Medical Leadership and Litigation: Ten Steps to Changing Culture

Imagine you are a highly capable physician who saved a patient's life. You're sued over it anyway.

Actually, your hospital system is sued for it, but they need you to defend it.

You spend days preparing for deposition, then eventually many weeks preparing for trial -- not to mention the five years of stress you endured leading up to it. You miss work for days of meetings with attorneys, and then for several weeks at trial, where you are maligned, misrepresented, and personally attacked.

Nevertheless, you testify like a consummate professional, bring the whole thing across the finish line, secure a victory for your hospital in court..and start learning to live with the scars.

And then? You return to work. You have to work a lot extra, because now you have to make up all the shifts you missed during prep and trial.

But nobody at work seems to know anything even happened. No one from Risk or leadership acknowledges your actions, or says 'thank you for saving the hospital $30 million'. No one mentions anything about what was the most difficult experience in your professional life. And when you meet with your boss for your scheduled annual review after your return, he asks you how your "vacation" was.

This was the experience of one of my clients, and it is a shockingly common one. In fact, it's the norm. And, unsurprisingly, it creates a lot of resentment.

This is not good leadership.