The VA provides a wide range of research opportunities including basic sciences, clinical trials, epidemiology, and health services research. Unique to VA research are VA-specific funding mechanisms, centralized research infrastructures, the Million Veteran Program, the largest national clinical database, and others.

This podcast explores ways in which the Veterans Health Administration, or VA, offers excellent opportunities for career development and advancement.

• Access to care for patients with neurological disorders is extremely limited.
• What can academic departments do to improve access to care for neurology patients?
• This leadership minute discuss ways to address the neurology access problem through:
  • Inspiration
  • Incentivization
  • Innovation

• The potential amount of obligations for any leader in an organization is infinite.
• There is no perfect method for how to "protect" yourself to be able to do the best job possible in all things required of you.
• Key points: prioritize by:
  • What is strategically important for your role?
  • What is important to you personally?
  • What is important to success of your team and cannot be delegated?
• Important take-away: Be honest to yourself and others.

This leadership minute will provide an overview of how the U.S. Graduate Medical Education funding model works, including discussion of possible mechanisms to increase funding lines in your program.

K Awardees are in an exciting and pivotal period in their careers, building technical, communication, and mentoring skills to lead their own research teams. This period is also one of great vulnerability, with competing demands in their lives as scientists, clinicians, and teachers, as well as in their personal lives. The support of departmental leaders and faculty mentors is absolutely critical in helping K awardees navigate these potential barriers to develop their own creative and high-impact research program.

There is a significant shortage of neurologists in the United States. Much of the potential neurology workforce is non-US international medical graduates who have limitations based on the rules of the J-1 visa program. Understanding how to use the waiver system can be beneficial in improving recruitment of neurologists.

As leaders in neurology, it is vital for our health care system to recruit and to retain and diverse workforce. Institutional advocacy for international medical graduates (IMGs) can improve retention efforts for a department both for patient care as well as for growth into global and diversified research networks. In this episode, we will discuss the pathway for an IMG to train and work in the US and some of the issues that it is important to know about to help promote the career success and satisfaction of international physicians.

While faculty recruitment is always an important job for department leadership, retaining high-performing faculty may have a greater impact over time. This Leadership Minute discusses some strategies to optimize faculty retention in an increasing competitive environment for neurologists.

Measurement of clinical performance, driven by the requirements of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, accrediting bodies like The Joint Commission, and benchmarking companies like Vizient, is ubiquitous in academic neurology. Forward-thinking department chairs have an opportunity to design and implement highly effective, sustainable quality improvement programs by emphasizing faculty training, recognition, and collaboration.