Connect on LinkedIn this holiday season

The holidays can be a great time to do some networking with friends and family. You never know who's going to show up at that next holiday party. Connect with people on LinkedIn to stay in touch and to see how that relationship may open doors of opportunity for you in the future.

If you're new to LinkedIn, here are a few simple tips to get you started:

1. Find and join a few groups on LinkedIn and participate in some conversations to virtually meet people in that community. If you're a physician in a leadership position, join the American Association for Physician Leadership group on LinkedIn. Interested in entrepreneurship? Join the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs (SoPE) group on LinkedIn.

2. After you're updated your profile, reconnect with lost classmates. I'm sure they'll enjoy hearing from you after all those years. You may be surprised to hear what some people are doing now. Your surgeon colleague may be working for a big consulting firm. A dermatologist you know may be a medical director at a biopharmaceutical company.

3. Next, look at the list of alumni from your schools. LinkedIn makes it easy to identify alumni who may be in influential hiring positions. Perhaps one of them would be willing to offer an informational interview.

AHA Physician Leadership Forum

If you spend most of your time working in the inpatient setting, you're probably already familiar with the American Hospital Association's Physician Leadership Forum (PLF).

The PLF strives to make available resources to prepare today’s physician for tomorrow’s challenges. Building the next generation of care necessitates close collaboration between clinicians and administrators across the care continuum. With rapid changes in care delivery, high performing leadership teams are needed to combine high quality and high efficiency to deliver high value care.

Over the past few years, the AHA PLF has been collaborating with various organizations and working on initiatives such as:

• Continuing Medical Education as a Strategic Resource
• AMA-AHA Joint Leadership Conference on New Models of Care
• Physician Leadership: The Implications for a Transformed Delivery System
• Lifelong Learning: Physician Competency Development
• Creating the Hospital of the Future: Implications of Hospital-Focused Physician Practice
• Team-Based Health Care Delivery

You can learn more about the AHA PLF here.