Teaching negotiation skills to medical trainees enhances their leadership development

Abstract

In health care, negotiation is a crucial skill that physicians apply in many contexts, from delegating clinical duties to navigating work terms. Various strategies and approaches can improve the efficacy of these interactions, and it is increasingly important for medical curricula to be adapted in a way that fosters the development of certain skill sets centred around leadership. Negotiation falls into this category and is crucial in developing both management and clinical capacities. Although the literature identifies the relation between knowledge and skill in negotiating, there has been limited integration into curricular activities. This article provides an overview of negotiation strategies as examined in the literature. It includes the commonly used positional negotiation strategy as well as the more effective principled negotiation strategy developed by the Harvard Negotiation Project. We compare the usefulness of these two strategies using a real-world scenario and summarize the literature exploring the gap in the skill of negotiation among trainees. This can also serve to identify ways in which it can be incorporated as a standard in medical education. Overall, with the push for leadership development, we propose that negotiation should not be a skill that is expected to be gained through work experience, but as a formal part of the medical education curriculum.