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Traditional Medical Training May Actually Impede a Physician's Ability to Solve Complex Problems Because It Is Based on Vertical, Linear and Traditional Thinking. Vertical versus Lateral Thinking Vertical vs. Lateral Thinking

Physician leaders operate in a realm of uncertainty and guide complex adaptive health care systems. Managed health care, compensation-based guidelines and the need for cost-effective systems fueled the necessity to deliver value-based, high-quality patient care. The need to better understand complex systems is especially critical in light of the magnitude of medical errors as noted by the Institute of Medicine.1 The challenges faced in today’s health care organizations are immensely complicated, which often necessitate sophisticated and non-linear thinking and solutions. Does medical training impede the ability of physicians to resolve leadership challenges? Traditionally, physician leaders have depended on reasoning and logical/sequential thinking to solve organizational problems. As described by Hauser, this process usually consists of “thinking that proceeds in a stepwise fashion applying specific rules in order to reach a definite goal.”2 It is linear and left-brained, selecting only what is relevant and “correct” to achieve a goal. This traditional way of thinking is referred to as “vertical thinking.”3 Much of the time that is spent in undergraduate and graduate medical education cultivates this form of