Leadership skills among medical interns - a cross sectional study in a medical college in South India

Abstract

Introduction: Leadership skills among medical students, plays an important role in making them competent and bringing success in their clinical practice. Physician’s professional activities require them to be good team leaders. But there is a leadership crisis among medical doctors in India and leadership skills within their curricula. Objectives: To assess the leadership skills among interns and identify possible influencing factors among them. Method: A cross sectional study was conducted among 110 interns in a medical college. Leadership skills were assessed using Modified Leadership Inventory for Medical Education (LIME). Unpaired t test for association of various factors with mean scores of leadership and Karl Pearson’s correlation coefficient for correlation between the scores of subcomponents of leadership skills were used. Results: Among the interns, 77.3% had a chance to be a leader during school/college days but only 20% had undergone leadership training. 87.3% of them had their leadership scores above average, suggesting good leadership skills. Interns who had been a leader in school/college, enrolled in Scouts/ Guides/ NCC and those who underwent leadership training had statistically significant higher mean scores. Majority had positive attitude towards leadership. There was a statistically significant, moderate correlation between the components of leadership skills.Conclusion: Participants had good leadership skills and there was significant association between former leadership experience and current leadership scores. Most of them had positive attitude towards leadership.

Keywords

• leadership skills
• medical curriculum
• medical students