As I take time to sit back and reflect on my experience as an administrative fellow with the North Shore-LIJ Health System, many things come to mind. The fellowship program is structured in a unique way which allows one to rotate through several departments within the Health System. At first I was overwhelmed by the size of the organization, but those fears were quickly displaced with the help of Margaret McDonough, the program administrative manager and each preceptor provided at each rotation site. Furthermore, the program provides a mentor who is a senior executive in the health system to each of the fellows; this one on one rapport provided me a person to ask questions to and helped with meeting other senior leaders in the process. These individuals provided me with a level of comfort and knowledge always informed me that they had an open door policy. The structure of the program through its rotations allows for great exposure to how the entire health system functions as a whole and to many of the senior level people within the organization. This provided various opportunities and useful knowledge in key areas of a health system as well as being able to learn leadership skills and qualities from successful healthcare executives.

During each rotation I was paired with a senior level preceptor that helped guide me through their particular department and assisted in carving out and focusing on areas that I felt were most interesting to me. This allowed for the ability to apply my knowledge learned from my graduate studies to different projects.

Another aspect of this fellowship program is the informal networks that you begin to develop from day one. You will begin to build key relationships with your fellow colleagues from your fellowship class, but at the same time there is a network of previous fellows within the organization that are always willing to help you during this time.

My goal for this administrative fellowship program was to learn how a large, integrated health system works from the inside out, while at the same time learning more about my own skill sets and what areas of healthcare administration I would flourish in. I believe that this program has definitely helped me accomplish most of my goal to become a strong and effective healthcare leader.