The Harvard Medical School Surgical Leadership Program was designed with surgeons’ busy schedules in mind. It is anchored by three four-day workshops in your choice of Boston or London, that use Harvard’s hallmark case method to facilitate interactive learning. Additional core teaching is delivered through live webinars delivered by international experts and more than 40 on-demand lectures that can be viewed at your convenience. The program culminates with a personalized capstone project, enabling you to apply what you have learned in a context that advances the immediate and long-term goals of your home institution.
This program’s innovative learning model is structured around the needs of practicing surgeons. A comprehensive core curriculum is presented through on-demand, self-paced lectures, live webinars, and three four-day live workshops.
Workshops feature highly interactive teaching and skills-development experiences and faculty from Harvard Medical School, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard Business School, as well as surgical innovators from Harvard Medical School-affiliated teaching hospitals.
Program Director Dr. Sayeed Malek and Co-Director Dr. Fiona Myint share an overview
The Harvard Medical School Surgical Leadership Program features the latest management concepts, leadership tools, and learning approaches to address the unique challenges facing today’s international surgical leaders.
Surgical Leadership and Executive Skills
Principles of leadership and management
Turning around failing organizations and leading transformational change
Personal leadership styles
Situational awareness
Communicating safely and efficiently in multidisciplinary teams
Difficult decision-making
Surgical crisis management
Assessing leadership behavior and outcomes
Giving feedback and conducting difficult conversations
Negotiation skills
Contract management
Creating a “just culture”
Understanding budgets and finances
The Surgeon as an Entrepreneur and Innovator
Innovation theory in health care
Business plan writing
Raising capital to develop and commercialize your innovations
Developing a startup company
Transforming ideas into products
Updates on new technologies in surgical practice
Designing medical apps
“Elevator pitch” development and delivery
Legal Principles for Surgical Leaders
Iatrogenic harm
Contract law
Patent law, copyright, and intellectual property
Litigation and medical defense
Responding to complaints
Duty of candor
How to write an adverse event report
Communications, Motivation, and Negotiation
Different approaches and when to choose them
Negotiation skills
Contract management
Influence without authority
How to initiate and nurture growth-promoting relationships
Conducting difficult conversations
Effective techniques for reaching favorable and win-win solutions
Building and Promoting Your Personal Brand
How to develop and maintain a leadership posture
How to build influence within and beyond your organization
Surgical Research and Education
Writing research grant applications
Funding a new clinical service
Developing a modern surgical curriculum
Raising sponsorship and endowments for academic purposes
Supervising research and academic mentorship
Assessment of surgical skills and behaviors
E-learning and digital resources for surgeons
Quality, Safety, and Improvement
State-of-the-art principles for quality and safety in surgery
Developing a culture of safety
Threat and error models from the aviation industry
Human factors in surgery
Value-based health care: measuring meaningful outcomes and accurate costs
Quality reporting tools
Reporting errors and leading root cause analyses
Mitigating intraoperative stress
The Learning Health System and the role of IT in surgical quality and safety
Efficient design and use of clinical databases and registries
Choosing and implementing electronic medical records
Group and Individual Skills-Development Activities
This program offers both group and individual skills-development activities to help you advance your surgical leadership objectives, including:
Building and leading high-performing teams and organizations
Developing surgeons as entrepreneurs and innovators
Understanding costs and outcomes measurements
Adopting new technologies and developing apps to improve clinical practice
Crisis management, negotiation, and conflict-resolution
Quality and safety theory and practice
Informatics, electronic medical records, and data management
Writing research and grant proposals
Medical education and mentorship development
Developing your personal brand
Personalized Capstone Project
The capstone project allows participants to demonstrate creativity, innovation, and proficiency in the knowledge and skills taught in the program.
The objective of the capstone project is to develop and communicate a real-world intervention that can improve surgical practice. Each participant is required to write a business plan and deliver a three-minute elevator pitch to Harvard faculty as part of their capstone project.
Examples of these real-world surgical improvement scenarios include:
Development or commercialization of a novel surgical device or innovation
Delivery of a new surgical curriculum for residency training
Implementation of a patient quality and safety intervention in the participant’s institution
Assignment of a Harvard Faculty Member
Every participant of the Harvard Medical School Surgical Leadership Program will have access to a Harvard faculty member. Your faculty member will provide guidance for your capstone project, including:
Providing feedback at the outline phase of your project
Reviewing the first and final drafts of your project and helping to optimize its value
