Leadership in the ICU with Dr. Cristin Mount

COL (Dr.) Cristin Mount is an Army Critical Care Medicine physician currently stationed at Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, WA. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Scranton and completed medical school at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland in 2003. She did an Internal Medicine Internship and Residency at Madigan and moved to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., for Critical Care Medicine fellowship. 

After fellowship, she returned to Madigan as the Director, Critical Care Services and promptly deployed with the 28th Combat Support Hospital to Baghdad, Iraq where she served as the sole Intensivist and the theater consultant for Critical Care and Internal Medicine. She is the only woman to serve as Chief, Department of Medicine and the Deputy Commander of Medical Services.  Currently she serves as the Critical Care Medicine Consultant to the Army Surgeon General.

She is a Master of the American College of Physicians, and past Governor of the Army Chapter of the ACP. She is married to COL George Mount, an Army Rheumatologist, and they have three small boys under the age of 7.

Any views expressed during this interview reflect those of Dr. Mount and do not represent official views of the Army Medical Department, Department of the Army or Defense Health Agency. 

We hope you enjoy this episode where we discuss her journey through medicine and leadership as well as leadership in the ICU. Welcome to Leading the Rounds. 

Questions We Asked: 

• How did you become involved in medical leadership? 
• How did you adjust to becoming a leader out of training? 
• What are some things that help you lead in stressful situations? 
• Can you discuss your article Ten Leadership Principles from the Military Applied to Critical Care and why you felt writing it was important? 
• What is unique about leadership in the Intensive Care Unit? 
• How do you develop a good care team? 
• How do you balance being firm in a stressful leadership moment vs. being aggressive and condescending? 
• How do you practice adaptive leadership? 
• Advice for medical leaders? 
• Books? 

Quotes & Ideas: 

• When taking a new leadership position, “recognize that you’re going to feel overwhelmed, and then sit back, learn, and ask questions.” 
• In moments of panic, “put your helmet on, put your kevlar on, and march in a straight line.” 
• You can study leadership, but you also need to practice. Look for everyday small moments where you can practice your leadership skills so they are ready when you need them. 
• “Every day there's an opportunity to practice a leadership technique in your personal or work life.” 
• Ten Leadership Principles from the Military Applied to Critical Care
• Leadership in the ICU: contrasts between problem solving without assessment of why things are happening vs. paralysis by analysis 
• To be a great leader in the ICU, you have to be able to make decisions without having all of the information. 
• “The success of the team means the success of the patient.” 
• In addition to placing yourself in stressful situations, you can rehearse in your mind what you would do if you would have been placed into that environment. 
• “As you are in a position to set boundaries to which work is not allowed, you have to set them.” 

Book Suggestions: 

• Complications by Atul Gawande 
• We Were Soldiers Once and Young by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway
• The Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson