Leadership and Culture

A supportive and honest culture is crucial to effect change in your practice. This collection of AMA STEPS Forward^® practice strategies offers practical ways to save time, build diversity and inclusion, and better care for your workforce. These tools will be most useful to physicians, practice managers and other health care leaders.

• Playbooks: Collections of related interventions
  • Saving Time Playbook Save time by stopping unnecessary work, sharing the necessary tasks with the broader team and gaining organizational leadership support.
• Podcasts
  • Supporting Physician Wellness in an ER Environment Emergency medicine physician Vanessa Calderón, MD, MPP, of Dignity Health St. Mary's Medical Center discusses breaking the “we’ve always done it this way” mentality.
  • Caring for the Health Care Workforce During Crisis Tait D. Shanafelt, MD, chief wellness officer at Stanford Medicine, discusses what you and your organization can do before, during and after a crisis to increase the likelihood your workforce will cope and thrive.
  • Creating A Culture That Supports Well-Being Nigel Girgrah, MD, chief wellness officer at Ochsner Health System, discusses how to address mental health stigma, build a strong EAP program, encourage leadership to be vulnerable about their burnout struggles and much more.
  • Racial and Health Equity: Five Concrete STEPS Rishi Manchanda, MD, MPH, president and CEO of HealthBegins, offers the five steps health care leaders can take to start translating their commitment to racial and health equity into action.
  • Four Key Questions Leaders Should Ask Clinicians During COVID-19 Recovery and Beyond A conversation about leading physicians through pandemic recovery with Kerri Palamara, MD, director of the Center for Physician Well-Being at Massachusetts General Hospital.
  • Cultivating Leadership Steve Swensen, MD, of the Mayo Clinic explains how measuring, assessing and cultivating positive leader behaviors can improve professional well-being for the entire team.
  • Building Bridges Between Practicing Physicians and Administrators Physicians and business managers sometimes feel as if they’re in different worlds, speaking different languages. Paul DeChant, MD, MBA, discusses helping these critical leaders understand each other and work together.
• Webinars
  • Medical Assistants: Recruitment and Retention Increase the number of medical assistants that are trained with innovative programs and retain the best.
  • Organizational Culture and Physician Well-Being Improve your team’s satisfaction and explore active inquiry tools to help decrease emotional exhaustion and burnout.
  • Recruiting Physicians Into Your Private Practice Strategies on how to attract top talent, position your practice and counter recruitment competition.
  • Addressing Physician and Patient Mental Health including Suicide Risk Identify at-risk physicians and patients for suicide, connect them with the most appropriate care and dismantle the stigma around seeking mental health treatment.
  • Addressing Adult Suicidal Ideation in the Primary Care Setting Hear from experts about pragmatic implementation strategies, including the key lessons one practice learned from putting them into action.
  • Parenting as a Physician: It Takes a lot of Patience Tips on setting limits, balancing family life as a physician and finding the time for family activities.
  • Protecting Mental Health in Disasters: COVID-19 and Beyond The use of evidence-based early interventions can reduce distress, foster resilience, enhance operational sustainment and help treat psychiatric disorders that may emerge.
  • Dismantling Stigma Around Behavioral Health Conditions and Treatment Learn to break the stigma barrier and normalize treatment for patients with behavioral health or substance abuse conditions, particularly those representing traditionally marginalized groups.
  • Vaccinations: A Roadmap for Success Understand why vaccine hesitancy exists and learn novel ways to increase acceptance.
  • The Habit of Gratitude: Being Positively Contagious Better integrate the habit of gratitude into your life and your organizational culture.
  • Rethinking Wellness: COVID-19 and the Search for Meaning Bryant Adibe, MD, system vice president and chief wellness officer, Rush University System for Health in Chicago, discusses wellness, community and our common search for meaning.
  • Creating Processes for Intentional Professional Connection Learn to use the principle that “no one should care alone,” building intentional professional connection into your organization and professional life.
  • Physician Burnout: It’s Not a Resiliency Deficit How health care organization leaders can address system issues to reduce burnout and promote physician well-being.
  • Physician Stress During Times of COVID A look at the key findings from the AMA’s Coping with COVID surveys, how to alleviate stress during a crisis, and organizational resources to support physicians.
  • Leading Through a Crisis: Communication Strategies for better macro-communication, micro-communication and communicating with teleworkers during a crisis such as a global pandemic.
  • Integrating Organizational Actions Toward Patient Safety and Clinician Well-being A framework to build on traditional safety models including human factors affecting outcomes in patient safety and the well-being of the care team.
  • How to Implement a Peer Support Program During a Crisis A properly implemented peer support program can potentially change organizational culture; here’s how to build your own.
  • Building Well-being into Culture: The Sanford Clinician Experience Learn how Sanford Health clinicians are supported to help optimize work-life integration across their entire careers.
  • Seeking Feedback Like you Mean it: Time to Take IACTion Consider the value of feedback in an entirely new way and learn how using the IACT process can help you accelerate your professional growth.
  • Crossing the divide: Building Bridges Between Physicians and Administration Opportunities for health care organization leaders and front-line clinicians to build trust and find new ways to align.
  • A Faculty Development Program to Create Wellness Champions Learn how a Scholars of Wellness initiative can build a critical mass of faculty wellness champions who can advance well-being at the organizational level.
• Toolkits: How-to guides for implementation
  • Racial and Health Equity: Concrete STEPS for Health Systems 0.5 Credit CMECollect data from your health system to build a shared understanding of racism and anti-racism, and use SMART goals to advance health equity in your community.
  • Racial and Health Equity: Concrete STEPS for Smaller Practices 0.5 Credit CMEAs you engage your team in efforts to promote racial and health equity, it is crucial to help your leaders be more comfortable with the discomfort inherent to discussing racism and anti-racism.
  • LISTEN-SORT-EMPOWER 0.5 Credit CMEFind and act on local opportunities for improvement to create your ideal practice.
  • Change Initiatives Produce meaningful, sustainable change for your patients, the care team and your practice using a simple three-step framework.
  • Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) 0.5 Credit CMEGet the most out of quality improvement projects in your practice.
  • Lean Health Care 0.5 Credit CMEHealth care professionals can use Lean tactics to eliminate waste and spend more time with patients.
  • Change Management and Organizational Development A simple five-step framework can improve efficiency and effectiveness.
  • Getting Rid of Stupid Stuff (GROSS) Learn how to recognize unnecessary tasks and other “stupid stuff,” empowering clinicians to speak up and make improvements.
  • Appreciative Inquiry Principles Asking unconditional positive questions such as “what went well” helps foster positive organizational culture.
  • Cultivating Leadership 0.5 Credit CMELeaders have an immense impact on a group’s professional satisfaction: Measure and improve leader behaviors at your organization.
  • Medical Assistant Professional Development 0.5 Credit CMEExtra training can empower medical assistants to contribute even more to the practice team.
  • Medical Assistant Recruitment and Retention 0.5 Credit CMEFind and keep the right medical assistants for your team and ensure they’re utilized to their full potential.
  • Collective Trauma Increasing organizational resilience can help an organization more effectively anticipate, plan for and respond to collective trauma.
  • Building Bridges Between Practicing Physicians and Administrators Improve physician–administrator relationships by opening communication channels and helping both parties understand each other's roles.
  • Caring for the Health Care Workforce During Crisis 0.5 Credit CMELearn about the stressors a crisis places on the workforce and how to plan for the unexpected.
  • Establishing a Chief Wellness Officer Position 0.5 Credit CMECreate the organizational groundwork and make the message clear that your organization values professional well-being.
  • Chief Wellness Officer Road Map 0.5 Credit CMEEffective strategies for leaders and organizations to promote professional well-being.
  • Team Culture Meeting regularly and teaching leaders to be mentors can strengthen team cohesion, improve communication and encourage continual learning.
  • Creating the Organizational Foundation for Joy in Medicine^™ 0.5 Credit CMECarefully implementing the right organizational strategies can promote a culture of wellness, workflow efficiency and physician satisfaction.
  • Peer Support Programs for Physicians 0.5 Credit CMEDevelop a program with trained peer supporters who can help mitigate emotional stressors.
• Success Stories: Real-world examples
  • The Chief Wellness Officer Journey at ChristianaCare ChristianaCare developed a comprehensive suite of wellness services overseen by a Chief Wellness Officer (CWO) and gain an understanding of the CWO scope and role.
  • A Simple Worksheet Helps a Urology Clinic Be “Lean” A urology clinic collects ideas for process improvement initiatives with a simple worksheet, then carries out these ideas using Lean principles.
  • Read more Success Stories