Leading Residents to Leadership: Maximizing Leadership Development During Residency

Abstract

![Graphic][1] In spite of continued acknowledgement of the gap between training and practice expectation in management and leadership skills,1 the subject has never been given more attention than it has today. The Pathology Milestone Project, a joint initiative of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and the American Board of Pathology (ABP), has six milestones specifically centered on developing leadership or laboratory management skills.2 Prior to the development of pathology residency milestones, no fewer than three pathology organization consensus documents highlighted the need for management and leadership skills to be incorporated into pathology residency curricula.3-5 Laboratory management has received a great deal of attention in residency education, with dedicated didactic lectures, specific management or junior laboratory directorship rotations, web-based training tools, and mock lab inspections, among others. But how does one teach residents to be true leaders in the laboratory? Many educators acknowledge the inherent difficulty in teaching the “soft skills” of pathology, with pattern recognition via unknown slide sets and immunohistochemistry algorithms for small B-cell lymphomas seeming intuitive by comparison. While I certainly do not pretend to have all the answers to the questions residency programs continue to struggle with, I would like to share a few ideas that I have found to be helpful in establishing a leadership role during my residency. Only recently was I enlightened about FISH! … [1]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif