Personality of Belgian physicians in a clinical leadership program

Abstract Background Physician and non-physician leadership development programs aim to improve organizational performance. Although a significant, positive relation between physicians’ leadership skills and patient outcomes, staff satisfaction and staff retention has been found, physicians are not formally trained in clinical leadership skills during their physician training. A lot of current healthcare leaders were chosen to take on leadership because of their productivity, published research, solid clinical skills, or because they were great educators, Heifetz RA. Leadership Without Easy Answers; 1994 although they often do not have the skills to build a team, resulting in dysfunctional teams and having to deal with conflicts and chaos. The first steps of a Clinical Leadership Program is to gain insight in one’s personality, one’s personal skills and one’s leadership growth potential, because this gives information on one’s natural leadership style. The aim of our research is to gain insight in the personality traits of healthcare professionals who are leading teams and to check (a) whether Belgian physicians with leadership ambition, share certain preferences, (b) whether physicians differ from other healthcare staff in terms of personality, (c) whether our sample of Belgian physicians differs from a population of physicians in the United States of America. Methods In-hospital physicians and non-physicians enrolled in a Clinical Leadership Program consented to participate. They explored their personal preferences across four dimensions, based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Their most suitable MBTI profile was determined with a self-assessment and a complementary guidance of an MBTI-coach. Chi-squared tests and logistic regression were performed to check distributions across different MBTI-dimensions and to assess the relation with profession and location. Results Among participating physicians significantly more preferences for ‘Thinking’ then for ‘Feeling’ were found. Non-physicians were found to be significantly more ‘Sensing’ and ‘Judging’ compared with physicians. No significant differences were found between physicians from our (Belgian) and the USA dataset. Conclusion Preferences of physicians proved to be different from those of non-physicians. ‘ISTJ’ is the most frequent personality profile both in Belgian and USA physicians

Factors for severe outcomes following SARS-CoV-2 infection in people with cystic fibrosis in Europe

Funding Information: Support statement: This paper was supported by an unrestricted grant from Chiesi Pharmaceuticals, Italy. The funder had no role in the planning, conduct, analysis or reporting of the study, nor did they review the draft paper before submission. Funding information for this article has been deposited with the Crossref Funder Registry. Publisher Copyright: © The authors 2021.Background Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in people with cystic fibrosis ( pwCF) can lead to severe outcomes. Methods In this observational study, the European Cystic Fibrosis Society Patient Registry collected data on pwCF and SARS-CoV-2 infection to estimate incidence, describe clinical presentation and investigate factors associated with severe outcomes using multivariable analysis. Results Up to December 31, 2020, 26 countries reported information on 828 pwCF and SARS-CoV-2 infection. Incidence was 17.2 per 1000 pwCF (95% CI: 16.0–18.4). Median age was 24 years, 48.4% were male and 9.4% had lung transplants. SARS-CoV-2 incidence was higher in lung-transplanted (28.6; 95% CI: 22.7–35.5) versus non-lung-transplanted pwCF (16.6; 95% CI: 15.4–17.8) ( p⩽0.001). SARS-CoV-2 infection caused symptomatic illness in 75.7%. Factors associated with symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection were age >40 years, at least one F508del mutation and pancreatic insufficiency. Overall, 23.7% of pwCF were admitted to hospital, 2.5% of those to intensive care, and regretfully 11 (1.4%) died. Hospitalisation, oxygen therapy, intensive care, respiratory support and death were 2-to 6-fold more frequent in lung-transplanted versus non-lung-transplanted pwCF. Factors associated with hospitalisation and oxygen therapy were lung transplantation, cystic fibrosis-related diabetes (CFRD), moderate or severe lung disease and azithromycin use (often considered a surrogate marker for Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection and poorer lung function). Conclusion SARS-CoV-2 infection yielded high morbidity and hospitalisation in pwCF. PwCF with forced expiratory volume in 1 s <70% predicted, CFRD and those with lung transplants are at particular risk of more severe outcomes.publishersversionPeer reviewe