Strengthen your leadership skills to reach your professional aspirations. Join physicians from across Canada in expert-led and accredited programs to advance in topics relevant for medical leaders.
The Physician Leadership Institute (PLI) offers a variety of scheduled and on-demand programs to meet your learning needs. These programs are designed to develop your leadership skills at any stage of your medical career from helping you build a strong foundation up to advanced leadership for overseeing teams and organizations.
Already enrolled in a PLI program? Access the Learning Portal.
Upcoming live programs
These live, online programs allow for valuable peer-to-peer learning and connection. CMA members receive a preferred registration rate of $1,400 plus tax (non-member fee is $1750) plus applicable taxes. These courses are available to physicians only.
Crucial Conversations in healthcare
Apr. 10–11, 2025
10 am – 5 pm ET
In any workplace, it can be challenging to dialogue and engage with people when they don’t feel psychologically safe to speak up to share their perspectives, especially when their opinions may differ. The cost of not speaking up may be high, impacting decision-making, patient safety and employee wellness. Crucial Conversations© by Crucial Learning© helps you and your team achieve alignment and understanding on crucial matters through open dialogue. Learn to set good intentions, build safety, speak honestly and approach tough conversations in a way where everyone feels heard.
Conflict management and negotiation
Jun. 5–6, 2025
10 am – 5:30 pm ET
Effective management of conflict is critical in a high-stakes, dynamic environment like health care. Physicians and health care leaders who are skilled in navigating conflict can experience better decision-making and improved relationships, creativity and innovation and can enhance the patient experience. During this course, you’ll learn how to successfully manage conflict, including using facilitation and resolution processes, to face the most complex situations and difficult conversations with confidence.
Inclusive leadership: Cultivating psychologically and culturally safe working environments
September 25-26, 2025
Day 1: 10:00 am to 5:00 pm ET
Day 2: 10:00 am to 2:00 pm ET
Inclusive leaders recognize and embrace diversity, build trust and foster a sense of belonging where team members feel respected and empowered to speak up and contribute to improving organizational well-being and patient care. Inclusive leaders are curious, are aware of their own biases and blind spots, demonstrate cultural humility and actively seek out different perspectives to inform their decision-making. Inclusive leadership is a critical capability to increase engagement and well-being, develop a positive organizational culture and improve patient outcomes.
In this course, you will work with other physicians and/or health care leaders to identify moments of intervention and learn practical approaches to effect positive and sustainable change within your team or organization.
Strength-based leadership
November 20-21, 2025
10:00 am to 5:00 pm ET
The culture of health care tends to view leadership as “solving problems.” But the conventional wisdom of fixing weaknesses (i.e., find what’s wrong and try to correct it) has been shown to be limiting and ineffective in the long term. It can lead to uninspired individual and organizational performance and contribute to decreased motivation and stress. Focusing on what works and paying more attention to what intrinsically energizes people is a much more effective approach.
This interactive course will help participants accurately identify their personal strengths and leverage them using pragmatic strategies. It also offers ways leaders can identify and leverage the strengths of their people and teams to increase work engagement and well-being and drive innovation.
Looking for a different learning program? Let us know which topics you’re interested in and we’ll contact you as they become available.
Leadership Essentials
These on-demand programs are free, available to anyone in English or French and you can complete in an hour, anytime. They cover topics that strengthen the foundation for a successful career in any specialty or practice.
Building self-awareness and personal mastery
Successful leadership is grounded in self-awareness. It will help you make better decisions, build stronger relationships and communicate more effectively. Through self-reflective exercises, hands-on activities and self-assessments, you’ll examine your personal values and principles, thinking patterns, assumptions, and emotional skills and strengths. You’ll explore the potential of your unique leadership style and discover opportunities to build capabilities in alignment with your personal values and goals.
Communicating effectively
Effective communication with patients and colleagues can lead to increased patient knowledge, improved patient safety and better health outcomes. In this course, you’ll gain foundational skills to communicate with clarity and engage and invite dialogue with patients and colleagues.
Foundations of advocacy
Health advocacy is a core role for physicians and an important tool for influencing the system to produce positive change, reducing social barriers and impacting public policy. Despite the importance of advocacy, there is ambiguity about how to advocate effectively in health care. In this course, you’ll explore foundational advocacy principles and get some practical guidance that will help you to advocate at the individual, community and institutional levels.
Practical strategies for engaging health care teams
In this course, you’ll gain valuable insights into the attributes essential for effective leadership and explore practical tools to influence others and improve collaboration and engagement. You’ll examine strategies to effectively motivate others and build skills to gain commitment and cooperation from individuals outside your sphere of authority to foster common ground.
Foundations of physician wellness
Featuring national and international experts in physician health, this interactive course will take you through key wellness concepts, organizational factors that contribute to burnout, and evidence-based findings on the interventions shown to protect against burnout and foster well-being.
Featured learning from other health care organizations
Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA)
Explore workshops led by the CMPA, a trusted partner in learning aimed at the delivery of safe, quality medical care.
Canadian Society of Physician Leaders (CSPL)
Explore opportunities to access physician leadership coaching, mentoring, events and research.
CASCADES Canada
Explore programs for individuals and leaders working toward environmentally sustainable health care.
CHA Learning
Explore online leadership learning programs in areas of health care management, leadership and wellness.