We are pleased to post the first part of a two-part autobiographical article from PRN member John C. Chang, MD, MBA titled “What Medical School Didn’t Teach Me, I Learned in Business School”
As I sat at the airport gate awaiting my last flight home from Michigan, I appreciated for the first time in a long while that I wasn’t preoccupied with finishing a homework assignment. I reflected on the incredible learning experience and personal growth which began over two years earlier to pursue an Executive MBA (EMBA). The return on my investment surpassed even my initial expectations going into the program.
At 37, I came to the difficult realization that the personal satisfaction I gained from clinical medicine had eroded over time to the point where the “good days” were outnumbered by the bad. I accepted my fundamental motivation to become a physician was to “help people in a meaningful way.” As a practicing ENT surgeon, my sense of accomplishment and desire to make a positive impact in my patients’ lives seemed to be diminished by bureaucratic paperwork, reduced reimbursement, loss of autonomy to make appropriate decisions, and sometimes even the patients themselves. At its core, medicine had become less of a profession, and more of a business. Since medical school had offered me no training toward the business of medicine, I was unprepared for the mounting frustrations of clinical practice and decline in personal satisfaction in my career.
My decision to pursue an Executive MBA was initially prompted after a contentious business meeting with administrators. A decision was made to decrease patient encounter times to improve practice volume and revenue. As a clinician, this decision threatened an already difficult balance between quality of care and economic sustainability. Was the answer to lower reimbursements, to see more patients? I questioned whether I could reconcile the tension of providing quality healthcare in the face of less time and more paperwork. Would this further demoralize my sense of accomplishment and impact for my patients? I realized that I lacked the business knowledge to make a sophisticated argument against this decision to the administrators of my healthcare group.
I felt a MBA was necessary to provide me with the business acumen and understanding to survive in my clinical practice. Additionally, I also saw the MBA, if applied properly, as one of many potential paths to transitioning into a non-clinical career. What I didn’t anticipate was how profoundly it would ultimately change my thinking about myself and my career path.
