Core Curriculum

Academic Survival and Leadership Skills

Leadership Training and Academic Survival Skills

The fellowship training program develops future academic leaders in palliative medicine who will develop and sustain clinical, teaching, and research programs in this emerging field. The skills required in a new field include not only the traditional expectations of junior faculty for grant funding and publications, but also encompass creation and maintenance of academic palliative medicine programs, including financing, negotiation and conflict resolution, and the requirement of effective leadership. Topics are taught through didactic classroom methods, required readings, palliative care program case analyses, review and critical analysis of successful and failed grant proposals and submitted manuscripts; review of sample article and grant peer reviews; role play; role modeling by faculty and interdisciplinary team; and explicit mentorship on these topics by palliative care fellowship program faculty.

Academic survival and leadership skills seminar series topics include:

• Establishing a clear professional mission
• Strategic planning for career development, establishing career objectives and strategies and methods of evaluation
• Characteristics of effective mentors, finding the right mentors
• Building a research career and characteristics of a good research idea
• Grant and manuscript writing skills for academic medicine
• Grant funding in palliative medicine: unfunded, foundation, and federal sources
• Basic program finance in academic medicine: business planning, projection, and mechanisms of faculty support
• Uses of development and philanthropy in academic program development
• Characteristics of effective teams, effective programs, and effective leadership
• Negotiation and conflict resolution
• Evaluation and outcome metrics: making the right choice of instruments
• Social change theory and palliative medicine: The Center to Advance Palliative Care