BreakingScrub

This episode was recording amidst the festivities of the EAST Annual Assembly in Austin, TX in January 2019. We hear from Laurie Punch, Babak Sarani, Brad Dennis and several attendees about the impact of the millennial generation on the surgical profession.    In the off-season, feel free to reach out and send me Season 2 ideas!

Bradley Block, MD is a private-practice ENT surgeon in Long Island, NY. After years of trying to better himself and his patient interactions through listening to podcasts, he decided to make one of his own. Physicians Guide to Doctoring is a podcast series exploring "everything we should have learned while we were memorizing the Krebs' cycle." He explores many ways to improve patient interactions and expand our understanding of what it means to practice medicine and surgery in the 21st century. 

Taylor Riall had it all. MD. PhD. Hopkins trained. Distinguished Chair by 40. But, as she says, in order to burn out, your flame has to first burn bright. An burn out she did, to the point that she almost quit surgery.  Instead, she found executive coaching and found her way back to academic surgery.     

Lindsay McNair started out on a very typical pathway. Biology degree. Research experience. Surgery residency.  But when her research years were more appealing than getting back to the OR, she realized she needed to make a change.  Medical students rarely get any exposure to medical careers outside of clinical medicine. Not finishing a residency is almost exclusively portrayed as a failure. Lindsay McNair is here to tell why that is a false narrative and why a non-traditional career can be valuable and fulfilling for the right people.     

Ryan Inman is a fee-only financial adviser "helping physician families take control of their finances to position themselves for a bright financial future." As the husband of a physician, he has learned first hand just how unprepared, and in debt, many doctors are. He focuses on educating and empowering physicians as they navigate the challenging waters of early career and beyond.    Ryan can be found at https://physicianwealthservices.com/ or in his podcast and online community, The Financial Residency. 

Dr. John S. O'Shea started out down a very typical surgical career. He trained in New Jersey and New York in the 80s and started his career in academic hepatobiliary surgery. After several years in the trenches, he really didn't like what he was seeing. He wanted to know why policy was changing so much. So he took some classes. Then he wrote a few op-eds. Before he knew it, he was at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Then the Heritage Foundation. Then a senior staffer for the House Commerce committee. He has been in the room where it happens. He has seen the sausage get made and even made some of it himself!    https://www.facs.org/profile/51253674

Carlos VR Brown, MD is a trauma surgeon in Austin, TX. After a career in the Navy, he moved back home to Austin where he played a key role in building a level I trauma center, a general surgery residency, as -as if that wasn't a lot already - The Dell Medical School at UT Austin. All in a little over 5 years. Dr. Brown shares his thoughts on how he builds teams and makes what "should happen" a reality for his home town.  Dr. Brown can be contacted at carlos.brown@austin.utexas.edu   I mentioned last week that I would be talking to Dr. Satish Nadig. That episode will come later. In the meantime, watch his TEDx talk on the future of nanotechnology in transplant surgery.    In this episode, I also mention the #EAST4All initiative on equity from the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma. Check out past-president Dr. Andrew Bernard introducing that task force in his presidential address from January. 

Many of us go in to medicine because we "just really want to help people." Right? Be honest, you said that in your medical school interview.  Some days, when you are drowning under the EMR and you patient just won't get better, its hard to see how one is helping much of anyone.  Well, not for Dr. Sutton, who is "doing the right thing" in her community by providing free care to the uninsured and underinsured. Find out more about Surgery on Sunday Louisville here. 

Geoffrey Dunn, MD literally wrote the book on surgical palliative care. Several of them, actually. But his career wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. In fact, he bore witness to a lot of human suffering. He used painting to help him process what he saw and in the process birthed the field of surgical palliative care.  For more information on Dr. Dunn's art, check out www.geoffrypdunn.com You can find the piece of work we discussed in the pod here   If you are interested in surgical palliative care, check out https://www.facs.org/~/media/files/education/palliativecare/surgicalpalliativecareresidents.ashx and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25813414

Wellness. You can't go anywhere in the surgical world without hearing about it. Dr. Guidry works hard to facilitate wellness in the Tulane Department of Surgery. She is going way beyond computer based training and or telling residents to take a yoga class. Tune in and see how she has made making residents' lives a little bit better her niche. 

Dr. Alan Harzman is a colon and rectal surgeon at the Ohio State University. He is also the Program Director for the General Surgery residency. He has made education his niche, the thing that balances him in his career. 

The world of surgery is changing. Surgeons look different. Being a successful surgeon means something different that it used to. The millennial generation is perhaps at the heart of these changes. What is certain is that you don't have to be an old white man who lives in the hospital and is married to his CV to be a successful surgeon anymore. Join me as I talk to surgeons who are thriving outside of the OR.