How to become director of a hospital or dean of a medical school?

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Yes true but actually a lot of hospital directors (or executives at least) seem to just have MD
 
Yes true but actually a lot of hospital directors (or executives at least) seem to just have MD
I would guess that's because most directors or executives desire to have that role once they have been involved in the healthcare system for an extended period of time, like working as a physician. Like most threads you've started, I would say that college-aged students desiring to be administrators of hospitals is pretty atypical.
 
What is the typical path from MD to a role like this?
To get to be a dean, you need to rise up the ranks of administration. Typically it will be:

Faculty
Dep't Chair or Division Head
Assistant or Associate Dean position (for example, Dean of Curriculum)
Finally, Full Dean.

These positions are advertised in medical or medical education journals when new schools open, or Deans resign/retire or die.

Networking skills are crucial, as are administrative ones. Fundraising or a successful grant history is also important. Having vision is also a requirement, especially at a new school.

Deans are also paid to lie.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
To get to be a dean, you need to rise up the ranks of administration. Typically it will be:

Faculty
Dep't Chair or Division Head
Assistant or Associate Dean position (for example, Dean of Curriculum)
Finally, Full Dean.

These positions are advertised in medical or medical education journals when new schools open, or Deans resign/retire or die.

Networking skills are crucial, as are administrative ones. Fundraising or a successful grant history is also important. Having vision is also a requirement, especially at a new school.

Deans are also paid to lie.
And if you’re the dean of USC you get paid to do a lot of other things...
 
Choose a large specialty (like IM) that offers flexibility and lots of leadership/administrative opportunities so you can network and gain experience
 
What is the typical path from MD to a role like this?

you gotta be a world-class "slurper" and lick your way to the top of the cone as chronicled in

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probably idk
 
To get to be a dean, you need to rise up the ranks of administration. Typically it will be:

Faculty
Dep't Chair or Division Head
Assistant or Associate Dean position (for example, Dean of Curriculum)
Finally, Full Dean.

These positions are advertised in medical or medical education journals when new schools open, or Deans resign/retire or die.

Networking skills are crucial, as are administrative ones. Fundraising or a successful grant history is also important. Having vision is also a requirement, especially at a new school.

Deans are also paid to lie.

If someone is interested in this type of work, are there things that they should be considering doing as part of their medical school experience/school choice (assuming they are lucky enough to have multiple choices)/specialty choice related to it? For example, some schools offer specific MedEd pathways. Would this make a significant difference? Or is this a trajectory where it just matters that you do what you do well, get some grant writing experience/fundraising as you’ve said, and then enter the pathway later in your career?

Thanks in advance for any insight you can provide!
 
Many are retired staff physicians from that particular hospital. I would get an online degree in education or hospital administration. They are abundant

I would also be interested in an online MD degree. Would that be on par with the Caribbean?
 
MD-MBA but a lot of people say you forget all the MBA stuff by the time you're done with residency, but the title is nice.
 
You can’t really plan a trajectory for becoming a dean. You need to rise through the academic ranks so first you need to get into the academic ranks (i.e prove yourself as an academic/scholar/researcher in addition to as a physician). Then you need to be really, really good at politics. People need to like you. You need to be good at fundraising and public speaking because that’s like half of your job. You need to prove you can run a large, financially complicated enterprise which is why most deans are dept Chiefs or dept Chairs first, ideally at a very well known dept in ur field.

When a position opens up you need to be well known and liked enough to appear on the search committees list.

Lewis Thomas has an essay on being a dean at both Yale and NYU in Medusa and the Snail, i believe. “On the governance of a medical school” or something like that
 
I would also be interested in an online MD degree. Would that be on par with the Caribbean?
Dont see why not. It most likely wont be recognized by any licensing body, so you could not get a license but could call yourself an MD. CRNAs in the 90s got Doctor of Divinity degrees online and were referring to themselves as Dr XYZ from anesthesia to patients. The state medical board had to get involved to get them to stop. Now, they get a PhD with their degree, so here we go again.
Some schools have an Independent Study track, but you have to be pretty exceptional to get accepted to it.
 
For hospital - there are different types of physician executives - there are CEO, and there are CMO (chief medical officer)

Usually you start as staff. Hospitals usually have lots of committees and task force. You start by joining a few ... there will be meetings, and more meetings, and follow-up meetings. In between meetings there will be emails. Occasional power point presentations will be required. After a while, if the opportunity opens up, you could be ask to serve as division (or section) chief. Whether this is via vote by division, or via selection committee, or appointment by the department chair or medical executive committee, or search committee depends on the hospital and how seriously they take themselves. Sometimes the selection is by default if no one else wants the job. This promotion results in more meetings, especially among different divisions in the same department. If the opportunity arises, there could be vacancy at the department chair level ... and if you're worthy - you get appointed to that. From here, if you focus on meeting with board of directors, as well as administrations from other lines of service (nursing, pharmacy, lab, etc) and show potential for organization, plus awareness of fundraising, strategic planning - you could be slated for the hospital administration pathway. If you still want to practice as a physician and be a liaison between physicians and hospital administrators - you can head toward the chief medical officer role.

Every hospital organization is structured differently so the above is just generalizations. And the more administrative task you sign yourself up to do, the fewer the opportunities to actually practice clinically.

As an example

Here's the bio for the Chief Medical Officer at Cleveland Clinic (an MD)

Here's the bio for the Chief Executive Officer at Cleveland Clinic (also an MD)
 
Dont see why not. It most likely wont be recognized by any licensing body, so you could not get a license but could call yourself an MD. CRNAs in the 90s got Doctor of Divinity degrees online and were referring to themselves as Dr XYZ from anesthesia to patients. The state medical board had to get involved to get them to stop. Now, they get a PhD with their degree, so here we go again.
Some schools have an Independent Study track, but you have to be pretty exceptional to get accepted to it.

"Reverend Doctor Smith, CRNA will be putting you under for surgery today"
 
If someone is interested in this type of work, are there things that they should be considering doing as part of their medical school experience/school choice (assuming they are lucky enough to have multiple choices)/specialty choice related to it? For example, some schools offer specific MedEd pathways. Would this make a significant difference? Or is this a trajectory where it just matters that you do what you do well, get some grant writing experience/fundraising as you’ve said, and then enter the pathway later in your career?

Thanks in advance for any insight you can provide!
You tell me:






 
Or in my experience, do a Chief year, see/experience the administrative life, and run screaming back to clinical medicine forever with increased gratitude 😉. Admin work in medicine is a thankless grind *to me* but someone’s gotta do it and sometimes you having to do it is better than the alternative of someone worse doing it, so I’m willing to do some, but not as a primary career.
 
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