But, after all, what is medicine? As Alexandre Valentim Lourenço emphasizes in his recent Public chronicle, medicine is not just a subject now; It is a set of sciences that interact in a multidisciplinary way to integrate engineering with artificial intelligence areas, from robotics to communication technologies.
Medicine is no longer a science. In addition to the undeniable advantages that these multiple interactions entail, there is a growing need to provide doctors with management skills: from the management of material resources that this plural interaction requires, from the management of people that intersect in these areas, and from the management of expectations of these people, empowering them with tools to avoid losing focus on the patient as the medicine main goal.
Like the opposite search, the disparity of answers that can arise from these questions can only come to a common conclusion: for doctors and managers, the purpose of their profession is the people. Today, and increasingly, a doctor, without even realizing it, is a manager. And with more or less formal education, it's up to the doctor to manage and interact. As a manager does.
When I signed up for the Nova SBE Executive Education Management Postgraduate Program, I came across a definition of management that wasn't part of my previous lexicon. From finance to marketing, from human resources to operations, I could not help noticing that the multidisciplinarity that today covers medicine is a concept acquired in the Management Dictionary.
Curious for someone who, like me, has been taking a course in science that (I was convinced) was based on more concrete data than the current multipurpose of medicine requires. And management too. Also curious is the fact that medicine was born from people to people. I realized in the Management Postgraduate Program too. By the way, what would become of it if, directly or indirectly, people were not part of the equation?
I think I came to a conclusion. After a medical degree and a postgraduate degree in management, I cannot undermine the ability of a doctor to be a good manager. Just as I can only emphasize that a (good) manager has the ability to be a good doctor. Because in the end, it all comes down to people.
From them and to them, the good and the bad doctors, as well as the managers, relationship architects, and curators of corporate or personal ills, more or less obviously approach those who seek them.
In the face of these multiple similarities, my postgraduate summary in management intersects with the culmination of six years studying medicine and is summarized in a few lines: in both these areas there is no answer; there is the ability to make it the most appropriate in its context. Making the analogy with the well-known adage: in medicine as in management not always, not ever.