Tetrahedron of medical academics: reasons for training in management, leadership and informatics.

Medical school professors and lecturers are often called to be practicing clinicians, researchers in their own field, in addition to executing their education and curricular responsibilities. Some further accumulate healthcare management responsibilities. These areas pose conflicting demands on time and intellectual activity, but despite their apparent differences, knowledge and skills from management, leadership and informatics may prove useful in helping to smooth these conflicts and hence increase personal effectiveness in these areas. This article tries to clarify some concepts and advance why training in management, leadership and health informatics would seem particularly useful for the medical academic. As opposed to the idea of educational dispersion/specialization, the concept of an integrative tetrahedronal education framework is advanced as a way to plan workshops and other faculty development activities which could be implemented transnationally as well as locally.