When world-renowned neurosurgeon Philip Stieg, PhD, MD, was recruited to establish the Department of Neurological Surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine in 2000, he viewed the new department as a diamond in the rough — a place where he could make his mark.
The appointment was an opportunity to rethink resident training and establish new professional standards. “I wanted the residency program to be rigorous, meaning that I believe that becoming a neurosurgeon is a little bit like becoming a Navy SEAL,” he says. “What we do is hard. But you also have to be human.”
To help meld the concepts of expertise and humanity, Dr. Stieg established seven pillars that would infuse and ultimately define the department’s operation both clinically and culturally: integrity, collegiality, compassion, perseverance, leadership, scientific curiosity, and technical superiority.
A Legacy of Leadership
“I felt that I had to give everybody some principles by which they knew I stood strongly and would be unwilling to violate,” Dr. Stieg says. “Not everybody's going to achieve great things in every one of these, but these are the core competencies that everybody in our group has to have.” The seven core principles are now embedded in the department’s DNA and have expanded beyond the institution’s walls.
“The thing that I'm most proud of is emphasizing the importance of emotional IQ,” says Dr. Stieg. “That was nonexistent in the development of neurosurgery. When I started, a compassionate neurosurgeon was a rare breed.”
Yet that combination of excellence and empathy in the field is paramount for the patient. “Every day, we're going into somebody's brain or their spine, which carries the risk of altering the quality of their life, if not their existence,” says Dr. Stieg. “You would have to be in human not to feel some level of anxiety or trepidation. There's this sense of awe and respect that one has to have.”