Interviewer: How did you position yourself? How did you position yourself to get the experience that you needed, to get that first offer of a job as a medical administrator, Dr. Lee?
Dr. Lee: I had been in private practice for a number of years, and realized that I did not have the management skills I needed in order to manage 35 people and all of the interpersonal issues that I was facing. So, I decided to get a degree in organizational development, to try to understand more about systems and how I could better manage people. I wanted to take a non-traditional degree and I wanted to take it in a non-medical format. So, I was able to find such a program and I continued to do full-time clinical work.
When the program was over, the children’s hospital I was working at decided to create a position of a hospital medical director. And so, I was the first hospital medical director who had this kind of role. In the meantime, I had chaired numerous committees, been on numbers of taskforces, developed lots of other kinds of programs for the hospital. So, I was positioned very well to take on this role of being a hospital medical director.