Surgical Leadership

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• How to develop and maintain a leadership posture
• How to build influence within and beyond your organization

• 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

• 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

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

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

All participants must complete the following academic and attendance requirements in order to be granted a Certificate of Completion from Harvard Medical School.

Attendance at Workshops and Webinars

• Learners are required to attend and actively engage in all workshops.
• Learners may be required to attend live, interactive webinars scheduled in between workshops. If a learner cannot attend due to an occasional scheduling conflict, it may be possible to complete an alternative assignment.

Successful Completion of Assignments

• Learners are required to complete and submit on time and receive passing grades on course-related assignments. These may include quizzes, exams and individual or team-based assignments.

To prepare your application for submission, please have the following documents available:

• Current contact information and credentials: This information is required for the online application.
• Curriculum vitae/résumé/list of awards or publications: You will be prompted to upload either your CV or résumé (.doc, .pdf).
• Written statement: Please provide a 250-500 word explanation as to why you would like to be considered for this program. Please note, you may be asked for additional information to support of your submission. All program specific requirements can be found within the application.*
• Letter of recommendation: The recommender must be a department/division head/director/chair or supervisor. The letter should be dated within 12 months of the application submission date and should address your suitability for the program and support your attendance at the workshops. Please note: The letter of recommendation may be submitted at a later date, but it is required for your application to be considered.

There is no application fee for this program.

*Your personal statement is an opportunity for the admissions committee to hear your voice. We strongly discourage the use of generative AI technologies, like ChatGPT, in your application essay. If an essay does use generative AI, then it must be acknowledged. If an essay is suspected to have used one of these tools without attribution or in its entirety, we reserve the right to deny your admission to the program or request that you submit a new essay in order to be considered.

We will acknowledge receipt of all applications and maintain all application information in strict confidence.

Students can expect to hear a decision on their application within four to six weeks from the date all application materials were submitted. Payment Plans are available for this program. Please contact the Admissions and Enrollment Services Team to learn more.