The Calling: Why Healthcare Is Different
Quint Studer's The Calling is about the purpose that draws people into healthcare, and what leaders must do to keep it alive. It is the book I recommend most often to people starting their careers.
Healthcare is, in the end, a business about people: those who need care and those who give it. I read The Calling in a couple of days, mostly because it described my own working life so accurately. Studer, who has spent decades helping hospitals improve their culture, writes about the reasons people choose healthcare and the ways organisations can strengthen or wear down that commitment.
What the book covers
Studer explains, in practical terms, how to build a healthcare organisation around its people: how to select staff who share its values, how to prepare them well, and how to sustain both employee and patient satisfaction over time. His central message is that the sense of calling most healthcare workers bring with them is an organisation's greatest asset, and also its most fragile.
What it means for leaders
Hire for values, train for skills. Technical competence can be taught. Commitment to patients is much harder to instil.
Protect the calling from the system. Bureaucracy, poor tools and unclear priorities wear down even the most committed professionals. Leaders should remove the obstacles that stand between staff and the work they came to do.
Connect people to purpose. Remind staff, often and specifically, of the difference their work makes. Patients' stories are more powerful than any mission statement.
Look after experience on both sides. Employee satisfaction and patient satisfaction rise and fall together.
Who should read it
Every young professional entering healthcare, and every leader responsible for keeping them. The audiobook, read by Studer himself, is particularly good.
Questions for leadership teams
- What in our organisation most often gets between our staff and the work they came to do?
- How do we remind staff of the difference they make?
- Do our recruitment processes test for values as rigorously as for skills?
People come to healthcare with a calling. A leader's job is to make sure the organisation does not take it away.
Dr Fatih Mehmet Gul is a physician and healthcare executive who has built, commissioned and led hospitals across the Gulf and Türkiye. He is an Honorary Professor at UCL Global Business School for Health, author of Connected Care, and host of The Chief Healthcare Officer podcast.
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