ABSTRACT
Physicians in the academic setting have, for the most part, chosen comfortable invisibility. With few role models to emulate, our medical students are left to their own devices. Participation in the research was solicited from several organizations whose members include physician leaders, medical residency program directors, physicians in academic medical institutions, and medical students. Historically, physician leadership research has focused primarily on the physicians who hold executive positions and their attributes and the tasks they perform while in those positions. The "Physician Leadership Competency" (PLC) questionnaire that was developed specifically for this research asked respondents to indicate the relative importance of nine competencies for effective physician leadership. The fact is, traditional academic approaches that emphasize knowledge transfer may be appropriate for the acquisition of certain technical and functional skills such as quantitative analysis but contextually embedded, personally relevant, behaviorally-based experiential learning is essential for the successful development of physician leadership competencies.
