Kristina Duffin, MD, MS is a professor in the Department of Dermatology and recently appointed Dean of the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah.

Kristina Duffin, MD

Kristina Duffin, MD, MS, built her LEADderm session around personal elements of leadership and the experiments that grew from them.

She referenced the book "Total Leadership," which asks leaders to define the qualities they bring to work, home, spiritual, and community life.

Duffin advised new leaders to carefully evaluate which problems are truly theirs to solve, since leadership roles require stepping back from certain prior responsibilities.

Leadership in health care is often less intentional and more of a learned process than many clinicians expect, according to Kristina Duffin, MD, MS, who discussed the origins of her LEADderm session, ‘Lessons in Leadership: Elements & Experiments,’ in an on-site interview with 

Duffin, dean of the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah, said she built the talk around her own leadership journey to help address common misconceptions about how leaders emerge in fields such as 

Key Lessons in Leadership as a Clinician, With Kristina Duffin, MD

Duffin said the session wove together the personal elements she has found valuable in leadership with the experiments that resulted from applying them. Drawing on themes discussed throughout LEADderm, including personal resilience, well-being, community building, and public speaking, Duffin said she wanted to start by identifying which qualities and behaviors support sustained thriving in leadership roles.

What Framework Did Duffin Use to Explore Leadership Qualities?

Duffin cited the book "Total Leadership" as a key influence, noting it challenges leaders to examine what qualities, traits, and behaviors they bring across 4 domains: work life, home life, spiritual or self life, and community life. She described this as an ongoing exploration relevant to any leader, forming the foundation of the "elements" portion of her talk. She then discussed how to deploy those elements in practice, framing effective leaders as chief problem solvers, chief vision setters, and chief cultural attachés.

What Is Duffin's Top Tip for Clinicians Moving Into Leadership?

Duffin said health care providers are leaders by default, given their responsibility for guiding teams and patients toward better outcomes. She said a critical shift occurs as clinicians move into more traditional leadership roles, since responsibilities that once defined their work may no longer be appropriate or feasible to continue. Duffin emphasized the importance of carefully evaluating whether a given problem is truly one's own to solve, citing a colleague's guidance that a leader cannot perform CPR and run the code simultaneously. She noted this often means seeing fewer patients directly while taking on more supervisory and educational responsibilities to help other physicians grow.

Editor's Note: This transcript has been edited for grammar and clarity using artificial intelligence tools. Duffin had no relevant disclosures of note.

Duffin K. Lessons in Leadership: Elements & Experiments (CME). Session presented at LEADderm. Aug 29-30, 2026.

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Kristina Duffin, MD, MS, shares lessons from her LEADderm leadership session, including how to define which problems are truly yours to solve.

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