Orthopedic surgeons should hone in on their leadership abilities, according to Joseph Bosco III, MD, vice chair of the orthopedics department at NYU Langone in New York City.
He spoke on the "Becker's Spine and Orthopedic Podcast" about his advice for aspiring orthopedic surgeons.
This is an excerpt. Listen to the full episode here.
Question: What is your advice for aspiring orthopedic surgeons today?
Dr. Bosco: I think most orthopedic surgeons were leaders, either they were captains of our athletic teams or Eagle Scouts or leaders in our theater group. We tend to be leaders. My advice is to really invest in developing your leadership skills, because talent only takes you so far. There are certain leaders that are talented leaders, men and women of certain stature that just get up there. There are also leaders who aren't blessed with that, but you can develop and hone your leadership skills. You could take classes, you could read on it, you can get a mentor. The more time and effort you look at developing leadership skills, the better leader you will be, whether it's for your profession, your community or your friends and family.
Two, is that things are changing, but you have to embrace change as an opportunity. What I mean by that is that any time there's change the have-nots can give you that can become the haves, right. Those of us that embrace change and are nimble enough to respond, to change have a competitive advantage. Never let a good crisis go to waste, as Churchill once said. You can complain about how things used to be and why they're not the same way or you can understand that things are changing, adapt to these changes and make sure that you come out ahead of the game.
Three, I would say is to set goals. Set goals and aspirations, and learn how to think and act strategically. That takes a lot of discipline. You can set goals and a strategy and plan, but those plans may not come to fruition. But discipline, in order to think that way, you'll make sure that as things change, you stay on a straight path and accomplish what you want to accomplish, because a lot of us spend 99 percent of our time reacting to things that happen on a daily basis.
The fourth thing is to enjoy yourself, because no matter what we think, we have the best career. We take care of patients. They do better. Our patients are grateful. We do something that's very important to people and people are grateful and that's really the best thing that we do. So I would say enjoy it as well.