Wisconsin Medical Society Foundation

Leading Healthy Work Systems

The Wisconsin Medical Society (Society) will design and pilot a leadership program for physicians called “Leading Healthy Work Systems.” The program is intended for physician leaders from across the state who represent or influence their physician colleagues’ occupational health and wellbeing. When physician leaders have access to the research on healthy and productive work systems, they can more easily articulate and act on physician needs, and influence legislative and organizational decisions affecting physicians’ abilities to function at their highest levels as healers.

The program will use a systems engineering, evidence-based approach to organizational health, based on key research findings in five interdependent areas (i.e., person, task, technology, physical and social environment and organization). This model is used by human factors engineers to design and evaluate jobs and organizations and provides a framework for root cause analyses of organizational behavior and performance.

Many leadership programs address one or two areas of the system in-depth. This program will be designed to illustrate the interdependencies between areas; for example, how technology impacts job design, how organizational incentive plans affect employee engagement, how job design impacts innovation. It is focused on supporting physicians to shape their roles within health care so that they enjoy healthier working lives and can effectively translate that health to the work systems they lead.