A Scholar-Practitioner Perspective on a Leadership Development Program in Health Care: Integrating Connectivism Theory

The Problem The U.S. health care system is currently undergoing reform, shifting from a volume to a value-based model. This transformation calls for strong leadership among physicians; however, they are often not prepared for leading changes for multiple reasons. Furthermore, physicians can be a challenging group to train when it comes to nonmedical disciplines. Therefore, identifying what will engage physicians in learning nonclinical topics is crucial for effective leadership development. The Solution I attempt to discuss this aspect by utilizing a year-long leadership development program, which yielded great response from physicians in terms of perceived value of learning. Exploring a more recent learning theory (connectivism) that considers the role of building personal learning networks (PLNs), I describe how the program unfolded and how the slow but steady emergence of PLNs became the basis for the learning. I also illustrate how theory has been used to guide program development, leading to successful outcomes. The Stakeholders Scholar-practitioners within human resource development (HRD), and leadership development professionals can be inspired to apply connectivism as a lens to further understand adult learning theories in the era of information and technology as well as apply to the development of leadership programs aimed at highly skilled professional groups.