Justifying the need to introduce and teach leadership competencies to medical undergraduate medical students

Abstract

The field of medicine continues to change with each day, which makes the overall process of health care delivery a challenging one for the current crop of medical undergraduates. An extensive search of all materials related to the topic was carried out in the PubMed search engine and a total of 5 articles were selected based upon the suitability with the current review objectives and analyzed. The undergraduate medical education has prioritized the domains of diagnosis and management of a disease, with a negligible focus towards the other aspects (viz. leadership, professionalism, system-based practice, etc.), which significantly determine the delivery of safe and quality assured health care services. Preparing a medical undergraduate student for tomorrow, without exposing them to leadership and managerial skills cannot be considered as the right approach in medical training. The need of the hour is to design a set of leadership competencies, incorporate them in the curriculum and assess them periodically. In conclusion, regardless of the stage of the career, a medical doctor is expected to discharge leadership role and work as a member of the health team to deliver encouraging results. Keeping this in mind, it becomes an indispensable requirement to expose the undergraduate medical students to leadership competencies within their training period and prepare them for their future role.

Keywords

• leadership
• competencies
• undergraduate medical education