In the days after our national election, citizens, physicians, and patients alike observed election results that may potentially change the direction of healthcare.
On November 10th, 2016, Donald Trump released a new plan for health reform on his transition website. Read it here.
These are the top-trending, post-election articles among Doximity physicians:
Day One and Beyond: What Trump’s Election Really Means for the ACA. [Health Affairs Blog]
10 Twitter Experts to Help You Navigate Trump’s Health and Science Policy [STAT]
How the country voted on state healthcare propositions:
San Francisco, Oakland, Albany, and Boulder passed ballot measures to place a one or two cent-per-ounce tax on sodas and other sugar-sweetened beverages. [NPR]
Colorado passed a ballot initiative allowing physicians to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill adults who want to end their lives. [Kaiser Health News]
California, Massachusetts, and Nevada legalized recreational marijuana use. [The New York Times]
Tax increases on cigarettes and vaping devices passed in California, but not in Colorado, North Dakota and Missouri. [Reuters]
California voted against lowering prescription drug prices. [STAT]
Florida voted in favor of releasing millions of Zika-fighting mosquitos. [Wired]
Choose one word that best describes your work style:
Collaborative.
What is your device of choice?
My iPhone
Favorite apps & software?
For USMLE/COMLEX preparation, I love telling people about some of the "new kids" in the board-review space: Osmosis, OnlineMedEd and Picmonic. I think these companies approach their business first as servants of the students who use their platform(s) and offer innovative, high quality, and disruptive products that are revolutionizing the way people learn medicine.
For podcasting, I use Audacity for recording software and record interviews with guests via Skype. To keep the quality as high as possible, my home studio includes my iMac, Audio Technica ATR-2100 microphone, an Audio Technica headphone amplifier and pair of ATH MSR-7s cans (headphones) I got while I was on temporary duty in Japan, and a Yamaha MG10XU mixing board.
For daily clinical work, my go to app is Wheel SP, an Ob wheel app that calculates estimated due dates, allows input of fetal biometrics, and other essential stuff for an obstetrician. I use Epocrates and UptoDate a lot on my phone as clinical references. My newest discovery is the social media/secure medical multimedia app Figure 1.
How does Doximity help you in your work as a clinician?
Doximity pushes useful articles, tailored to my specialty to my dashboard. I've also used it to find specialists to whom I might refer patients. Plus, it's helped me connect with influencers to be guests on the InsideTheBoards podcast.
What’s your secret to staying productive?
Setting goals for the day before going to sleep and using the very early morning hours when I'm "fresh" for tasks that require the most creative energy (like working on content for InsideTheBoards or writing an article on bioethics) while saving more time-consuming, but mundane tasks for the evenings when I'm tired (like catching up on email, editing articles or podcast shows).
What do you wish you knew when you were a student?
I wish I had known the "mind hacks" that make undergraduate medical education more efficient, especially studying for board exams. Someone should have told me on day one of first year to do USMLE-style questions. I wrote about the difference that multiple choice questions make in your medical education here. Osmosis, the medical education platform I mentioned above, is doing its best to integrate the best principles of learning discovered in neuroscience into its platform. Things like spaced repetition, memory anchoring, and just doing a bunch of self-assessment questions can drastically increase your retention, efficiency, and long-term memory.
Who is your mentor?
The late Edmund Pellegrino, who has been called the father of bioethics, was my inspiration for becoming a physician. He became my mentor and I've always wanted to model my career after his. One of the best academic experiences I ever had was being his fellow at the Georgetown Center for Clinical Bioethics when I was a medical student.
As an MD-turned-podcaster, do you have advice for other doctors who are interested in alternative ways of using their clinical knowledge?
Many doctors sell themselves short. But a medical education and practice imparts more than just clinical knowledge. There are a bunch of skills a person acquires on the way to becoming a doctor. Besides learning your specialty, you have to be somewhat of a teacher, researcher, communicator, executive, manager, mediator, counselor, scientist, humanist, and writer (although interminable clinical note-writing can have a detrimental effect on one's writing skills) to become a physician. In the first two years of medical school, I was always writing and submitting popular and academic articles on bioethics topics while in class. I wrote boards-style questions during third and fourth year and eventually became the director of content for one of the major Osteopathic question banks. As a resident, I became a MedSchoolCoach.com advisor and have helped premeds perfect their applications to medical school, practice their interviewing skills, etc. I still do a little bit of this work because working with med school hopefuls helps maintain the original idealism that inspired me to pursue medicine as a career.
My dad was in radio broadcasting growing up; I always admired what he did and wanted to emulate it. I was a philosophy and theology major in college and always fancied myself a writer. The result? After becoming a doctor (and during the process, too) I found ways to apply my clinical expertise to writing and media. Clinicians should ask themselves what they think about at work, what they do when they leave the clinic or wards, or what they wish they had more time to do. And then consider ways in which their role as a doctor could be applied to these.
What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?
I try to get in some quiet time/religious devotion and/or exercise.
What’s the last thing you do before you go to sleep?
It's a bad habit, but I'm usually checking my social media feeds for news (and opportunities to troll my friends' by antagonizing—I mean commenting on—their profiles).
How do you decompress?
Working out or writing.
I can’t live without...
My family. I'm in the military and stationed nine hours from three of my kids, who live in Cleveland with their mom, and five hours from my wife (who is a psychiatry resident) and newborn, who live in Cincinnati.
What are you currently reading?
Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.
Do you have a favorite song?
So glad you asked this. I love music. It's a little-known secret that part of the reason I'm doing the InsideTheBoards podcast is to connect with some of my favorite artists and share some of the songs I love with a wider audience. My favorite song is by a little-known artist, Rich Mullins, "We Are Not As Strong As We Think We Are" which, I think, captures the agony of loss better than anything I've ever heard: "I tremble like a hill on a fault line just at the thought of how I lost you."
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
From my mom and dad: stop living so far in the future.
Patrick Beeman is an Ob/Gyn and writer. He worked on the Case Files series and has written practice questions for four question banks including USMLE-Rx. Most recently he was the director of content for a leading board-preparation question bank until founding InsideTheBoards to teach students the principles board exam question writers use to construct test items in order to help them reduce stress, improve efficiency in studying, and to help them achieve the scores they deserve. Listen to the InsideTheBoards Podcast for the USMLE, COMLEX, and Medical School tips.
Whether it’s the iPhone 7 flying off the shelves, or the Samsung Galaxy 7 being put on the No-Fly List, our favorite hand-held device has been making the rounds in recent news stories. Apple, in particular, has been front and center - and with their announcement of a revamped MacBook Pro at today’s Apple October 27th event, they seem to be headlining the news every week.
Our researchers at Doximity started wondering: exactly how are physicians are currently using smartphones? With over 60% of all U.S. physicians on the Doximity network, our member data provides an unparalleled wealth of information on physician technology habits and implementation to get the most accurate look at device trends in medicine.
Physicians adopted the iPhone 7 faster than the rest of the population
When it comes to new technology updates, physicians are often at the top of the curve. In the first two weeks after the release of the iPhone 7, 3.7% of the general population updated to the new device. However, 4.1% of physicians adopted the iPhone 7 in this same time period - proving once again that those in the medical field are tuned in with tech.
Which iPhone model is most popular among physicians?
click to enlarge
Overwhelmingly, the iPhone 6 holds the first place spot - with over 80% of Apple-using physicians in tow. The standard iPhone 6 (not iPhone 6s or 6 Plus) was the most commonly used of all the iPhone 6 versions, by 45% of all physicians using iPhone 6 versions. The iPhone 5 and 7 claim the second and third places respectively, but at 11% and a little over 7% each, the iPhone 6 is most popular by a large margin. (Did you know that we predicted the iPhone 6’s popularity among physicians before its release, in 2014?)
After the initial wave, is it possible iPhone 7 adoption will slow with doctors? It could, given that the iPhone 7 doesn’t have ‘enough’ features for people to make the change. There’s a better camera, better speakers, and no headphone jack (which some would count as a negative feature), which are all new features, but nothing as exciting and noteworthy as the changes from the iPhone 5 to the iPhone 6.
Perhaps it’s not that the iPhone 7 is underwhelming, but rather that the iPhone 6 has enough features to keep customers, and physicians, happy.
How quickly did physicians upgrade to the iPhone 7?
click to enlarge
Our findings showed that certain iPhone users were much quicker than others to adopt the iPhone 7. Those physicians with the iPhone 4 were the group that most quickly adopted the iPhone 7 upon its release.
After that group, physicians with the iPhone 6 were second most likely to make the upgrade to the iPhone 7.
From our sample, around 3% of total Doximity physicians made the switch to the iPhone 7 in the first month of its release. After the first month, the adoption rate of the iPhone 7 doubled to over 7%.
In past releases, the iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 have been adopted much quicker in the first month, at rates up to 37% in the month of the initial release.
Code Red! How many physicians are carrying the flammable Samsung Galaxy 7?
By our standards, thankfully not too many! Our researchers found that less than 1% of physicians on Doximity were using the fiery phone. This is good news. If you think a phone catching fire on an airplane is bad, imagine it happening in a hospital surrounded by oxygen tanks.
Are you a reporter interested in more data from Doximity's research team? Email today.
Dr. Richard Milani currently serves as Chief Clinical Transformation Officer and Vice-Chairman of the Department of Cardiology for Ochsner Health System. This is how he works.
Choose one word that best describes your work style:
Nonstop.
What is your device of choice?
My new iPhone 7. I even got the shiny black color, Matrix-style.
Favorite apps & software?
It changes every day. In the last 24 hours, I’ve been really into iBooks. I have all my books, PDFs and keynotes in there, just stored in the Cloud! It’s crazy.
How does Doximity help you in your work as a clinician?
Right now, it’s in the Colleague Connect Platform, where we’ve been able to generate information about Ochsner as a tertiary center for potential referring doctors and have them better understand what we do, in an easy-to-digest way.
What’s your secret to staying productive?
Never taking no for an answer. You find a way to make things happen that need to happen -- I guess I’m just pushy (smiles).
What do you wish you knew when you were a student?
You sort of divide medicine into two parts: science and healthcare. You can learn the science in school, but then there’s the healthcare side, which is really how it works - workflows and the business of medicine. That’s the part you learn over time, but don’t learn in school. I wish I knew more about that as a student.
Who is your mentor?
Today, there isn’t one, but I’ve had various mentors along the way. Dr. Alex Leaf, who was Chief of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, stands out as a mentor in my life.
You’ve worked with Apple extensively in the past, utilizing technology to enhance patient care. How has this transformed the patient experience at Ochsner?
The transformation has been dramatic. Let’s take a step back: what healthcare needs to do is identify the issues that the population you are surrounded by face - and match those. What is the epidemic of our time? Chronic diseases. 86% of all dollars spent in the United States - 2.86 trillion dollars, is spent on chronic diseases. We do a lousy job of managing it, and we’re not doing anything different to change that. In contrast, if you were running a business, wouldn’t you look at inventory on a daily basis or sales on a daily basis? You’d be evaluating all these variables hourly or daily - you’re constantly monitoring to match supply and demand. In healthcare, we say “you have diabetes, it changes by the hour or the day, and we’ll see you in 6 months.” Then in 6 months you’ll be fine, or in 2 months you’ll be crashing. With chronic diseases, we need a different model of delivery with multiple streams of data between physician and patient.
For example, patients who have been enrolled in a digital health program in managing hypertension will work with their internal medicine doctor to measure readings wirelessly, right from their home. In addition, we have multiple “O Bars” in our primary care centers to help patients seamlessly manage their health. Now patients don’t have to call their son or daughter for technical assistance - we have a full-time technology specialist behind the bar to help if they have any issues. This way, patients have tools that empower them to stay healthy.
This week we rolled out Connected Mom, a program to promote a healthy pregnancy. Pregnancy is very scripted within health systems, usually 14 visits for the average expectant mother. At some of these visits, all that takes place is ensuring that the woman is gaining the appropriate amount of weight and her blood pressure is within normal range. Some visits would be unnecessary if everything is going well. With Connected Mom, women can go to the O Bar to receive a wireless scale and a blood pressure cuff. The program also gives women tips throughout their pregnancy, including milestones, and what to expect next. The value is that women can skip unnecessary visits, and doctors can fill that appointment slot with patients who need to be seen.
How do you decompress?
Exercise. I’ll do whatever my body will allow me to do - yoga and weights, in particular.
Do you have a favorite song?
Whatever my wife and kids are listening to.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
The dean of students at my medical school told me this: it’s just as important to know what you don’t know, as it is to know what you know.
Debra Houry, MD is the CDC's Director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. This is how she works.
What words best describes your work style:
Collaborative, innovative, dedicated
What is your device of choice?
Smartphone: for better or worse, so I can keep up with emails at all hours. I also like the apps for directions, social media, and keeping my child occupied at times in the car or at restaurants with educational games and reading apps.
Laptop: I still like to use a computer for writing papers, longer emails, and working on presentations.
Favorite apps & software?
Twitter and LinkedIn for social media, One Note to keep track of to-do’s and keep notes in one place, and I can’t function without Outlook Calendar.
How does Doximity help you in your work as a clinician?
I like reading the articles on topics relevant to my work that may not be in journals or media outlets I subscribe to or read regularly.
Want to receive specialty-specific news? Update your settings here.
What’s your secret to staying productive?
I’ve always loved the quote “well behaved women seldom make history." For me, it means you cannot be a silent bystander in life - when you see something you can do to make a difference in the world, you need to step up. Taking care of patients in underserved “safety net” emergency departments, coming up with innovative programs to prevent violence and injury, and making the world a better place for my daughter and her peers is what drives me.
Describe your journey to medicine/when you realized you wanted to be a physician.
I had a calling very early on. No one in my family was in medicine, but I volunteered in hospitals in high school and really loved science. During my undergraduate studies, I continued to volunteer in hospitals in various capacities and found that I always left inspired and wanting to learn and do more for the patients I interacted with. I pursued a joint MD/MPH degree so that I could focus on treating individual patients and have impact at the population level through prevention work. During my residency training, I realized there were so many injuries I saw that could be prevented and knew that I can balance all of this in the emergency department by working on the front line of the health care system and working with the community on injury prevention.
Who is your hero?
Several come to mind. President Carter for his work in recent years through the Carter Center to improve the health and well being of others globally; C. Everett Koop and David Satcher for some of the work they did as Surgeon General - taking on tough issues because it was the right thing to do; and my dad- who came from an immigrant family, worked his way through engineering and then law school, and has been a role model and mentor to so many. My boss, CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden, inspires me to focus on using the data we have to compel action and to ensure that what we do has impact to improve the health of others.
What is the biggest challenge for women in medicine right now?
I think there are several issues that impact women in medicine. One is balancing work and family, and it’s certainly not just women who face this - it’s tough to do and I don’t think you can ever “balance,” but rather shift the imbalance as needed. Sometimes family needs more focus, and other times a work project may require added attention. And, although women have become more represented in leadership positions and academic rank over the past decade, there are still significant differences in the number of male and female chairs, deans, and full professors.
You’re currently the Director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) at the CDC. What was the path like to this role, and any advice for clinicians looking to work in a similar capacity?
Over the past 15 years, I’ve balanced clinical work in the emergency department with a dual appointment in the School of Public Health. I conducted research on intimate partner violence and sexual violence prevention, taught classes in injury and violence prevention, and was president of two national organizations (Society for Academic Emergency Medicine and the Society for Advancement of Violence and Injury Research). My experiences in the emergency department treating patients after an injury and those experiencing ongoing violence, studying interventions to prevent violence, and leading diverse organizations fueled my passion for injury prevention and I wanted to have impact at the national level. I can’t say I planned the path to this role, but my various experiences gave me the balance of skills and knowledge needed for the job. I think my emergency medicine training has been really helpful for this job - I can triage what needs to be taken care of immediately vs. later, make decisions based on the data at hand and revise actions if needed when I have new information, and understand firsthand how our work impacts the patient, clinician and community. I’m lucky - I love this job, and I now get to practice medicine at the population level to help people live healthier lives through the work we are doing at CDC.
How do you decompress?
It can be as simple as reading a good book or spending some time with my family away from work. A trip to the beach where I can walk in the sand is always great when I have a few days to spend some downtime.
Do you have a favorite song?
Zac Brown Band's Homegrown and Toes. It reminds you to keep things in perspective, take things one day at a time, and be happy and thankful for what you have.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
The “can you sleep at night” rule. It comes down to doing the right thing at the time based on what you know at that moment. As I’ve always said, if you’re worried that you could you have done something different for a patient when you go home and sleep, then you need to do what you believe is right for the patient now. The same is true with other types of work and interactions: if you know you did the right thing, involved others when needed, and can stand by your actions, then you can sleep at night.
Debra Houry, MD is the CDC's Director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Dr. Houry leads innovative research and science-based programs to prevent injury and violence and to reduce their consequences. She brings frontline experience of preventing injuries and violence as an emergency room physician and researcher.
National PA Week 2016 has come to an end, and we want to leave you with a final resource for your future PA questions and needs.
Here is our list of the 10 Best PA Blogs of 2016. Each blog listed offers something different, so check out these fantastic resources and bookmark any you find useful!
This fantastic blog that rightfully claims itself as the “world’s best resource for PAs.” The publisher, Paul Kubin, found himself with a variety of doubts and questions when he first began his medical journey, and took to the internet for answers and advice. Now, after having gained valuable experience and becoming a PA, he created this resource so, “You don’t need to break the internet all over, like I did.”
This blog has articles on PA medicine, video interviews with PAs, PA focused forums, a directory of PA programs to help you decide where and how to apply - it really is worthy of that “world’s best resource” title.
This fantastic PA resource reminds us of a virtual college student center - practically the only thing missing is a coffee shop. We love this resource because it puts a social spin on the idea of what a blog usually is. This website has a forum, events page, featured student spotlight, and active surveys to make you feel connected with other PAs across the country.
There are also articles about life before and after PA school, your didactic year, clinical year, and much more. Great resource for the PA who is looking to engage online with others.
This blog is written by Paul Gonzales, a current PA student in Texas. His blog covers a wide variety of all things PA, but also serves as a kind of personal sparknotes. Most blog posts cover a few related medical topics, and include definitions, diagrams, and important facts to keep in mind pertaining to each topic. It’s a great way of merging information and entertainment that his many loyal subscribers are huge fans of.
This is a PA lifestyle blog, written by the blogger Aashna. Here she covers a range of topics from medical terminology and PA advice, to the general lifestyle of being a PA student. As she says, “I promised myself that I would share not only the great, eye-opening, exciting things I'll learn and experience in PA school, but also the hardships and struggles that come along with it.” This blog is a great read, and honestly conveys the intense and rewarding lifestyle of being a PA.
Another well written blog by a PA Student - Lindsey who is studying at Albany Medical College and graduating in 2017. This blog has posts about what PA school entails, experiences with rotations, and her own personal musings. She puts an interesting spin on posts, such as this one that compares studying in PA school vs. studying for your undergraduate degree.
This blog breaks down posts into three categories: applying, the interview, and journal. Posts underneath ‘applying’ feature information about choosing the right program, writing your personal statement, and information about your major. Posts underneath ‘the interview’ provide you with practice interview questions, and information on what to expect in your interview and how to deal with it. Lastly, the journal section chronicles experiences of a PA student, with relatable stories and information.
This blog is titled ‘musings’ and is exactly that. Different guest writers feature with stories on recent health news, strategies, studies, and offer their own input as they present the topic. The guest writers are PAs, but also hold other titles as well, which provides a variety of different insight.
Another great blog written by a current PA, Marjorie Shanks, this website features a variety of information from surprising facts about PA school, and why you need a mentor, to podcast suggestions and personal tips on how to navigate your life as a PA.
This blog differs slightly from the rest, as the majority of the posts are from guest writers and bloggers who are currently PAs and Assistant Professors. The posts range from information on “New Grad Anxiety” to stories about health news, and opinions on the current health industry.
PA School is an experience unlike any other. In honor of National PA Week, we reached out to PAs and asked them to share their best pieces of advice for those currently in PA school.
Here are our top answers from PAs who have been in your shoes:
Utilize your classmates
“Every new student of medicine - no matter how green - has unique talents and gifts. Each member of my class at UC Davis was an expert in some corner of medicine that I knew nothing about, and they were always glad to teach me if I asked. It took me a little longer to see that I was an expert in some things that others in my class didn't know much about, and that I could help them in turn.” - Paul Kubin
Try and maintain a good school/life balance
“While PA school can sometimes be overwhelming with midterms, exams, and having the constant anxiety of always studying, at the end of the day you are still a human being. You need "you time" to clear your mind, feed your brain and stay healthy mentally and physically. PA school will be always be a challenge, how you go about that challenge will make it more bearable. “ - John Dao
Be assertive
“Don't be afraid to be honest about what you want to do. Tell your professors and preceptors if there is an area you see yourself working in, and pursue it wholeheartedly. This goes for contract negotiations too. You'll never know what could happen if you don't ask.” - Savanna Perry
Remember the importance of networking
“Network with others in the profession sooner rather than later, and don’t be afraid to tell them what you are looking for. In a huge field like healthcare, much of your direction is shaped through personal connections with people you know - not like an "old boy" network, but like an "I know just the person you should speak with about that" network.” - Paul Kubin
Focus more on being a “practitioner” instead of just a “student in training”
“PA school can be viewed by many as an accelerated version of medical school with rotations ranging anywhere from 4-6 weeks. Quite frankly, this isn't enough time to master your skill set. So when you make that transition from didactics to clinicals, mentally prepare yourself to fully engage in that "practitioner" mindset no matter how difficult that speciality may be, because you will not have this opportunity to when you’re done with school.” - John Dao
Spend some time to reflect and appreciate
“Stop every now and then and take stock of where you are. School only lasts for two or three years, so savor this time when your biggest responsibility is to your own learning. Soon your biggest responsibility will be to your patients, which is wonderful too, but in a much different way.” - Paul Kubin
Keep these helpful hints in mind as you navigate your way through the challenging and rewarding experience of PA school.
Share your own advice and thoughts below!
Paul Kubin, MS, MFT, PA-C is a primary and urgent care physician assistant who writes and speaks passionately about physician assistant careers. He is the founder of a well-known and visited PA blog, MyPATraining. He lives, practices, and coaches pre-PAs in Sacramento, California.
Savanna Perry is a member of the Society of Dermatology Physician Assistants, Georgia Dermatology Physician Assistants, American Academy of Physician Assistants, and the Georgia Association of Physician Assistants. She hosts a website called The PA Platform.
John Dao is a Family Medicine PA in San Jose, CA. He graduated from Touro University Mare Island in 2015.
Choose one word that best describes your work style:
Methodical
What is your device of choice?
iPhone
Favorite apps & software?
Gmail app
How does Doximity help you in your work as a clinician?
Doximity is a good way to network with other healthcare providers as well as stay up to date on recent medical issues.
As a PA and Olympian, time management must be very important. What’s your secret to staying productive?
Life is a balance and nothing is unmanageable. People are capable of accomplishing more than they think. If there is a will, there is a way. After taking 3 years off of the sport, I had 2 years to get ready for the 2016 Olympic Games. I was 20 pounds overweight, I hadn’t set foot in a gym in 3 years, I didn’t have a job, and I was in an unfamiliar city.
I was essentially on my own to make this dream a reality. Even though it seemed overwhelming, I sat down and made a plan. I wrote out all of my training plans, routines, diet ideas, strength and conditioning, job search directions, and eventually my work schedule; everything that would get me from being a nobody to an Olympian. Through hard work and planning, anything is possible.
My advice is to write out your goals and then make a schedule for how you are going to accomplish those goals. Then all you have to do is follow your plan. There will always be set backs, but focus on the bigger picture of what your original goal was. Think positively and you will be able to balance it all.
What do you wish you knew when you were a student?
I wish I knew that I didn’t have to know everything when I was a student. I was so worried that I wouldn’t be prepared when I got out into the workforce but realistically, no one is ever fully prepared. As a medical provider, you are always learning because medicine is always changing and evolving. As a physician assistant, we are expected to be like sponges, learn as we go, and use everything we learned in school as a stepping stone into our careers.
Who is your mentor?
My gymnastics mentor is 1996 Olympic gold medalist, Dominique Moceanu. She was my childhood idol, however has transitioned into a mentor during my recent years.
My physician assistant mentor is my boss, Jim Nahrstedt. Not only has he taught me everything to be a successful PA, but he has also supported my Olympic dream since the first day I met him, which was the day of my interview for the position I have now in obstetric surgery.
What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?
Grumble that I have to get up and exercise, but once I am up and going, I'm happy that I did it.
What’s the last thing you do before you go to sleep?
Make sure my alarm is set for the morning.
How do you decompress?
By exercising. All of my worries and frustrations from the day would just dissolve once I started my routine in the gymnastics gym.
I can’t live without...
Some type of challenge that needs accomplishing.
What are you currently reading?
“When Breath Becomes Air” by Paul Kalanithi.
Do you have a favorite song?
I don’t really have a favorite song, but my favorite artist is Micheal Jackson. All of his songs are my favorite.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
The best advice I ever received was to work hard because my hard work will eventually pay off, even if I don’t see it immediately.
Houry Gebeshian is a Surgical PA on the labor and delivery floor at Cleveland Clinic Fairview Hospital in Cleveland, OH, and received her PA training from Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Most recently, she was the first female gymnast to represent the Republic of Armenia at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.
Choose one word that best describes your work style:
Dedicated. I have been writing and editing professionally for about 10 years and it’s something I never plan to quit. But I think the trap that comes with experience is the assumption that any prior success will lift up your current projects. I try really hard to not become complacent, to keep reinventing myself, to experiment and take risks. I never want to assume I get a pass because someone is familiar with my previous work. I write every article or essay with the assumption it will be the only sample of my writing you will ever read. I want them all to leave a great first impression.
What is your device of choice?
I always have my phone, but if I leave the house for more than one day I tend to bring my laptop. A phone just can’t handle word processing like a computer with a full-sized screen and keyboard.
Favorite apps & software?
People interested in medicine and writing can follow me on Twitter. For clinical apps, I like to use the PEPID Emergency Medicine suite. It’s a lot of information organized and formatted for the chaos of the ER.
What’s your secret to staying productive?
Consistency. Like exercise, writing and clinical medicine are much easier if you do them on a regular basis. Sometimes that means scheduling time to write or edit even if I’m not in the mood, or making sure I have time alone on my days off. The difficult thing is anticipating my own energy levels and acknowledging when the most productive thing is to get some sleep.
What do you wish you knew when you were younger?
That healthcare is a business. There are a lot of romantic ideas around the healthcare industry and in many ways medicine can be a very noble pursuit. But it doesn’t happen without budgets and sometimes even profits. As someone who had a more human-centered motivation to enter this line of work, that realization was tough. We can still put patient care first, but we must acknowledge the other forces at work in our industry so that we are not blindsided by their effects.
Who is your mentor?
I’ve had some great managers, editors, and teachers at various stages of my career. But my most dedicated and loyal mentor has always been my mom. She is still my toughest and most honest editor to this day.
What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?
If it’s a work day I turn off an alarm that has been ringing for way too long.
On my days off, I walk down the street to my favorite café. The coffee is great and the owner works the cash register every day.
What’s the last thing you do before you go to sleep?
I wish I could say I have some sophisticated ritual but I just plug in my phone and make sure at least three alarms are set. There’s nothing worse than the cold sweat when you realize you’ve overslept.
How do you decompress?
I run outside when the weather allows it. But my favorite thing to do after a long day is play video games with my teenage nephew. I think he puts a lot of effort into making sure I don’t feel too old and out of touch.
I can’t live without...
My house definitely feels empty when I run out of hot sauce. There is also a void in my life when I don’t have a working pair of headphones. I could survive a post-apocalyptic world without those things but I wouldn’t be happy about it.
What are you currently reading?
In the fictional world I’m reading “Cutting for Stone” by Abraham Verghese and for nonfiction I am reading “How to Write Short” by Roy Peter Clark.
What’s your favorite book?
Roy Peter Clark’s “Writing Tools” changed my understanding of writing more than any other book. But the book that stands out in my mind is “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card. Card created a fantasy world without losing any of the grit and heartache of real life. It’s not often a book is both relatable and an escape at the same time.
Do you have a favorite song?
People are sometimes surprised to hear that I am a huge fan of hip-hop. I like Jay-Z’s music, specifically The Blueprint through The Black Album. But a song outside the genre that I really love is Frank Sinatra’s I Did it My Way. It still gives me chills.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
“Dare to be different.” My mom always says that. It’s good advice and I use it as a personal challenge. I think it is important to be something the world hasn’t already seen.
Harrison Reed is a physician assistant who practices emergency and critical care medicine. He is the Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants and a regular blogger for the New England Journal of Medicine's Journal Watch. He currently lives and works in Baltimore, MD.
The culture of medicine today has led to the erosion of career satisfaction among physicians. Dissatisfaction comes from the gamut of physicians, young and old, male and female, family practitioners to cardiologists. In fact, burnout is more common among physicians than other workers throughout the country, but is career satisfaction something a physician recruiter can help with? Absolutely.
In an earlier article, physician on-the-job unhappiness: how physician recruiters can help, we wrote that physician burnout stems from multiple interrelated causes: excessive workload; loss of autonomy; administrative burdens and consequent inefficiencies; difficulties integrating personal and professional life; and more. Salary is primary discussion about job satisfaction, too, but salary is the tip of the iceberg. Kevin Pho, MD, says career satisfaction isn’t even about being liked, or being respected. The key to satisfaction is the “v” word – being valued. Interestingly enough, Dr. Pho is the leading physician voice in social media today, blogging at KevinMD.
Physicians don’t live by medicine alone. They have interests, passions, and pastimes outside of medicine that are engaging and satisfying – things that differ from their daily grind. Many write, and many who don’t write often ask us and physician recruiters about writing. Specifically, blogging.
John Mandrola, MD, who blogs at Dr. John M, wrote an article Six Reasons Why (I) Doctors Blog. Among his reasons: to educate, to better mankind, to give a look behind the curtain, to achieve useful information, and to display our humanness. A cardiologist, Dr. John M says, “I like to write about the paradox of being a heart doctor: Here we are every day using skills and technology to save people from a disease that could be prevented with simple lifestyle changes. As a cyclist, I have learned that success depends on making choices. It’s the same for being healthy. (Of course, both cycling and health also depend a bit on luck.)”
So could blogging be an uncommon cure for physician burnout? Bryan Vartabedian, MD, thinks so. A pediatrician at Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children's Hospital and one of healthcare’s influential voices on technology and medicine, Dr. Vartabedian’s blog – 33 charts – is “a sandbox for his evolving ideas.” He is passionate about communication and believes it’s a critical part of how the world works today. He writes, “On some level, writing and making media should be seen as part of what we do as citizens of the Information Age. Not only is it how we’re understood, it’s how we’ll help others understand. Doctor means teacher.”
Anton Chekov, who may have crafted the first career as a physician-writer back in the 19th century and is arguably one of the most famous physician-writers, once wrote, “Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress.” On the subject of writing, he also wrote: "To advise is not to compel." So if physician candidates are asking you about writing, consider pointing them to a blog. A great place to start is KevinMD, a platform for a lot of physician writers. Wendy Sue Swanson, MD, writes a blog called Seattle Mama Doc worth reviewing. There’s also a nice round-up of 59 top physician blogs worth reading worth sharing with candidates, too. Dr. Vartabedian also wrote this article your physician candidates might find helpful: 7 Reasons Every Doctor Should Write. Doximity’s blog also hosts many physician-written pieces (if your physician is interested in writing a blog, they can reach out to ali@doximity.com).
If it seems a little out of the realm of a physician recruiter to talk about writing with your candidates, let us remind you of something recruiting guru Lou Adler tells recruiters frequently: “You’re managing their life!” – career satisfaction included.
