This story is one of more than 20 health system profiles featured in the 2025 AMA Joy in Medicine® magazine (log into your AMA account to view).
Physicians-in-training spend more than a decade after high school preparing to practice medicine, learning about everything from microbiology to how to perform physical exams. But there’s one critical part of their jobs in which they often get little, if any, formal education: leadership.
“The training that we get in medical school, residency and fellowship is mainly concentrated on the clinical and technical aspects of our fields. It allows us to execute very effectively in our specific areas of expertise, but what we don't get educated on is the ability to influence and lead people and to be agents of positive change,” says Luis Garcia, MD, president of the Rush Medical Group in Chicago and a surgeon who specializes in advanced laparoscopic and bariatric surgeries.
But Dr. Garcia says that physicians often have the weight of expectations on their shoulders, whether they’ve been trained in management or not.
“By having MD behind our name, everybody expects that we are going to be good leaders,” he says.
In his career, Dr. Garcia has held a variety of leadership positions at organizations including Sanford Health in South Dakota, which received designation in 2023 from the AMA Joy in Medicine® Health System Recognition Program. Rush University Medical Center also received recognition in 2023.
“As physicians, our biggest concern is the quality and the outcomes of our care, and we have the most sincere commitment to our patients—that if they're trusting us with their most valuable asset, which is their life or their health, that we are going to deliver to perfection,” Dr. Garcia says. “That puts a lot of responsibility in the shoulders of a physician and a lot of stress.”
“The added administrative tasks, documentation and regulatory requirements just add to that stress,” he says, “making a recipe for burnout.”
To lead well, communicate
“As we develop support systems for our clinicians, we aim to get them to feel that our profession is a profession and not a job—get them to understand that in everything we do, there is a value that is much more powerful and much bigger than any administrative task,” Dr. Garcia says. “That value is to deliver on that promise to our patients.”
Relatively new to the position at Rush, Dr. Garcia says he’s focusing on building a framework for positive leadership using an approach that focuses on trust, respect and honesty. Some key leadership skills, he says, are the abilities to communicate, energize, define common goals and guide change—both with patients and with colleagues.
