-: You know, I think you can't go wrong
being a clinician first and I when you're going
to lead clinicians in hospitals
it's always good to know you get a little
of that street credibility if they knew you were
at the bedside before you know your way around
the anatomy or around certain medications,
treatments and things like that.
Be a good clinician and really learn
the field that you're in.
But keep an eye out how the organization runs.
There's lots of, I think I mentioned, my
days usually run big meetings there's lots
of committees in hospitals so it's a very
collaborative environment; it's a team environment.
So if your you have to be comfortable working with others
and working in a team environment and if you're
going to be successful first in the clinical side
but definitely as on the administrative side too.
Find out how every component of the hospital works
and understand reimbursement.
I think that's probably the area that most clinicians
are a bit afraid of because that's the business side
and as a clinician you don't necessarily learn that
going through school so that's something
that, whether you achieve it by, lunch meetings
with your director of finance or CFO or advancing
your degree and getting a masters in business administration
or something where you can start to learn how
to read a profit and loss statement, a balance
sheet, and really understanding the way it works.
My advice to folks who want to move into
administration is to look for committees to join.
Try to be the one who runs that committee at some point
and try to secure a position where you can
manage budgets and employees, FTE's.
And that's really the first couple steps
and work hard.
As someone once said to me as you're moving
to administration you start working half days
you just pick which twelve hours of the day
you want to work and if you're somebody
who's going to put the time in and seek
the knowledge and you have the right personality
that is inviting to others and that folks
want to collaborate with you, I think
that's the measure of success.