Before The White Coat

Growing up in Annapolis, MD, Dr. Eric Howell was fascinated by solving puzzles and finding out how things worked. He often took things apart so he could try to put them back together – from hair dryers to the transmission in his father's car.

SHM CEO Dr. Larry Wellikson talks with Dr. Howell about the various career choices he considered – from commercial pilot to electrical engineer – and ultimately what led him to becoming the Chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, MD.

Hired as the fourth hospitalist at Johns Hopkins Bayview, he has helped the program to grow to 190 hospitalists across three hospitals. An active member and past president of SHM, Dr. Howell is the Senior Physician Advisor to SHM's Center for Hospital Innovation and Improvement. 

After witnessing firsthand the impact of a severe medical error on a family member, Dr. Jeffrey Glasheen learned that these situations were not caused solely by knowledge deficiencies, but rather by faults in systems and processes. This realization led him to a career as a hospitalist, rooted in quality improvement and patient safety.

From his role as president of his fraternity during his college days to his current role as Chief Quality Officer at the University of Colorado Hospital Authority, hear about the story of Dr. Glasheen's path to a career in hospital medicine.

From playing the lead in his high school class play to becoming the Chief Quality Officer at the University of California Davis, Dr. Gregory Maynard explains his storied journey to a career in academic hospital medicine.

In the latest episode of Before the White Coat, he discusses with Dr. Larry Wellikson how he evolved from a small-town boy in Illinois to a leader at one of the world’s leading cross-disciplinary research and teaching institutions.

“How do I create a career combining medicine and business?"

That was the question a young Patrick Cawley asked himself while still in pre-med courses at the University of Scranton.

Today, his combined interests in medicine, business and leadership have propelled him to become chief executive officer of Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Medical Center and Vice President for Clinical Operations of the Medical University of South Carolina.

In this episode of Before the White Coat, learn about Dr. Cawley's career path toward leadership, which started with working in his father's podiatry office and an unlikely student council election win in high school.

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Watch out, Sanjay Gupta! SHM board member and physician editor of The Hospitalist Danielle Scheurer may be coming for your job.

"To this day, my dream job is to be a newscaster," says Danielle Scheurer, MD, MSCR, SFHM in her interview with SHM CEO Larry Wellikson. But before that, Dr. Scheurer traces her career from summer jobs to providing care in Africa, which included her own ailments by hanging an IV bag by candlelight.

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Hospital medicine is a team sport. And nurse practitioners and physician assistants are an important part of the hospitalist team.

In this episode of Before the White Coat, SHM CEO Larry Wellikson talks with Tracy Cardin, ACNP, a nurse practitioner who has dedicated herself to patient care as a hospitalist, about her career progression and how she has defined her role within the hospital.

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When Dr. Mary Jo Gorman’s hospitalist practice was acquired by IPC in 1999, she became responsible for the rapid growth of the hospitalist model in the Midwest, growing from 50 physicians to hundreds in multiple cities in just a few years.

“My role was to put air in the tires as we were rolling down the road,” she tells host Dr. Larry Wellikson.

In this episode, learn about how Dr. Gorman applied her MBA to life in hospital medicine and why, in her words, “one way to look like a genius is to steal some idea they’re doing on the west coast and bring it to the Midwest.”

Before he was one of the original architects of the hospitalist movement, John Nelson, MD, MHM, was a magician, worked in a gas station and even cleaned out an abandoned hotel with a convicted felon.

In this episode of Before the White Coat, Dr. Larry Wellikson talks with Dr. Nelson about how he began doing hospitalist work well before there was a name for it – and how his career in medicine led him to that point.

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As a young boy, Dr. Mark Williams broke his arm. What happened next inspired him to become a doctor.

In this episode of Before the White Coat, SHM CEO Dr. Larry Wellikson explores the early influences in Dr. Williams' career: the people and events that led him from working at his father's gas station to becoming a leader of the hospital medicine movement.

Dr. Williams is the director of the Center for Health Services Research, professor and vice-chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Kentucky. He is also principal investigator for SHM's Project BOOST.

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“I never really knew what I wanted to be. […] What I really liked doing was working, building or being part of a team that worked really well together on problems, or issues, or challenges or opportunities that we saw as compelling.”

Science and health sciences were always a career consideration for Dr. Brian Harte but in what capacity or to what degree was unclear. In this episode of Before the White Coat, Dr. Harte tells stories of the various points in his life where he learned the value of hard work and teamwork. From his childhood in Cincinnati public schools and unwavering family support to serving scoops at Baskin Robbins and putting cellophane labels on bleach bottles in a factory, Dr. Harte developed a strong work ethic.

Fast forward to today, and all is much clearer; Dr. Harte serves as the President of Hillcrest Hospital, a Cleveland Clinic Health System hospital, and as President-Elect of the board of directors of SHM.