they need some assistance and they have to be helped and it's unfortunate, but that's just a reality.
John: True.
Dr. Peter Angood: But we also have to help organizations appreciate and understand that improving their systems and processes will go a long way to improving workforce wellness. And then the third piece therefore then is how to help the physicians in other healthcare professionals to understand better that systems change takes time. Don't just sit and complain about it, but look for ways to engage, help to create more change in the systems and processes. And that will help with sort of an improved awareness of why you're feeling frustrated. And it gives you a longer-range view on things.Because of the respect that the physicians get in organizations inherently and the medical profession as a whole, if we have a strong responsibility to engage in trying to help all of the organizations, whether it's our private practice, our hospital, our post-acute care systems, help them all because folks tend to listen to physicians. So, it's a wonderful opportunity to help abate the burnout by taking that broader based approach.
John: That kind of ties in with something we were talking about before we went live or went on the recording. And that is how the AAPL, although it's an organization for physicians run by physicians, you told me that we were kind of getting involved with other nonphysician components of the system.
Dr. Peter Angood: Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up, John. For a number of years now, multi-professional team-based care has been out there. And a lot of it started in ICUs and emergency departments, transplant programs, all those sorts of things. And so, it's natural that leadership begins to become more interprofessional as well. And as many of your listeners will recognize there's dyad models and triad models. Some of them work, some of them don't. All those sorts of things.
But what we're recognizing in our institutional programs is that as much as 20% - 25% of the participants are actually nonphysicians and organizations are looking more and more for physicians to be the CEO of places. And in that type of setting, obviously then that interprofessional leadership is critical. For those organizations that are more progressive, they're very much encouraging interprofessional leadership. And so, physicians are like "Hey, we're trained and we like being the boss of the team." That's a cool thing, but that's shifting and you can be a strong contributor of a team without having to be the leader of the team.
John: Yeah. That's something that I was not aware of. The extent to which the AAPL was getting involved in that component. So that's awesome.
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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 456
What Is the Best Way to Empower Physician Leaders?
- Interview with Dr. Peter Angood
John: I've spoken about the AAPL many times on the podcast over the past five years mainly because it was a big part of my career transition. I was working as a physician advisor and a little bit of medical directorships and joined the AAPL. And eventually it really helped me to pursue my job as a chief medical officer for a hospital. I thought I would devote an entire episode to this topic today, the American Association for Physician Leadership. And who better to have on as a guest than the president and CEO of the organization, Dr. Peter Angood. So hello, Peter, it's nice to have you on the podcast.
Dr. Peter Angood: Hey John, thank you so much. And I very much appreciate the opportunity and I look forward to our conversation.
John: This should be fun. We're going to give it about 30 minutes or so. There's so much. The organization is really very complex and has a lot of offerings, but before we get into the details of the AAPL, how about just a thumbnail sketch of your background and how did you end up there at the organization?
Dr. Peter Angood: Oh gosh, thank you for the opportunity. I'm a surgeon by background. I spent a better part of 25 years in the academic side doing trauma surgery, surgical critical care. And both of those are multidisciplinary and very systems oriented. So, as I got into mid-career, I found myself thinking more and more about how to create larger scale systems change as opposed to patient-by-patient hospital by hospital.
I was very fortunate as I made that shift, I became the first chief patient safety officer at the joint commission. And that was just one of those career opportunities that really opened my eyes to a lot of the intricacies of our industry and how complex healthcare is actually. I looked after all of the safety initiatives at the joint commission and we did a lot also internationally as well as a bunch of work with the world health organization. Again, that national international exposure was wonderful.
I did that for a number of years and then shifted over to the national quality forum and looked after their safety initiatives and NQFs are all about measurement and how do we get better measurement tactics inside of healthcare. I spent a very brief bit of time with GE Healthcare looking after their patient safety organization.
So, a little insight to the for-profit side of life, but those experiences, John, made me really appreciate that it's all fun and fine to be doing policy development and deployment and all that sort of stuff. But those organizations often didn't have enough physician insight as to really how to deliver care. Take GE for example, a multi-billion-dollar international organization and their true appreciation of how healthcare is delivered from a physician perspective, if you will, was absent.
After those experiences and my ongoing desire for trying to create larger change, I was looking for an opportunity to work in that gap zone, if you will, where I'm still involved and aware of what's going on at that policy level, but also strongly connected to the front line. And I was very fortunate to be chosen as the successor CEO. AAPL at the time was the American College of Physician Executives. The organization is nearly 50 years old now, and I've been here about 10 years and it's been just a wonderful journey in the organization. Truly does sit right in that gap so it influences the policy side, but also very strongly tied to the frontline.
John: Yeah. It's grown, it's morphed over the years. And so, we're glad to have you there. It's been awesome since you've been there these last 10 or so years.
Dr. Peter Angood: Out there. Yeah.
John: Yes. Why don't you give us in a nutshell what the AAPL is? If someone is listening that never heard of it or maybe has heard of it, but has really not looked into it. What is it? What does it do? How does it help physicians with their career advancement?
Dr. Peter Angood: Sure. Well, as I mentioned, it's nearly 50 years old as an organization and the originating CEO, Roger Schenke was a clear innovator in his own right back in the day. And he ran the place for 35, 37 years. And almost I think created the whole concept of physician executives, physician leaders.
While he was running the ship, wound up with a strong constituency of physician leaders who mostly were mid-career, mostly looking at administrative roles in hospitals. And the pinnacle was you get to be a CMO. And yet healthcare's continued to evolve, as you said, in the opening, healthcare's very complex as an organization and so we've become more complex. And as we've been transforming the organization from Roger's beginnings, we really took a different philosophy and that is our society as a whole really continues to look at physicians as leaders.
And the medical profession is still by and large, strongly trusted, and the medical profession is a lead profession. I've taken the philosophy at some level, all physicians are leaders and how do we help physicians embrace that? It's like a responsibility, but it's also a privilege. And so, we're really all about that leadership development, but also professional development along the entire trajectory of a career.
We've expanded and diversified the variety of things that this organization offers. So, we've got very strong and deep information resources. We run a couple of journals, a number of newsletters. We've got a great archive. We've got webinars. We have our own podcast series, had some great guests on that, but then as well, we've obviously continued to expand our educational offerings. We have 85 plus different courses. We have our certified physician executive credential, which is an industry recognized credential. And then you can continue on to become a fellow of the organization. And that's not an automatic, you got to earn the fellowship, all those sorts of things.
And then as well, we have partnerships with five universities and offer seven different master's degrees in there. We've got a large community as you might well expect, and we've got a terrific technical platform to support all of this, the information resources, the education, the networking, the community.
And what a lot of people don't appreciate is that we also do a lot of institutional organizational work. As those of us who are physicians know there's a long-spotted history of the medical staff versus the general administrative staff of hospitals. And they don't always get along. But with the employment trends in about a half of physicians are now employed, many of them by hospitals and health systems, what we're finding is that those institutions are looking for ways to better integrate and engage and to get physicians into leadership roles. And the traditional HR offices are not necessarily all that good at that.
And so, we are working with a good number of institutions. We probably put on 350 - 400 programs a year with different types of organizations to help them with not only the physician leadership pieces, but how to better manage with their medical staff and that whole interface as well. And that's been just wonderful.
And then, yeah, there are a couple of pieces within the international arena. There are not that many countries that have similar organizations such as ours. There are maybe 12 or 14, and they all tend to view us as that best organization, sort of best of breed type of thing into that. And we were just doing some analytics on some of our website stats and purchasing stats. And could you believe this, John? There were 135 countries represented who had been poking around on our website and trying to sort things out. Physician leadership is strong, we're strong and it's just a privilege to be in that role where people want to learn more about it. It's a new era for physician leadership. It really is.
John: Yeah. Things are always evolving. And yeah, I think I've definitely spoken with physicians from other countries and they're looking for assistance in thinking about what direction their career should go and how to get more exposure to leadership and management principles and working together with teams and so forth.
Now, the last thing you mentioned in that whole long litany was working with these organizations. Now I'm kind of thinking some of that with the medical staff is like dealing with let's say burnout and resilience. Does that get into that? Because that seems to be something that's in big demand.
Dr. Peter Angood: Oh yeah. And all those of us that have been in this profession, we all know burnout was happening before the pandemic. The pandemic has brought it forward. The stats are horrible. And yet the way I view it, physicians are resilient as a breed. We got these incredibly long education tracks and then that whole startup of your practice. And so, to walk around telling physicians to be more resilient is kind of a lost cause in my mind.
John: You are talking my language there. We are already resilient.
Dr. Peter Angood: We are.
John: To deal with these other issues.
Dr. Peter Angood: And that's the point, John. It's those other issues, the systems and processes that create frustration that then lead down to the anxieties and the stressors and take this job and shove it kind of attitude that shows up sometimes. And our approach is really kind of in a few different ways. One is clearly there are some individuals who are truly burnt out and they need some assistance and they have to be helped and it's unfortunate, but that's just a reality.
John: True.
Dr. Peter Angood: But we also have to help organizations appreciate and understand that improving their systems and processes will go a long way to improving workforce wellness. And then the third piece therefore then is how to help the physicians in other healthcare professionals to understand better that systems change takes time. Don't just sit and complain about it, but look for ways to engage, help to create more change in the systems and processes. And that will help with sort of an improved awareness of why you're feeling frustrated. And it gives you a longer-range view on things.Because of the respect that the physicians get in organizations inherently and the medical profession as a whole, if we have a strong responsibility to engage in trying to help all of the organizations, whether it's our private practice, our hospital, our post-acute care systems, help them all because folks tend to listen to physicians. So, it's a wonderful opportunity to help abate the burnout by taking that broader based approach.
John: That kind of ties in with something we were talking about before we went live or went on the recording. And that is how the AAPL, although it's an organization for physicians run by physicians, you told me that we were kind of getting involved with other nonphysician components of the system.
Dr. Peter Angood: Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up, John. For a number of years now, multi-professional team-based care has been out there. And a lot of it started in ICUs and emergency departments, transplant programs, all those sorts of things. And so, it's natural that leadership begins to become more interprofessional as well. And as many of your listeners will recognize there's dyad models and triad models. Some of them work, some of them don't. All those sorts of things.
But what we're recognizing in our institutional programs is that as much as 20% - 25% of the participants are actually nonphysicians and organizations are looking more and more for physicians to be the CEO of places. And in that type of setting, obviously then that interprofessional leadership is critical. For those organizations that are more progressive, they're very much encouraging interprofessional leadership. And so, physicians are like "Hey, we're trained and we like being the boss of the team." That's a cool thing, but that's shifting and you can be a strong contributor of a team without having to be the leader of the team.
John: Yeah. That's something that I was not aware of. The extent to which the AAPL was getting involved in that component. So that's awesome.
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