The Best Medicine: A Physician’s Guide to Effective Leadership

Be warned...this book is 90 pages total. For $46 I was expecting more of a textbook, not a handbook!

Reasonable overview. I definitely encourage reading Tribal Leadership and The Three Laws of Performance as companion texts.Jerris

Thoughtful guide for physicians as the face an ever more challenging context in their work with patients and families and colleagues in and increasingly complex context for effective, humanistic care

I read and studied this book more than once in order to gain as much insight as possible into the mindset of a high impact physician and leader. Dr. Gewertz, as a renowned vascular surgeon and scholar shares with us his leadership values developed during his more than 30 years as a chair or dean in academic medicine. Professor Logan, a driven cultural shifter, creates a template of leadership with guidance and clarity, which can be applied to any profession, including medicine.Gewertz and Logan have articulated with surgical precision what many physician leaders know intuitively but struggle to express and teach others. During my study of this book I took notes, and now review those notes and apply these leadership values to my own situation on a an almost daily basis. Rarely has a book on personal and professional development engaged me as much as this one.At whatever phase of physician leadership you find yourself, this book will give you the tools you need to assess and improve your innate leadership abilities today and in the years ahead.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book for its conversational writing style, the excellent examples and most of all for its useful approaches to leadership. By breaking down the stages of leadership and advancement along these stages, the authors have given aspiring leaders, and those already on the leadership ladder, a practical roadmap.As a department chair for over 20 years ,I have experienced many of the issues discussed and I wish I had had the wisdom of this book to help me through the tougher spots. I immediately recommend this book to my colleague who is working along the leadership ladder.

I am not a clinician but work as a healthcare administrator. This was an easy read with much insight. I found myself thinking about the phase I am in today and contemplating my journey to the next phase. I have read my share of leadership books but this one stood out as it provided a road map framework that I not only use when considering my own career, but can reference with my direct reports on their journey to growth and fulfillment at work. Additionally, this has been a useful tool for me in my interactions with both junior and senior physician faculty. It has given me insights into their personal motivations and ideas on how to guide them when having career advancement conversations.

Effective leadership has always been easy to identify but hard to define. With clarity and a breezy style, this book reduces the ineffable qualities of the successful leader into a few basic principles that will have the reader kicking himself for not having been able to articulate them as succinctly and cogently as Dr. Gewertz has. Whether you're the captain of your high school football team or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, you will benefit from the simple instruction this book provides. It should have been done before but better late than never.

The Best Medicine is a practical, eye-opening walk through the challenges and potentially lifelong journey of being a physician leader. A quick, insightful and common sense read – distills a complicated subject in a down to earth way. Great advice throughout the book with application that extends beyond physician leaders. A terrific read for someone starting a new role as well as seasoned leaders.