Today, we have a special episode for you in celebration of National Doctor’s Day. For the past 14 months, we have been interviewing osteopathic physicians about their career journeys and experiences. We like to ask them about the best advice they have for students entering the field of medicine. Today, we have compiled for you some of the most valuable advice we have heard from our guests to help motivate you through YOUR journey in medicine. We hope you enjoy this episode!
Created and edited by Madli Vahtra
Today, we have a special episode for you in celebration of National Doctor’s Day. For the past 14 months, we have been interviewing osteopathic physicians about their career journeys and experiences. We like to ask them about the best advice they have for students entering the field of medicine. Today, we have compiled for you some of the most valuable advice we have heard from our guests to help motivate you through YOUR journey in medicine. We hope you enjoy this episode!
Created and edited by Madli Vahtra
Hello listeners, my name is Madly and you are listening to Do or Do Not.
Today we have a special episode for you in celebration of National Doctors Day.
For the past 14 months, we have been interviewing osteopathic physicians about their career
journeys and experiences.
We like to ask them about the best advice they have for students entering the field
of medicine.
Today, we have compiled for you some of the most valuable advice we have heard from our
guests to help motivate you through your journey in medicine.
We hope you enjoy.
What advice and words of wisdom would you have for a student that would rotate with
you?
During training, we take bits and pieces from all of the people who we are learning from.
Like, I can even hear myself sometimes when I'm talking to a patient almost verbatim
say some of the things that some of my mentors in fellowship or residency would say.
Or even my colleagues, you know, you could pick up things from your colleagues, just
little phrases that you use when you talk to patients.
With that being said, do you have any other final advice for students that want to apply
to your school that maybe you haven't said yet?
If you're passionate about becoming an osteopathic physician and maybe things didn't go smooth
for you in undergrad or maybe you had a life shattering experience or those things make
you stronger, you continue that drive that shows you have grit, it might make you more
compassionate as a physician.
From a physician point of view, I already said this, however, my byword has always been
from Dr. Davidson that your patients don't care what you know until they know that you
care.
And I live by that more and more, even though I don't take care of patients anymore.
However, training the next generation of physicians, I want them to embrace that.
I want them to understand that's how they're going to be the most effective as a physician.
And in these days of COVID, and everybody reassessing what they're doing and what's
the right thing and how do they find meaning, caring for one another as one human being
to another, that's it.
That never goes out of fashion.
So I just want people to understand this, so my grades getting into college were great,
my SAT score was not, my ACT score was fair, my MCAT score was poor.
So I had good things working for me, but then I had some major things not working for me.
And I graduated from West Point and I graduated from the Kirksville College of Osteopathic
Medicine because don't quit.
And my high school football coach gave me a poem when I went off to West Point and he
wrote on there to one of the toughest rebels, and there's a poem about not quitting no matter
what the circumstances are.
And that thing has been with me for the last 24 years.
It's on my wall.
I look at it every day when I go to work.
The word authenticity always comes to mind, and I mean that in the sense of really being
true to yourself, really, really being true to yourself.
Never doing something because someone suggested, someone told you, or do what's expected, do
what you want.
And going to school is hard and life is harder and internships and residencies and tests
and exams.
And it is not easy.
And I believe that being a physician, being an osteopath is a calling.
I don't believe it's a job.
It is challenging.
And I think the more authenticity, the more you are true to yourself in all of your decision
making, the better off you'll be.
You know what I like to pass on to my students and residents is you have to take care of
yourself.
One of the most important things that a physician can do is make sure they are well.
Because ultimately, you're not going to take as good a care of your patients as you could
if you're sick, whether that be physical, psychological, social, even.
May I use two?
Absolutely.
We'll take, if you have five, we want wisdom.
So we'll take as many as you have, but two would be great.
Well, the first comes from earlier in my life.
So I developed an interest in Olympic weightlifting when I was in junior high school.
And by high school, had managed to find in my hometown, a retired Olympic weightlifter.
He had been candidate for the 1968 Olympic team and ended up with an injury that kept
him from participating.
But I learned about him through a friend and reached out and asked if he would help teach
me, would he help coach me to become a better lifter.
And we'll only talk about rule number three, but there were three rules that he had if
I was going to, if he was going to help coach me.
And the third one was you will not try to win.
And I can just remember this young high school kid and the only thing I'm imagining is a
gold medal in the Olympics and that it was about getting to the gold, the gold medal.
And he really in his way of teaching was able to show me that it's not about the end point,
it's about the journey.
And what he kept focusing on again and again and again was I just need you tomorrow to
be better than you were today.
And so it was really a form of continuous improvement.
We would think of it in medicine.
And by doing that, rather than trying to reach for the win, as he would say, eventually someday
if you're better tomorrow than you work today, then the others will fall by the wayside and
the wind will come.
And so your mindset is in the right place as you go through the process.
So that was something that shapes the way I think today and how I want to run the organization
and how I want to work with other people.
The other happened as I was leaving from my internal medicine residency and headed to
my fellowship.
And so the assistant program director, Mark Pace, a cardiologist at Brentwood Hospital,
sat down with me and he was just a really humble guy.
And he said, you know, I'm not a particularly bright cardiologist, I just do my job.
I'm probably just average, which he was far better than, but he was never going to say
that.
And he said, what I want you to remember as you head for your fellowship is this, always
start from the beginning and listen to the patient.
And while he didn't talk about it in terms of diagnosis momentum, what he was really
teaching me was the idea of diagnosis momentum, that too often we pick up on what's in the
chart or what the last physician told us or what someone shared on the nursing staff or
even the patient and it guides and affects our thinking.
Sit down, start with the patient from the beginning, get their story, and most of them
are going to tell you what's wrong with them.
And it's your job to listen and to ask the right questions and to get to the way that
you can help them the most.
So those two things have definitely shaped my career and my life.
All of this advice is critical and can really be applied to wherever you are on your journey.
The one piece of advice that we most often heard is that it's important to do what you
love.
Here are some of our guests expressing why that is so important.
So the best piece of advice is to do what you love because if you end up doing what
you love, it doesn't feel like a job.
It feels like a hobby.
The most important thing is one of the most simple pieces of advice that someone ever
gave me.
And I forget who it was and I'm sorry, but they would always tell me, and it's such
a cliche thing, but do what you love.
I see that if you do what you love, the rest kind of comes.
Again, love what you do because then you'll always love what you do and you won't stop
doing what you love.
You have to go into a field that is going to constantly stimulate you, constantly learning.
It should challenge you going to go through ups and downs.
You're going to have to work hard, but that's what makes this whatever field you go to enjoyable.
Okay.
One of them is a quote by Mae West and she said, you only live once, but if you do it
right, once is enough.
It's kind of like when you're living your passion, when you're living your dreams, you
wouldn't have it any other way.
And if you had to do it all over again, you wouldn't do it any differently.
To all of the pre-medical students, medical students, and physicians listening, we appreciate
you and all that you do.
We would like to thank our listeners for following with us and we would like to thank all of
our amazing osteopathic guests for sharing their journey and wisdom.
Our final piece of advice is from the amazing screenwriter and director, George Lucas, through
his incarnation of the wise mage from Star Wars, do or do not, there is no try.