“You have to be able to organize, and conduct yourself and your relationships with other people at a professional level. And you have to be firm. You have to be judgmental and you have to be able to make decisions at the spur of the moment,” says Dr. Lahita. “I think all those things are extremely important to being a leader.”
“Nobody should take this job unless you’re willing to do six things at one time and you can handle stress,” he says. “I take a lot of antacids.”
The author of several books on lupus, autoimmune disease, and rheumatoid arthritis and an ACR Master, Dr. Lahita obtained his medical degree from Jefferson Medical College and a doctorate in microbiology from Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia. He completed his residency at New York Hospital and Rockefeller Hospital in New York City. Before his current post, he served as division chief of rheumatology for 25 years at St. Luke’s Roosevelt and St. Vincent hospitals, also in New York.
Dr. Lahita begins his day early at the hospital, making quick rounds, and then moves to teaching responsibilities, meetings, employee reviews, and sometimes more meetings. He also serves as director of safety and performance improvement for his hospital. Two days a week he sees patients.
“Multitasking is critical if you want to be in an executive position,” says Dr. Lahita.
His numerous duties as an executive mean his life is never dull, says Dr. Lahita. “I’m sitting here with a stack of stuff to sign, for example. I have to sign off on everybody’s vacation, their time off, their reimbursement forms… I’m telling you, it’s a neverending saga.”
Despite his hectic schedule, Dr. Lahita, who was a first responder during the 911 terrorist attacks and is trained in emergency medicine, regularly rides in an ambulance for middle-of-the-night calls in his community to car accidents and other medical emergencies. He can choose his calls and only does it at night.
“If there’s a cardiac arrest and I’m available, I go,” says Dr. Lahita, “in the town, on the highway, in a bus, on a train, whatever, I do that. That’s all part of giving medical care to people. I have to do that for some reason. I don’t know why, but it’s part of my fabric.”
Careers in Pharma
Mittie Doyle, MD, director of immunology, clinical research and development at Janssen Research and Development, left academia to take a management position in the pharmaceutical industry. She was living in her hometown of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit and washed her “back up to the east coast,” she says. Fleeing the storm’s devastation, Dr. Doyle and her family went to Philadelphia so her children could continue their schooling. Once there, she decided to explore other job options and took a position with Centocor Research and Development, now named Janssen.
“If there was any silver lining to the hurricane, the fact that I switched career tracks ended up being a good thing and I really enjoy what I’m doing now,” says Dr. Doyle. “It’s a perfect combination of science and clinical medicine.”
I think with a background like mine in both rheumatology and research, it allows me to contribute in other ways to an organization that I care about.
—John H. Klippel, MD
Dr. Doyle obtained her medical degree at Yale University, completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and a fellowship in Rheumatology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, both in Boston, and then worked many years in academic research and as a clinical trials investigator, serving on the faculty at Harvard and Tulane medical schools, before stepping into her current role at Janssen.
With the career change, Dr. Doyle gained a broader perspective on drug development and, as a physician working in clinical research and development, what it takes to plan and oversee clinical trials. “It’s completely different because you’re not directly involved with individual patient care. You’re looking at data on a trial and population level.”
Too often, the pharmaceutical industry is seen as being represented by an aggressive sales representative who visits medical doctors, says Dr. Doyle, who would like to dispel the notion that working for the pharmaceutical industry is “going to the dark side.”
Her work as an executive allows her to continue interactions with key opinion leaders that she knew in academia, and provides insight into cutting-edge science and a chance to collaborate with scientists who develop new compounds, medicines, and mechanisms of action. In her post at Janssen, Dr. Doyle oversees the company’s phase II and III global clinical research trials related to rheumatology. She still enjoys seeing patients as an adjunct professor at Pennsylvania State University and the opportunity to share her clinical trial experience with medical students and colleagues.
Careers in Nonprofit
John H. Klippel, MD, began volunteering for the Arthritis Foundation (AF) early in his career, and in 1999 joined the AF staff as medical director. In 2003 he was named president and CEO.
“The Arthritis Foundation has always been important in my life,” says Dr. Klippel. “I think with a background like mine in both rheumatology and research, it allows me to contribute in other ways to an organization that I care about.”
For Dr. Klippel, the risk of different challenges is what attracted him to executive leadership.
“I had to be willing to try something completely new,” notes Dr. Klippel, who says he gets energized by learning new things.
Dr. Klippel obtained his medical degree at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. He completed a residency in internal medicine at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Conn., and a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health and the University of California at San Diego. He previously served as Clinical Director of the National Institutes of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases and authored arthritis-related publications and textbook chapters during his time at the National Institutes of Health.
In his current position, Dr. Klippel gains additional business and leadership skills through interactions with governing boards across the country, while working on his passion for helping people with a disease he spent years researching.
“It keeps me grounded in traditional things that I value, making a difference in the lives of people with arthritis,” says Dr. Klippel about the foundation.
Transitioning to an Executive Career
Doctors contemplating a career switch to executive management often seek counsel from Linney or others at the ACPE. They come from various backgrounds and specialties and frequently have already volunteered for management duties and discovered they enjoy it, says Linney.
Recruiters have told Linney recently of fierce competition for physician executive job openings. Annual salaries for doctors in executive roles range from $250,000 for entry-level positions, to $350,000 and higher for some CEO posts, she says. That’s typically an increase from a traditional clinical practice setting unless the doctor is a surgeon or in a high-paying specialty.
One reason physicians are hired for executive roles is that, from a management perspective, they can stand their ground with other physicians, says Linney, who has taught an ACPE course on managing physicians. “Anybody else can talk to a doctor and the doctor can say ‘You don’t understand. You do not know about patient care. You do not know what I’m dealing with here,’ she says. “Physician to physician, that cannot be said.”
The demanding job of an executive includes financial responsibility and accountability over much larger budgets than are typical in a medical practice. The ACPE offers courses for doctors turned executives to teach them about financial business applications, as well as graduate programs at various campuses across the United States.
“To be sure there are business managers and there are chief financial officers that will help you as an executive, it’s good to have some kind of a base of knowledge of how to handle that stuff (that) you don’t get taught in medical school,” advises Dr. Lahita, who took leadership courses to enhance his understanding of finances.
Challenges and Rewards
Drs. Lahita, Doyle, and Klippel say that the best way to handle the inevitable politics of an executive job is to lead by example, respect others’ opinions, and build trust and confidence as a leader.
“You have to be honest and transparent,” says Dr. Klippel. “You have to show that you have a vision and a dedication to working with others to achieve that vision.”
The position offers a great opportunity to study human behavior, says Dr. Lahita.
“I always keep in the back of my mind, that I’ve seen people at their lowest and people at their best,” says Dr. Lahita. “And the people at their best can always go to their lowest very quickly and the people at the lowest level can become very prominent and very successful quickly as well.”
Dr. Doyle, like Drs. Lahita and Klippel, says she finds executive leadership gratifying because the work can positively impact the lives of many. “If you can help bring a new medicine to the market for a population of patients, that’s a great contribution and very rewarding,” says Dr. Doyle.
Catherine Kolonko is a medical writer based in California.
