Key Takeaways
- Embrace vulnerability and admit uncertainty during high-stakes negotiations to build trust and model psychological safety for your team.
You’re two years into your first formal leadership role—responsible for an entire emergency department’s clinical operations. It’s 7:13 am. Your inbox dings with a new hospital policy, state guidance is contradicting yesterday’s, and the first COVID patient of the morning is already in resuscitation. Your phone vibrates with staff questions you can’t yet answer. At this crossroads, one fear rises above the rest: What if my decisions aren’t enough—for my team, my patients, or myself?
This isn’t just your anxiety; it’s the collective experience of clinicians-turned-leaders across the country, especially since the pandemic. The leap from clinical work to system-wide responsibility now requires more than clinical acumen; it demands vulnerability, rapid learning, and strategic communication. That’s why I’m sharing Dr. Chris Baugh’s story—a seasoned Emergency Medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s, who became Vice Chair of Clinical Affairs mid-pandemic. His journey offers not just inspiration, but real, applicable tactics for your own pivot from bedside to boardroom.
Picture this: In early 2020, as Vice Chair of Clinical Affairs, Dr. Baugh faced a perfect storm—PPE shortages, evolving science, staff fear, and a daily flood of policy updates. Every clinician leader in the U.S. was improvising. What stood out? The way Dr. Baugh responded: “This was an opportunity for me to stand tall and think about how I was going to support the patients coming through the department and our staff taking care of them.”
He didn’t just issue memos. Instead, Dr. Baugh curated daily department-wide messages, combining clinical data, policy changes, and words of solidarity—all co-signed with nurse and APP leaders. He emphasized clarity and connection, closing every update with “strength in love.” In an era of uncertainty, this unified, authentic communication built trust and combated misinformation.
Try This Today:
Send one message to your team that combines new information with a genuine check-in. Make it personal.
It’s tempting to wait until you “feel ready” before stepping into leadership. Dr. Baugh argues the opposite: “If you want to reach your full potential, that means growing, and that means being willing to fail—it means being willing to put yourself out there and be vulnerable.” He credits previous, sometimes painful career challenges for training him to lead through COVID, echoing the Stoic mantra Amor fati—love your fate.
In practice, that means embracing discomfort as essential to mastery. Leadership, especially in healthcare, is less about controlling what happens and more about how you respond. Dr. Baugh references the book Crucial Conversations as a tool for “seeing yourself from the third person” and maintaining patient-centered calm, even when emotions run high.
Case vignette:
Early in his vice chair role, Dr. Baugh faced a tense negotiation between nurses, physicians, and hospital administration over staffing shortages. Rather than power through with orders, he paused, acknowledged the tension, and opened the floor for staff fears. That vulnerability set the tone for a more honest—and ultimately successful—resolution.
Try This Today:
In your next tense conversation, pause. State your discomfort or uncertainty out loud. See what shifts.
Can your years at the bedside really make you a better administrator? Absolutely, says Dr. Baugh. “Working clinically gives you the perspective of where the gaps are—and how important those gaps are for patient care or clinician wellness.”
He shares that being present across all shifts—weekends, overnights, holidays—opened his eyes to how workflows break down in real time. For example, he learned that “solutions” designed for weekdays often fail at 2 am on a Sunday. That firsthand awareness became the basis for more resilient, system-wide protocols.
Story vignette:
When leading a project to redesign ED admissions, Dr. Baugh shadowed night-shift nurses and discovered the “admission bottleneck” wasn’t a staff issue, but a missing lab courier at midnight. The fix wasn’t more education, but a reallocated resource—something he would have missed without clinical immersion.
Try This Today:
Spend 30 minutes this week shadowing a shift or role outside your usual schedule. Take notes on workflow pain points.
Most clinicians see research as an academic pursuit—nice, but optional. Dr. Baugh flips this: “Research and developing a niche where you can become a deep content expert is a great part of my career… I like the idea of doing a literature search or review whenever I'm looking to solve a problem. The problem I have is probably a problem for other people too.”
He’s not exaggerating. By publishing quality improvement projects as articles, protocols, and “before and after” studies, he’s multiplied his impact far beyond Boston. “Once you get papers out into the universe… all of a sudden you’ll have someone reach out and say ‘Hey, we’re doing this study that’s similar to what you’re doing, we’d love for you to join us as a co-author.’”
Mini-case:
Dr. Baugh’s quality-improvement project on accelerated diagnostic pathways didn’t just improve local ED throughput; publishing it inspired three other health systems to adopt—and then adapt—the protocol. His advice? Start small: write up your process, even if only as an internal white paper.
Try This Today:
Document one recent workflow change—what prompted it, what you tried, what happened. Share it with your team or department.
Here’s the unglamorous truth: Most change initiatives fizzle after the launch party. The real work is sustaining change. Dr. Baugh shares, “I think the idea of sustaining change can sometimes be harder than the initial launch… We launch something, go to the next project, and say ‘job done.’ That’s the wrong way of thinking.”
So how do you build and maintain buy-in?
Connect change to direct patient outcomes.
Show data on “why now,” and the risk of status quo.
Involve frontline staff early—especially skeptics.
Quantify return on investment (ROI).
Clarify what resources are needed, and when results will be measured.
Map project benefits to larger organizational goals.
Vignette:
When introducing buprenorphine for opioid use disorder in the ED, Dr. Baugh didn’t just share research—he invited clinicians to learn the workflow, linked it to patient stories, and ensured bridge clinic follow-up was seamless. Administrators, meanwhile, saw the data: reduced readmissions, lower costs, and improved safety.
Try This Today:
Identify the “why” of your next proposed change for both clinicians and administrators—then craft two different 2-sentence pitches.
Dr. Baugh’s career embodies the “force multiplier” effect—his words, not mine. “I like to think that the literature I put out there is part of someone else’s lit search… and in that way, I can become a bit of a force multiplier in terms of clinical medicine, not just directly care for patients… but for patients all around the world.”
But, as he points out, truly integrating research into leadership requires:
Becoming a content expert—start with a deep dive into your area of interest.
Building a stakeholder group—bring everyone to the table, from nurses to administrators.
Iterating fast—the first draft doesn’t have to be good, just written.
Sustaining with data—measure, re-measure, and adjust over time.
Try This Today:
Next time you solve a workflow problem, run a quick literature search first. Borrow ideas shamelessly—and cite your sources.
What if you’re an administrator or new leader with little research experience? Dr. Baugh is direct:
“There’s many educational opportunities out there, most of them free, that help you acquire some basic skills… I’ve also personally included administrators as co-authors, especially on heavy operational projects. Even as a middle author, you get exposure and learn how the process works.”
Key tactics:
Audit a workshop or webinar on reading research.
Partner with clinicians or researchers—co-author a project, even if you only help with data collection.
Build a network of research-savvy colleagues to bounce ideas off.
Stay open to feedback—let trusted colleagues challenge your interpretations.
Try This Today:
Pick one research skill to develop this month—reading methods, critiquing results, or even co-authoring a QI project.
The through-line in Dr. Baugh’s story is clear: real leadership, especially in medicine, demands vulnerability and the willingness to grow publicly. It’s not about never being uncertain—it’s about owning your uncertainty, communicating it transparently, and rallying others to grow with you. The first step? Embrace discomfort as the price of real leadership, and put yourself in the flow of feedback—through data, conversations, or even just shadowing the night shift.
On your next shift, try this:
Ask one “stupid” question, admit one uncertainty, or invite feedback on a new idea. Growth always starts there.
<p>if you want to reach your full potential that means growing uh and that means being willing to fail it means being willing to put yourself out there and be [Music] vulnerable hello and welcome to the clinicians in leadership podcast series my name is Zack and I'm joined today by Dr Chris ba Dr B do you mind taking a second to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your experience of course thank you Zach so my name is Dr Chris B I'm an emergency phys and I work at Brigham and Women's Hospital which is one of the Harvard Affiliated teaching hospitals in Boston I'm an associate professor of emergency medicine and I've been at the Brigham for almost 20 years at this point I did my emergency Medicine Residency at the Brigham and master emeralds combined emergency Medicine Residency program and prior to that I did an MD MBA combined degree program at University of Pennsylvania and business school I've I've worked in a series of leadership positions during my time as an attending physician first starting with medical director of the observation unit at Brigman Women's Hospital followed on by being medical director of the Urgent Care Center that we opened in Foxboro Massachusetts for about five years and then became medical director of our main academic emergency department in 2018 I became the vice chair of clinical Affairs and recently completed a five-year term in that role that's awesome well thank you again for Dr B for being here today and uh joining us on this clinicians and Leadership podcast series uh as as I was looking through your resume and pouring over your your LinkedIn that like you in what we just heard from you right now you you have extensive experience both on the clinical side of medicine as well as the administrative side of medicine and that that started going when you were when you were going through Medical School graduating with both your md and your MBA any both of those are amazing accomplishments on their own but to do that together and so my question is what you have had a number of experiences both in this clinical and administrative side of medicine what what has been some of the more impactful ones the ones that you have taken some lessons from the ones that have stuck with you throughout the course of your successful career that's a great question uh I would say in these operational roles that I've been working in I feel like there is never a shortage of urgent um I think problems to solve I think one of the challenges in a role like that is kind of separating the Urgent from the important and being able to both take care of the day-to-day operation but also be forward-looking and be able to put into the works these longer term strategic initiatives that take maybe months or years to really come to fruition um if I had to pick one particular challenge that stands out in my career I'd have to go back to the early days of the covid pandemic um I was about a year and a half into my vice chair role in in an academic emergency department these days there are often multiple different Vice chairs in charge of different uh things and so there's a vice chair of Education could be a vice chair ofc faculty Affairs I was the vice chair for clinical Affairs and so it was very clear that um that the ownership of how our department was going to respond to the pandemic uh really fell to my leadership and so that was an opportunity for me to stand tall and um think about how I was going to support the patients coming through the department and our staff taking care of them and so if if you can recall back to those early days you know we had PPE shortages was no vaccine there was a lot of I think unknown uh that was really scary time to be working in the emergency department and to be a patient and so uh this was an opportunity for me to uh really be a visible leader in my department my hospital and my health system one of the challenges that our staff was facing was uh changing uh guidance that was coming from multiple different levels from the hospital from the state from the federal agencies and sometimes that gu would change within one day and it was very confusing so one of the things that I really focused on was authentic messaging I did a daily message uh where I Cur curated all of the information into into one daily message um I put data into that message there was a lot of I think misconception around the volume of say covid patients coming through our department uh what the inpatient capacity was like what ice du capacity was like so I wanted all of our staff to to really see what the data was showing and and kind of uh remove kind of misinformation from the conversation uh I also had this message uh come from not just myself uh even though I pulled it together and send it uh to to the staff but really have our nursing leadership our AP leadership um I'll be with my name at the signature line so this was a unified message and also gave staff an opportunity to contact me directly uh with any questions or concern they had and then on the next message I could go ahe and answer that for them and and be responsive um and so this was a strategy of communication that I think really helped us you know and I think morale is also a big challenge you know I I ended up on the signature line uh for each of these message having the phrase strength in love because I feel like at that time we needed both of those things and and I like to think that the way that I helped our department respond uh really made it uh made us survive and and thrive in that situation that was incredibly challenging no and that that was I mean the word thrown around all the time was unprecedented times and it and it truly was and you had you had just all across the country and across the world you had very very impactful and accomplished Healthcare leaders who had never experienced anything like this before and so it truly was just a you trial by fire everyone was going through it um and one of one word I thought that was really interesting that you used um specifically when you're were talking about your role as the as the vice chair of clinical affair is you viewed it as an opportunity and I think that that's something that's a unique approach that not a lot of people that I have interacted with viewed the the covid pandemic as a unique opportunity to stand strong and to to display effective leadership so how how do you cultivate a mindset that views things even terrible things such as that covid-19 pandemic how how do you cultivate a mindset or develop a mindset that sees everything as not opportunity that's a great point you know I think at the time the way that I saw it that really helped me um have the right mindset was that all of the things that I thought had been challenging in my career were really kind of pushed me to grow or was maybe difficult uh during the time but I felt like maybe I was better off for having gone through it was essentially training me for for that uh for that early days of the co pandemic and and as a result I was I think grateful for the challenges I had gone through because I felt like I was ultimately a more effective leader because I had been forced to grow I think there's a discomfort in growth uh but and I think it's natural to kind of not seek that discomfort to actually stay away from it but ultimately if you want to reach your full potential that means growing uh and that means being willing to fail it means being willing to put yourself out there and be vulnerable uh and so that's kind of the the mindset that has I think served me well over the years I think there's a phrase from uh from the stoics that's called Amor fat uh that that I like to think about it's love your fate um I think I think the idea that we can't uh control what happens to us but we can control how we react to it is a is a really helpful mindset that I think um takes a lot of the kind of personal persecution perception out of um what happened to us in our daily life and say hey it's not personal it's just happening to me and now it's how I respond that's important you know there's a book called crucial conversations that I that I've read that I think is really helpful and it's about kind of how you control how you react to things and this is really relevant even dayto day when I'm working clinically in the emergency department I might have a very tense situation with a patient or a family member or consultant or an admitting doctor and the idea of kind of uh being able to see yourself from the third person and not get emotionally activated in those situations and really keep the patient at the center of the conversation uh has been a really effective tool set for me that i' like to think makes me as a better clinician and a better administrative leader well I want I want to talk a little bit more about your experience in in the emergency department and um how how that experience on the from the clinical bedside serving as an Emergency Physician um emergency medicine physician has has affected your leadership because you've served in leadership both uh in that emergency room setting as well as in a variety of other areas and so um what has been the impact of your clinical experience on your approach to Administration I'd like to think it makes me a more effective administrative leader for having uh spent the time in the clinical Arena you know I think when you're actually seeing patients uh and working shifts think the emergency department is a little bit unique because we have to work 247 and so I've always uh really prided myself on being able to work not just the the morning shift or the or the afternoon shift but being working uh in the evening working overnight shifts working weekends working holidays because the emergency department doesn't always run the same at different times of day or day of the week um for example a lot of resources in the hospital that are available in the middle of the day uh midweek are not available on a Sunday day overnight and I think when I'm thinking about an operation solution to a problem being sensitive to to that fact uh I think helps me create a workflow that is ultimately more useful it's more useful for my colleagues who might be nocturnist it's more useful for that patient coming into the emergency department at 2 am versus 2m um so having that direct experience to understand that I think is is quite helpful um I think there's always a list of of things that need to be fixed uh in a department in a hospital in a health system and I think working clinically gives you the perspective of kind of where the gaps are and and how important those gaps are for patient care or clinician Wellness or you know different things that we're trying to optimize and so unless you're actually having that experience I think it can be very challenging now you can try and get some of that experience if you're not working clinically you can you know you can spend time shadowing in the department you can um have clinicians that you that are partners that are mentors that kind of run things by but um for me it's been invaluable to actually be um be taking care of patients while I'm also working on these uh process Improvement and operations projects well and another component I think that is just that is fascinating about your your career thus far has been uh your your involvement in research and um uh we haven't necessarily talked about it thus far but you you are pretty extensively published uh with research studies and articles in the New England Journal of Medicine amongst other journals can you tell us a little bit about just your research experience and how how that has combined with your clinical experience to make you a more efficient administrator and leader I think research and and developing a research Niche where you can become a deep content expert is is a is a great part of my career where I get to travel around uh give talks give Grand round talks I get to write papers uh and really have this deep knowledge of different areas for me it's observation medicine it's accelerated diagnostic Pathways and that really dovetails nicely with the administrative work that I've done it being our observation medicine medical director or being the vice chair of clinical Affairs where things like accelerated diagnostic Protocols are very important to having relationships with Consultants to efficiently moving patients through the department to having a level of safy around the way that we're evaluating things for example patients with chest pain and our approach to cardiac biomarkers and stress testing Etc and so it's been a nice complement to the clinical and administrative work that I've done and the way that I think I've set it up which has allowed me to publish quite a bit uh is really to never um miss an opportunity to write about um some of the administrative work that I've done I think uh people who are heavy into Administration oftentimes um don't have the the the ability to find the time to do the writing and and and it can be a challenge to start writing you know just staring at a blank page or writing a grant for the first time is very difficult uh but it's like any other skill the more times that you do it the easier it gets the better your skill set is and so that's just been something that I've tried to over the past say 15 to 18 years to publish several papers per year to get you know into triple digit papers and if you look at what I've written uh it's largely clinical operations um one nice thing about clinical operations work too is that it oftentimes can can kind of fill uh the category of quality improvement which often doesn't need IRB approval oftentimes does not need patient consent randomization things that take a lot of time and money to to you know pull off as a research project if this is like Hey we're doing a before and after around a pathway for taking care of patients with low-risk GI bleed you can just Implement that as a quality Improvement project and then you can publish your data as a quality improvement project later uh and so I've really tried to be disciplined around saying hey for for a particular project can we write a paper just describing our process for reaching consensus and creating a pathway uh and then we can publish the pathway and then we can publish the before and after study of how the pathway performed and so all of a sudden for one administrative project or operations project I have three or four papers uh and then once you get papers out into the Universe I feel like people will come find you and and all of a sudden you'll you'll have someone reach out and say hey we're doing this study uh that's you know similar to what you're doing we love for you to join us as a co-author and all these positive follow on come from uh I think writing and putting your work out to the universe you know for me I like the idea of um doing a a literature search or review whenever I'm looking to solve a problem I'd like to think that the problem that I have is probably a problem for other people too and so I think the skill of doing a lit search before you start um coming up with Solutions on your own is very valuable and I'd like to think that the the literature I put out there to into the world is part of someone else's lit search uh and all of a sudden that uh you know maybe something good that I did is being implemented in another institution and so in that way uh I can become a bit of a force multiplier in terms of clinical medicine and not just directly care for the patients uh that that I'm seeing in the emergency department or in my hospital but for patients all around the world potentially oh yeah and that's I think that that is such just an amazing part and component that without research you you you can't have that extended impact and that is research is a way especially published research articles in all these journals is a is a way that other administrators like you just said can review your process and what you have accomplished and then implement it in their own um and you're you're Paving the way in a lot of ways for these other administrators in healthcare organizations and I love the way you described it as a force multiplier I thought that was that was just that was fascinating that like you said that extends Beyond just the care of the patient uh in the bed in the emergency department which is still very very important but it's a way that you can affect patients in emergency departments all across the country and across the world and that and that's awesome um that doesn't come without some challenges though I would imagine and so what are what are some key challenges to integrating research and some of these evidence-based practices that you've talked about into administrative policies it's a great question I you know if you look at what we do in medicine that's rigorously evidence-based you know it's it's actually um probably the minority of what we do and so when there is something out there that is evidence-based that we should be doing I think you know uh we need to be doing everything we can to make sure that that's part of our daily practice and so the idea of keeping up with the literature with reading a lot being able to assess the literature so even if you're not writing papers yourself I think being able to read a paper and you kind of understand the methods understand the results and ultimately the limitations and and whether that paper is going to change the way you practice I think is a critically important skill I think even non-clinicians should have some familiarity with how to read a research paper But ultimately when you're trying to have an administrative policy protocol workflow whatever you want to call it um I think the first step is to become a Content expert on that particular problem and that means doing a lot of reading I think then you once you become a Content expert you pull together a stakeholder group of of anyone that that workflow is going to be touching and I think importantly involving nurses APS and and other um folks who are going to be caring for these patients is also an important uh group to include at this step then ultimately you're going to develop what the new workflow is you're going to um start with a version one and by the time you share it with everyone it might be in version 10 but you got to start with with something I always tell people that the first draft um doesn't have to be good it just has to be written right so I think Having the courage just to put something on paper share it start iterating is very important um and then once you have this new workflow I think the idea of uh in service of getting it out there making it accessible to folks in uh in the areas where it's going to be applying to them whether it's electronically or I've certainly had the uh the experience of laminating uh a workflow posting it uh up on the wall next to where people work and then ultimately uh data you know the idea of having access to data to to to first of all make the argument to people that change is needed uh that's going to be part of the inservice to say hey there's a gap and this is going to help close the gap But ultimately to say hey what you're implementing doing what you wanted it to do is it making a change and any change that you had initially with perhaps success of a launch and some of the pr that goes with it is that success being maintained I feel like very often we launch something and then we go to the next project and we say you know job done and I and I think that's only a wrong way of thinking about it I think the idea of sustaining change can be sometimes harder than the initial launch and so those are all kind of perspectives around the life cycle of of kind of operations change that are always in the back of my mind when I'm taking on a new project well and I think it's I think it's interesting you just talk about sustaining change change is something that is in in inevitably hard for for a lot of people um and especially when you were talking about workflow and the way that they have done their job for a number of years and Hab habits changing something is that that's always hard and so how do you as the as a a clinical leader promote buyin from fellow clinicians and from administrators when research or evidence points towards making a change how how do you promote and sustain that you you just talked about that a little bit Yeah I think you need to know your audience I think if you're talking to clinicians you have to make it about the patient uh how is this change going to ultimately um change patient outcomes patient experience for the better and that means you know having as I mentioned before some data to suggests that uh there's there's room for improvement and that uh the change that's being proposed is really going to move the needle and and you know if if you have the say the research to back that up to say Hey you know for example several years ago uh my department was one of the first to become X wavered to be able to um write for borine for our opio abuse disorder patients you know there was a very compelling uh case for uh for borine that was that was evidence-based right around reduced relapse rates around safety around preventing mortality in this patient population I think anyone who went through that presentation didn't you know um you you had to leave that being like hey this is the right thing to do for us to have this capability and it was launched at the same time um that we also opened a bridge clinic so it was a great new workflow where the emergency department could initiate and then the bridge Clinic could take over the care of these patients and so ultimately it really activated us as clinicians to say I I know it's this new information that we have to learn and there's a new workflow we have to learn about how to write for this and assess patients for it um but we are willing to do that because we knew it was the right thing to do I think administrators also for sure are interested in patient outcomes but I think they also think about things in a bit more of a business business lens in that they think about return on investment when they're trying to figure out which projects to tack and which ones to really prioritize so that Roi around what's the investment going to be is that investment and a new Staffing role new hours a new resource a new piece of equipment and then what is that expected result and and how does that translate into dollars and then so so is that every dollar spent what's the dollar amount that is going to be an improvement and they you know want to be seeing a multiplier right so they want to see if I invest a dollar I get $3 back and savings or Improvement ultimately these administrators are trying to prioritize what they're funding and they can't fund everything I think uh someone once told me you can fund sorry you can solve infinite problems if you have infinite resources um but we operate in a Capa in a capacity and resource constrained environment in healthcare right so we can't solve all of the problems at least not all at once in the near term and so the administrators are trying to do their best with the resources they have available to say hey this is what we're going to put forth in this year's agenda you they're fighting for a budget every year and so I think if you can speak to them in that language I think you'd be more uh likely to be successful in getting your project uh um supported by them and ultimately you need that especially if there's any kind of investment from the hospital that's required well and I I think you I think you put that very gracefully and eloquently talking about the tension between the the business side of healthcare as well as the patient care side of healthcare and both both are equally important in the sense that if if you're not doing one well you can't do the other one well and that I think I think that you you navigated that that very in a very concise uh but but accurate way and that just speaks to the importance of having someone with experience in both Fields being able to see from both perspectives having them involved in change and implementing new workflows and research and evidence-based practices and I I I think that's I think that you put that really really well can you give us an example um of where research findings have influenced an ad an administrative decision or a policy change within your the hospital system that you work at great question I I think one example that I could go into a little bit is our home Hospital program so this is now going back maybe six plus years um we had this uh idea that shifting the location of inpatient care away from the main campus Hospital into the community um was going to be an important strategy for the future you know we were full back then we're even more full today and so uh in order to uh to get that program started we actually had to start started as a research project so we started with randomized control trial where we randomized patients to routine care which was inpatient admission you take the elevator right up to the tower have your normal admission um as has been the case for years versus uh going home with the Home Hospital team where they can do remote patient monitoring they can keep an IV in the patient they can bring some Diagnostics some limited Radiology lab testing medications to the patient's house um they could visit the patient in their house Etc and we had a number of conditions that make sense for this type of care things like pneumonia or heart failure um and then we actually studied you know how those patients did in the two arms and essentially found that the home Hospital program didn't have any worse safety events uh they were they had higher size satisfaction they had more Mobility during uh their hospitalization so as you can imagine in your own home you're up and about more which is important to to prevent deconditioning and other kind of risks of being an inpatient um and it was also lower cost and so I think that very positive trial gave our health system the confidence that this was the right uh thing to invest in for the future and then now for the past several years our home Hospital program has been one of the most ambitious parts of growth of our health system right now I believe we have the largest Home Hospital in the United States with the idea that that Home Hospital is still going to grow by multiple of three or four in the upcoming years and that all started as a research project and so sometimes you have to kind of um show it's going to work on a smaller scale before the hospital or health system is willing to really invest in in building up something way more ambitious that wouldn't have happened spontaneously so we've just as we can get ready to conclude just one final question for you um for administrators without extensive research experience or um necessarily without the ability to to conduct research what ADV advice would you give to these individuals who are looking to strengthen their their knowledge base their approach to research what what advice would you give someone that doesn't maybe have the experience that you have in the research field uh I would say there's there there's many uh educational opportunities out there most of them free uh that really help you uh acquire some basic skills that could be very helpful I mentioned earlier around how to assess uh a research paper and and kind of know whether it's high quality low quality whether it really should change practice you know there are many different um workshops tutorials Etc that um are available for kind of folks starting their careers it could be for medical students it could be for um Junior faculty and in the idea of as administrator kind of auditing one of those workshops to sit in and and kind of get more familiar with different types of of study design the limitations Etc I think um I think that's probably time well spent um I've also personally I've included administrators as co-authors and some of the projects that I've done especially ones that are very heavy operationally and maybe the administrator helped with some of the data acquisition and Analysis so they legitimately contributed as a co-author I think being involved in that process where maybe you're not the first author or last author but you're a middle author and you're getting some exposure and you're seeing how that process is would be a lighter lift that would be more accessible to an administrator without um a research background um and and then ultimately having uh a network of folks who um have research as a strength to kind of turn to as an adviser or a mentor would be another piece of advice I think in research mentorship is really critical to success for at uh for anyone's career so the idea of administrator saying like oh this is my go-to person to to send oh saw an interesting article come out what do you think of it and and having that trust to say oh their their reaction could be very valuable I have my own reaction but you know theirs might validate that or or challenge that to say oh I didn't really read it the same way what can I learn um from from what what you just told me I think being open to that would be very helpful so those are all different ways for administrators to really I I think improve uh the way that they look at research and and ultimately I I would think become more more effective administrators because that's part of their skill set well thank you Dr B for joining us today on the clinicians and Leadership podcast series uh presented by the American Journal of healthc care strategy I know I greatly benefited from this conversation and um I know our listeners will as well and so uh thank you for joining us today and uh we hope you have a great rest of your day thank you so much Zach it was a pleasure talking to you take care bye bye</p>
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