HealthManagement, Volume 16 - Issue 4, 2016

INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR TIENUSH RASSAF


HealthManagement.org, Europe’s leading multidisciplinary healthcare management platform, welcomes Prof. Tienush Rassaf as Editor-in-Chief, Cardiology, HealthManagement.org. Prof. Rassaf is Director of the Department of Cardiology and Vascular Medicine at the Westgerman Heart- and Vascular Center, University Hospital Essen in Germany. He gave an interview to HealthManagement.org about the present and future of health management and leadership, where he reflects on personal thoughts and experiences working as a cardiologist and a leader.

 

What should cardiologists learn about management and leadership?
 

The further we advance in our medical career as cardiologists, the more we have to face the challenges of management and leadership. We should not make the mistake and see this as a problem, but rather as a chance and an opportunity. Taking a role in management and leadership is a privilege and belongs to the responsibilities of every cardiologist, even or especially early in his/her career. What kind of challenges do we have to face? Let’s focus for example on education: we all want to be trained, we all want to learn more about novel techniques, and we all expect to be educated. But we should not forget that, when starting our career, it is also our commitment and our responsibility to start training and educating the next generations very early. We may all see deficits in our own education; what we should do, however, is to take responsibility and try to make it better for the next generation. Motivating, inspiring, educating, training and recruiting young students and physicians is the genuine obligation of every cardiologist.

 

How do you balance clinical and leadership excellence?

 

I believe that you cannot do one without the other! Clinical excellence is inseparable from leadership excellence. Cardiology is a very fast-growing and developing field. Treatment of complex cardiological diseases requires teamwork. Teamwork within the department and with colleagues from other departments is indispensable. To manage this, you have to be a good leader.

 
How can we achieve a good level of engagement between healthcare managers and clinicians?

 

We have to learn from each other. With the growing economic challenges, strong interaction between health managers and clinicians is becoming more and more important. Practising medicine, and especially cardiology, at a hospital and/or a practice has changed over the past years. Meetings and round tables are a good tool. The professional societies more and more offer seminars and courses to train physicians. The clinicians of tomorrow have to realise that health management is part of the job. We have to start very early in our career as physicians to train other physicians, ideally during their studies.

 

How important is the role of journals in the field of health management for the dissemination of healthcare management practices?

 

Very important! Problems and solutions of healthcare management practices can thus be disseminated. However, we need journals of high quality.



"It's Always Too Soon to Give Up"


Read Prof. Rassaf's Zoom On profile 
at https://iii.hm/5by