Physician leadership development: Evidence-informed design tempered with real-life experience

This article describes key considerations for creation of evidence-informed in-house physician leadership development. Ten elements extracted from a scan of the peer-reviewed and grey literature are presented, and key learnings at the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre, a quaternary academic health sciences centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, are highlighted. Each element is briefly described with practical considerations and challenges to implementation outlined in the context of the former Capital District Health Authority, where the authors collaborated to create in-house physician leadership development prior to the consolidation of health districts in that province. The purpose of this article is to share how the authors used evidence to plan physician leadership development and to explore the additional situational and contextual factors and considerations needed for implementation.