Clinician interest in leadership is growing. Here's how one group is helping its members develop their skills

Last week I covered the increase in the number of healthcare industry professionals who are returning to school to get their MBAs. When I asked clinicians what prompted their decision, many mentioned that they had already taken on leadership roles — and they wanted to excel in them.

But leadership doesn’t necessarily mean having a formal, appointed position. In fact, when the American Academy of Physician Associates surveyed its members in 2017, 31% said that they had responsibilities including supervising staff, serving on a committee, managing a budget or overseeing quality and performance improvement. But among them, as many as 36% said their title did not reflect those duties.

The group is now seeking to better prepare its members for leadership, and last year released competencies for PAs to master in healthcare administration — a set of domains including professional practice, business skills, communication, interpersonal skills and other areas. The standards were published this month in Journal of the American Academy of Physician Associates (JAAPA) .

Perhaps unique to the PA profession is also the issue of advocacy and visibility. While PAs are one of the fastest growing segments of the healthcare workforce, they’re also one of the smallest, with fewer than 200,000 professionals. One of the key issues for the AAPA is increasing scope of practice — something the group says is necessary to help ease the clinician shortage and increase patient access. (Groups representing physicians heavily oppose these efforts.)

A more universal theme is to help increase engagement and prevent burnout; there’s been a hunger among clinicians in all roles to be at the decision-making table. Yet recognition matters. A more recent AAPA survey in 2022 found that PAs in informal leadership roles were more likely to report burnout than those with formal titles or no leadership responsibilities.?

The AAPA’s House of Delegates first identified the need for competencies two years ago and created a task force to help develop them. In addition to reaching professionals currently in or on track for administrative roles, they also wanted to create a pipeline of future PA leaders, and build a roadmap they could use to advance their careers.?

Risa Zimmerman , director of clinical education at the College of Saint Mary , and Sarah Vanderlinden, DMSc, PA-C, DFAAPA , associate chief advanced practice officer at FROEDTERT & MEDICAL COLLEGE OF WISCONSIN , chaired the task force and published this month’s JAAPA article.

I had a chance to speak to them about why this issue is so important, the current knowledge gap and what happens next. You can read our conversation below.

And tell me: what leadership responsibilities do you have in your job? Which skills have been most important and how did you acquire them?

The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

LinkedIn News: With all the focus on increasing the clinician workforce and ensuring patient access, why is it important to bring PAs into leadership?

Vanderlinden: We know that healthcare is expensive and we have patient access issues as well. But that’s why we need leaders in these areas. Do we really know how to advance PAs and [nurse practitioners] into clinical roles? Think about care models. How do you work with an interdisciplinary team and advocate for advancing scope of practice? How do we think of new ways we can best take care of patients?

A PA administrator can be many different things. There are a lot of different jobs that that can encompass, but if this group isn't represented or it doesn't have the skills, it's really hard to build a representative team and make sure all the components of the healthcare team are advanced in the same way.?

LinkedIn News: I’ve reported in the past about how getting clinicians into leadership can be one way to decrease burnout and increase engagement. What have you been seeing?

Zimmerman: That's the thing too: [learning about these competencies is] a nice way for people who are interested to dip their toe in. As we said when we were putting it together, it's choose your own adventure. What are you interested in? It's not like you're putting forth $50,000 in tuition. It's at your leisure.

We also want to make sure that they realize that you don't have to follow the trajectory of administrator in a healthcare system; you can [hold any number of roles.] But you need to have the same fundamentals as far as knowledge of leadership skills, healthcare management, business skills, etc.

LinkedIn News: How much leadership training do PAs currently get in school? Vanderlinden: Just like in medical school, our main job is to prepare clinicians, and there's a lot to cover. The amount of medical knowledge you have to learn is exponentially growing. There's not as much focus on some of these other areas. We hope that some of these resources we created will improve awareness so you can build some of these leadership and administrative skills early.?

I will say that I personally teach a professionalism and leadership curriculum; getting people strategies of how they can make a difference in advocating and caring for patients is a big deal and it's a strategy for combating burnout. These are things that are really important for resiliency.

Our nursing colleagues actually get a lot more of this in school. They build a bigger pipeline and leadership track from very early on and we see that difference. We hope that this will encourage and promote PAs to do the same thing.

LinkedIn News: What are the core competencies that PAs need?

Zimmerman: A lot of these competencies are domains [that are outlined on the AAPA’s website]. But we have one that’s about PA professional practice and advocacy because at the root of it all, even though we may be in leadership, we are PAs. There are some specific competencies based on what our profession is about.

LinkedIn News: How can the PAs gain these competencies?

Vanderlinden: That was one big gap: people didn't know what they needed to focus on. We've reviewed a lot of job descriptions and looked at other competencies to say what's appropriate for a PA administrator. And then there are lots of different ways to do it. There are some people who take formal education, but it's really more than that. We didn't want to underrepresent the need for networking and gaining hands-on experience to do this. [Our goal was] how do we give people some of those foundational skills so they have the confidence to go out there and try some new experiences and learn and get mentorship to do that?

LinkedIn News: What’s next for this initiative?

Vanderlinden: We really look forward to hearing from others who are now taking on these competencies: How are you introducing this in your organization? How do you develop people leaders? Are you introducing it to your students? Zimmerman: I'm in academia and I'm doing a professional practice course for the fall of 2024. Our other goal was mostly to cater to those who are earlier in their career because if you're at an executive level, you can find these resources at national conferences. That's one of our thoughts, to make sure that we slowly start peppering it through the lifespan.