Dear friends, partners, and colleagues,

The last decade has witnessed a monumental shift in the practice of medicine as a variety of forces continue to shape how we take care of our patients and our communities. Such forces led many of us to restrict themselves to the clinical aspect of medicine, but also made many of us t6o know why things are the way they are and we can do about them.

Many of us seek knowledge and experience to be ready for opportunities to be part of the healthcare formula, an input rather than an outcome. Many do not view ourselves as basic components of the healthcare puzzle that can simply be moved around or even replaced. We have a lot more to offer and want to be valued for.

While a few of us learned the hard way without structured guidance, leadership can be acquired as a set of skills that can be explored, learned, refined and expanded. This is why Physician LEADS West Virginia was born- to find the leader in you and nurture it to become the effective, influential physician leader that guides our West Virginia communities towards better healthcare.

Physician LEADS West Virginia was built on the idea that the we should have the opportunity to lead, engage, advance, and develop, right here in our state, all over our state, across various practice models, and irrespective of medical specialty or system affiliation. It was designed to fulfil our needs to meet fellow physicians, build networks, and form relations with diverse leaders and stakeholders, in our pursuit to a better future in West Virginia.

Physician LEADS WV was developed with the multitude physician commitments in mind, thus limiting burden and maximizing value through camaraderie, education, and shared experiences.

The program evolves over a series of four weekend per class per year, and hosted at different locations and include a variety of instruction styles. It gradually grows with our emerging leaders along four tracks that introduce us to the basics of effective leadership and serve as a springboard for those who are about to or have already took their first step along their leader paths, or may be just curious to know and are looking for a jumpstart.

Every weekend starts with exploring our inner selves and looks for the leader inside us in order to refine it and ‘upgrade’ it on a personal level. It then evolves and shows us how to reflect our skills upon those around us and shows us how to work with others and influence them to follow our lead. It then escalates into looking at the environment we work in and previews the complexities that constrain what we can do. It later ends with looking at ways to identify and manage change around us and build agility as we handle challenges that come our way at various stages and in different forms.

These four tracks of leadership training run in parallel on every scheduled weekend as shown on the screen and every track progresses from one level to another in a well-knit series that collectively form Physician LEADS WV and sets the stage for more advanced engagements as we grow as leaders. During that time, we will have opportunities to engage with a variety of keynote speakers and leaders with expertise outside healthcare yet have meaningful impact on what we do and how we do it.

None of this would have become a reality without the shared vision and collective efforts of a variety of physician champions and organizational sponsors who saw the need and opportunity to develop our own leaders. Physician LEADS WV is proudly the first and only state-wide physician leadership development program and is open to all physicians and physicians in training who care for our communities.

I am excited for our first meeting and look forward to getting to know our first class, the Physician LEADS WV class 2023. I am thankful tp all those of you who were part of the planning taskforce, and program development committee and to our staff and consultants without which none of this would have materialized. Please reach out to me if you have any questions or comments and wish our first class a wonder and worthwhile experience.

Thank You.

- Shafic Sraj, MD, MBA

Program Director