ACHE/AUPHA Joint Address and Breakfast: Leading With Stamina—Purposeful Resilience in a Shifting Healthcare Landscape

It is not uncommon for a healthcare administrator to field a comment that fits the following description: “It’s a difficult time to be a leader in healthcare.” And there is, indeed, a long list of complex situations and issues that leaders confront daily.

But “today” being difficult is not new. Leadership has been difficult for several generations. More than likely the issues are more complex today, and quite possibly the list of issues is longer than ever. Leaders are therefore confronted with a truism: Leadership is hard every day; patient care is hard every day; the delivery of care by all inside of health systems is hard every day.

If this is true, stamina becomes a core skill that leaders need to develop. But stamina in leadership is more complex than the stamina that comes from athletic activity. Systems, approaches and team building are required to help healthcare leaders build the stamina needed to make tomorrow better than today.