Leadership Succession at Regional Medical Campuses: What incoming leaders might want to know from their predecessors

Succession planning and changeover between outgoing and incoming leaders within medical education is an important but largely neglected topic (Rayburn, Grigsby & Brubaker, 2016). The paucity of literature is even more apparent regarding leadership transitioning at regional medical campuses (RMC). With this paper, perhaps one of the first to inform this topic, we hope to bridge this gap by assembling the shared perspectives of an administrator, senior faculty member and a learner from the same RMC. Specifically, this work will focus on the following two questions: Based on our collective experiences what are the critical issues facing an incoming RMC dean? Are there practical strategies which might assist an incoming RMC dean with the leadership transition process?  This commentary is the result of our collective experience at Western University’s Windsor Campus, a 10-year old regional medical campus of the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry located in southwestern Ontario, Canada. We make the assumption that RMC’s encountering leadership transitions are adequately funded, in this way incoming deans can properly attend to effective leadership succession processes. This paper might be of particular interest to those who are personally transitioning as new RMC deans or who will soon take on such a leadership role. We have no conflicts of interest to declare.