Dr. Emrick's Books and Articles
Published Books: https://www.amazon.com/author/kellyemrickphd
If you care about being a leader, you should care about sharing
those ideas with others. Not the decorative kind that gathers dust, but the
practical notes, drafts you wrestle with, white papers you publish, and books
you someday ship. Writing is not a side task. It’s how you clarify your
thoughts, create teachable knowledge, and make space for others to join you.
I’ve spent most of my career doing two things at once: leading people and
jotting things down. Each book started as scribbles in a notebook, became
outlines and tables, grew into essays or guides, and then opened to others for
questioning, borrowing, or improving. I don’t see writing as a side task. I see
it as part of leadership. When I write, I organize my thoughts. When I share, I
turn private insights into something others can find helpful. I’ve learned that
the page is a better mirror than memory. An idea often feels sharp in my mind
until I try to explain it in clear sentences. That resistance is useful. It
forces me to choose words, clarify assumptions, and express my ideas. Writing
also does social work. Writing and publishing take what a few have learned from
hard lessons and make it available and contestable for everyone. There is a
personal side as well. Over time, the work I create, the ideas I develop, and
the story I tell reveal why we lead the way we do. People sometimes ask how I
make room for all of this. The honest answer is that it takes real time.
Writing pulls attention away from, honestly, other fun things. It needs quiet
moments, which leadership rarely provides. I’ve had to create habits that keep
this work sustainable. I capture ideas first, then refine them later. Early in
a project, I allow myself to write messily, by hand, quickly. I switch to a
keyboard only when the structure starts to form.
Not every draft turns into a book. Some become memos,
briefing notes, or short essays. The length matters less than how widely they
are circulated. Once a book idea is written, narrated, and published, it enters
the world and belongs to those who will use it. A quick tour of my library
shows how this habit accumulates. In Population Health, I developed
foundational formulas and metrics to facilitate effective communication between
executives and clinicians. In Healthcare Finance, I explained payer mix, cost
structure, and sensitivity analysis in a way that non-finance leaders could
understand and apply in everyday tasks. Radiology Operations turned field notes
on throughput, referral patterns, and failure points into checklists and simple
dashboards. Healthcare Quality simplified methods and measurements into steps
that managers could run at the unit level. Predictive Analytics explores both
the potential and the limits of modeling in clinical settings, with examples
where simple baselines outperform complex models. Leadership Short Stories
captured moments that taught me about clarity and courage. Each project started
small and borrowed from the last. Together, they form a body of work that
others can inherit and improve.
There is joy in this, but not the easy kind. The pleasure
comes from watching ideas leave my mind and out into the world. A nursing
manager quotes a paragraph from Patient Centered Care in a grant proposal; a quality
manager adapts a metric from Healthcare Quality; a peer rewrites a section of
the Value Based Care Model and shows me a better way to stage the argument; a
radiology manager makes use of key performance indicators. It is these moments
that repay the long evenings and slow Saturdays that went into the drafts. They
also remind me that writing is less about proving you are right and more about
making it easier for others to do right by patients and communities.
Let me close with a simple scene that has repeated across
the years. It's late in the evening, and the house is quiet. A document is open
on the screen: half narrative, half table. The working title might be
"Precision Leadership" or "Healthcare on Life Support." I
began with a messy page in a notebook before the moon rose. By the moonlight
oil, the ideas started to take shape. Writing rolls into weeks, then into
months. That is the outcome I want. Leaders change systems by turning their
knowledge into words that others can pick up, test, and refine. That is why I
keep writing and sharing. It takes patience. It takes time I could spend on
something easier. Yet every time a page I write helps someone else do their
work with more clarity, the effort feels more than worth it. So, what part can
you play to share your knowledge?
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