Gurpreet Dhaliwal

Health care systems need physician engagement to deliver high value care. In order to engage the profession and change the way physicians view their role in an organization, managers and leaders need to understand the psychological forces that govern physician behavior. In this talk, Dr. Dhaliwal discusses the powerful influences of social norms, uncertainty (including malpractice), and professional identity and how these forces can be leveraged to engage physicians in system-wide goals and initiatives, including the effects on healthcare reform.

Even since IBM’s Watson supercomputer defeated human Jeopardy champions in 2011, the medical world has been abuzz about the possibility that a supercomputer can one day diagnose patients. With technological developments like driverless cars and the promise of Big Data, this seems like a forgone conclusion. In this talk, Dr. Dhaliwal examines the reality of teaching a computer how to diagnose the human condition. He touches on the promise and challenges of a diagnostic droid and raises the question of which is more remarkable: the computer and its artificial intelligence, or the human brain it’s trying to emulate?

Health care systems need physician leadership in order to effect change. Physicians and non-physicians alike may equate “leadership” with major administrative and organizational positions. In this talk, Dr. Dhaliwal outlines a broader view of leadership with examples of the many ways physicians can and must lead – in their own clinic, in their group, or in their organization. The theme of the coming change in the medical profession’s identity is integrated throughout.

The most expensive piece of equipment in all of medicine is the physician’s mind. Years of study and hundreds of thousands of dollars are invested into its development, and the decisions it makes drive most of the dollars spent in health care. In this talk, Dr. Dhaliwal provides a “user’s guide to the brain” and shows how physicians navigate between pattern recognition and analytical thinking when making medical decisions. Both the hope and hype around information technology solutions (e.g, IBM Watson) are discussed.

A physician’s diagnostic and therapeutic skills are a core part of their identity, a source of professional satisfaction, and a major driver of health outcomes (good and bad) and expenditures. In this talk, Dr. Dhaliwal emphasizes the difference between becoming an experienced physician and expert physician. He outlines action steps that physicians can adopt from other professions who engage in career-long continuous improvement of their decision-making skills. Clinicians and non-clinicians leave the talk understanding how they can go from good to great.