DGTL Voices | Patrick McGill | Grieving Employees, Grieving Patients

15 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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In this interview segment, Patrick McGill recounts a pivotal moment early in his career when he was asked to cover a family physician’s practice after the physician was killed in a plane crash. Initially intending to serve only temporarily while a permanent replacement was found, McGill ended up staying for six years before moving to Community Health Network. He describes this experience as his greatest leadership lesson, emphasizing the challenge of leading grieving employees and patients and the broader shift it caused in his understanding of leadership—moving from a focus on clinical tasks to caring for people holistically.

Chapters

Was there a pivotal moment in your life that fundamentally changed your trajectory?
The first practice that I ever joined, I was working in urgent care after I finished my residency. I was actually looking for jobs back in Georgia, and there was a physician who had been a family physician for about 25 years or so who was killed in a plane crash. And the hospital that I was working at urgent care called me and said, would you cover the practice? And I said, sure, I'll cover it. I'm not doing anything else. I'm working in urgent care. Thought I would do it until they found a permanent person and 6 years later, I guess I was the permanent person. And then that was when I came to Community Health Network. And that was the greatest leadership lesson, even in the rest of my career, taking over a practice with grieving employees, grieving patients. And really, I had to learn to take care of people who had diabetes or had hypertension, but it was really taking care of people. So that was the greatest leadership lesson. I think that changed kind of fundamentally, fundamentally how I think about leadership.