Learning from Experience and Beyond Medicine: Transforming Medical Culture

Tell us about your career path.

I decided to go to medical school late in college, where I was a biochemistry major at the University of Notre Dame. I took the MCAT as a senior and spent a gap year doing ENT outcomes research at Washington University in St. Louis. I then graduated from medical school at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and completed otolaryngology residency at the University of Missouri.

Can you cite any particular instance or individuals that influenced your choices?

My research mentors in high school and college encouraged me to pursue lifelong learning and supported my decision to spend my gap year doing outcomes research. I took a wonderful medical ethics course during my junior year, taught by a physician-priest, and decided to pursue an MD rather than PhD degree.

What challenges have you faced in your medical career?

People still expect their doctor to look or act a certain way. There are cases where patients will defer to a younger junior male resident in the room, even when the female chief resident is at their bedside and talking with them. These types of occurrences will continue to happen until the mainstream population is used to expecting a different kind of doctor than the current narrow-minded, and perhaps old-fashioned, stereotype.

 There is also this sense that some people think their surgeons are, or should be, one-dimensional people. That’s not real life!

Have you had an Ah-Ha moment? Or is there anything else that has impacted your career trajectory or work within or outside medicine that has been a significant influence?

Residency training can be grueling at best and abusive at worst. Since graduating, I have dedicated my time outside of the hospital to creating resources for current trainees. Based on the tools and skills that I wish I had – but didn’t – in residency, I created a brand called Rethinking Residency that has static and dynamic resources for current, prospective, or recent trainees. There are a wide array of resources ranging from the super practical (how to get a contract lawyer, things to consider when starting a family in residency) to the personal (taking a mental health sabbatical during training, self-care). I have written a series on DBT(dialectical behavior therapy) informed skills (including distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, and emotional regulation) that can be used in the operating room if a trainee is under duress. 

I have had the privilege of giving Grand Rounds and speaking with medical students and residents across the country on the importance of Interpersonal Effectiveness skills and Distress Tolerance skills (the latter being particularly crucial for any trainees who spend time in the operating room). I discuss many of these skills as they relate to the culture of medical and surgical training on my podcast, Promising Young Surgeon.

The reality is that most physicians perpetuate the behavior and workplace personas that have been modeled for them. Historically, those have not necessarily been conducive to an effective or psychologically safe environment, neither for working nor learning. We cannot change other people, we can only change ourselves – I encourage physicians to examine the ways that they have been treated and taught during their journeys to becoming a physician or surgeon, and thoughtfully keep the elements that were productive and kind, while re-considering those that were not. 

Connecting with people outside medicine is life-affirming, and I highly recommend this to any physician. There’s a great deal that healthcare can learn and borrow from industry (e.g. business, aviation) as well, with regards to formal leadership training, communication and strategy.

Given your lived experiences, do you have any advice for women in medicine?

I am a big quote person. One of my favorite quotes about careers is from Cheryl Strayed: “Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life.” My world opened up when I stopped identifying only as a “surgical resident” or a “surgeon,” because that was a very limiting mindset, and also made it difficult to handle setbacks related to my experience as a resident physician. A related quote from Nayyirah Waheed is, “I don’t pay attention to the world ending. It has ended for me many times and began again the next morning.”