Leading the Rounds

In this episode, we interview Nobel Laureate Dr. Robert Lefkowitz. Dr. Lefkowitz is an internist and cardiologist who is best known for his novel work in the discovery of GPCR’s. This discovery has led to the production of numerous life saving medications. He is currently an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a Professor of Medicine at Duke University. 

We hope you enjoy this episode where we discuss the serendipity of life, pursuing excellence, the importance of mentorship and more. 

Welcome to Leading the Rounds! 

Questions we asked: 

• What do you mean when you call yourself an “accidental scientist”? 
• How do you balance enjoying control vs. recognizing the serendipity of life? 
• What do you ask yourself to live a meaningful life? 
• What does it feel like to be a Nobel Laureate? 
• What is the real value of rewards? 
• How have you been able to pursue excellence while still holding other aspects of your life together? 
• How do you approach building relationships? 
• When experiencing struggles, when do you decide to keep persevering vs. moving onto something else? 
• What are your favorite books? 
  
  

Ideas: 

• The Road Not Taken 
• “Try as you might, you can’t control everything.” 
• “Serendipity blesses each of us… the question is whether you recognize it at the time and take advantage of it.” 
• “Every day… I have the sense that something big is coming.” 
• IKIGAI 
• “I never felt like I was going to work, I was just doing what I do.” 
• “I love the challenge of finding out how to motivate and mentor a trainee.” 
• “The goal for my trainees… is to have them experience what it feels like to work right at their potential.” 
• “If you look at any really successful scientist, they trained with successful scientists.” 
• “Mentoring is about transferring ways of working and values that can’t be written down in a protocol book.” 
• “If half of everything I’m trying to do is working, I’m not working on challenging enough projects.”

Books: 

• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Stockholm: The Adrenaline-Fueled Adventures of an Accidental Scientist by Robert Lefkowitz 
• The Splendid and the Vile by Eric Larson 
• The Language of God by Francis Collins 
• Plato's Republic 
• The Citadel by A. J. Cronin
• Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
  
  

In this episode we interview Dr. Tait Shanafelt. Dr. Shanafelt is a Jeanie and Stewart Ritchie Professor of Medicine, Chief Wellness Officer, and associate dean at Stanford University School of Medicine. He is the co-author, with one of our former guests Steven Swenson, of “Mayo Clinic Strategies to Reduce Burnout”. He is credited for bringing physician-burnout to the forefront of healthcare discussion. He is a leader in the field of physician wellness and healthcare team efficiency. He has published numerous works in the field of physician well being and his studies in this area have been cited by CNN, USA Today, and The New York Times.

We hope you enjoy this episode where we talk about his book, why wellness initiatives often fall flat, and how we can build a positive work environment. 

Welcome to leading the rounds 

Questions we asked: 

• How has the pandemic changed the ideas you wrote into “Mayo Clinic Strategies to Reduce Burnout”? 
• What systemic issues in healthcare wellbeing has the pandemic shined a light on? 
• What were some of the processes that your team at Stanford implemented to fight the pandemic? 
• Are financial constraints a valid argument for not prioritizing healthcare wellness? 
• What makes a good wellness initiative? 
• What would you say to a medical leader who is making excuses for not prioritizing physician wellness? 

Quotes: 

• ”The culture of our organizations is the foundation of wellbeing and professional fulfillment.” 
• "It’s about organizational change, systems change, and culture change, not tips and tricks for personal resilience.” 
• ”Our goal is to fix a broken work environment, not teach and train physicians to tolerate a broken work environment.” 
• Ask your team, ”What do you need from your leaders that you’re not currently getting? What have your leaders done that has been effective?” 
• ”Probably the most important thing we can do [is] listening.”  
• ”When organizational wellness efforts are either lip service, or manifest as yoga and granola and learn how to practice mindfulness… they will fall flat.” 
• ”Physicians have higher resilience than the general population.” 
• ”Even physicians with the highest scores on resiliency… have high levels of burnout.” 
• ”Our efforts are focused on improving the work environment.” 
• ”The purpose of the leader is to accomplish the mission and attend to the welfare of the soldiers.” 

Book suggestions:

• Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling by Edgar Schein
• Good to Great by Jim Collins 
• Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan 

In this episode we interview Dr. Roxana Doneshjou. She is a clinical scholar in the department of dermatology at Stanford School of Medicine. She is a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans and was the Stanford Medicine TEDMED Student Ambassador in 2015. She is interested in bridging new technologies such as genomics and machine learning with clinical medicine. She is also interested in the use of Twitter for scientific communication and medical education. You can follow her on Twitter: @RoxanaDaneshjou.

We hope you enjoy this episode of leading the rounds! 

If you enjoy what we're doing at Leading the Rounds, subscribe and give us a positive rating. You can also connect with us at leadingtherounds.com and on social media. 

Questions: 

• How did you develop your leadership philosophy? 
• Have you always been a team player or did you develop it? 
• What is your take on STEP1 being pass/fail? 
• How did you develop your career in medical technology? 
• How will artificial intelligence fit into medicine in the future?
• How can we avoid bias seeping into medical technology?  
• How do physicians balance promoting their brand on social media and not spreading misinformation? 
• How do you balance being yourself and maintaining your professionalism on social media? 
• How do you balance social media with your patients? 
• How can you thrive at virtual conferences? 

Ideas: 

• “Artificial intelligence technology has the capacity to offload some burdens within medicine and to provide decision support tools to physicians.” 
• Bias may sneak into AI algorithms 
•  “The pace of innovation often outpaces moral obligation.” 
• “We build things, but we don’t always think about the consequences.” 
•  On Twitter, “false news stories are 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true stories are.” 
• “If you are are trying to go viral, that is antithetical to science.” 
• “To me, science should always be about promoting the truth.” 
• When using humor, “Never punch down.” 

Books: 

• We Are Water Protectors by Carol Lindstrom (children's book)
• Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington
• Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares by Aarti Namdev Shahani

In this episode, we bring back a guest from season 1 and interview Hamza Khan. Hamza is a multi-award winning marketer, best-selling author, and global keynote speaker whose TEDx talk “Stop Managing, Start Leading” has been viewed over a million times. He is also the author of two books, The Burnout Gamble and his most recent book, Leadership Reinvented. If you want to learn more about Hamza, check out his website hamzakhan.ca. 

In our episode with Hamza last season, we talked about his leadership experiences, challenging the status quo, as well as his take on burnout being a leadership issue. In today’s episode, we focus on his new book, Leadership Reinvented and go through his belief that Servitude, Innovation, Diversity, and Empathy (SIDE) are the key to 21st century leadership. We hope you enjoy this episode with Hamza Khan.

Welcome to Leading the Rounds

Questions we asked included: 

• Tell us about your new book? 
• What does it mean to you to be a servant leader? 
• How do you look at innovation? 
• How do you reorient yourself to stay on the cutting edge? 
• How can you cultivate diversity if you yourself are not “diverse”? 
• Why is empathy important for leadership?
• What would you add as an addendum to your book? 

Our favorite Ideas: 

• SIDE (Servitude, Innovation, Diversity, and Empathy) 
• “The dark triad of leadership [narcissistic, Machiavellian, and psychopathic] is officially dead” 
•  “Become so good, that you can inspire other people to be better than you” -Hamza 
• “[As a leader] you are at the center of the organization radiating outwards.” -Hamza 
• “If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.” -Jack Welch 
• “Tap into very inspired and wise younger people” -Hamza
• “What we are striving for is diversity of background, experience and perspective.” -Hamza 
  
  

Check out Hamza's new book, Leadership Reinvented online, or at your local bookstore. 

Jonathan Burroughs is President and CEO of The Burroughs Healthcare Consulting Network, Inc. He works with some of the nation’s top healthcare consulting organizations to provide ‘best practice’ solutions and training to healthcare organizations throughout the country.

Dr. Burroughs serves on the national faculty of the American College of Healthcare Executives and the American Association for Physician Leadership, where he has been consistently rated as one of their top speakers and educators.

He is the author or coauthor of many books on healthcare leadership including, Redesign the Medical Staff Model - A Collaborative Approach, which was the winner of the 2016 James A. Hamilton Award for Outstanding Healthcare Management Book of the year.

Dr. Burroughs received his bachelor’s degree at Johns Hopkins University, his MD from Case Western Reserve University, and a healthcare MBA with honors from the Isenberg School of Management.

We hope you enjoy our conversation where we talked about knowing yourself, the importance of physician healthcare executives, and following the money in medicine. 

As always, if you like what we’re doing give us a positive rating and follow our social media pages for more content. 

We hope you enjoy this episode of Leading The Rounds. 

Questions we asked included: 

• How did you develop your leadership philosophy? 
• Tell us about Burroughs consulting? 
• How do we follow the money in medicine? 
• How do trainees learn the business of medicine? 

Our favorite quotes: 

• “Learn from every single patient. That’s why they call it the practice of medicine” 
• “Look in the mirror and see who you are… then exploit the strengths and minimize the weaknesses.”
• “If you don’t learn the business, you are going to be delegated to the assembly line.” 
• “Doctors who only know how to diagnose and treat patients will be treated as a commodity in the coming century.” 
• “He or she who controls the money, controls the system.” 

Book Suggestions: 

• French’s Differential Diagnosis 
• Introduction to Healthcare Finance by Carlene Harrison and William P. Harrison
• Essential Operational Components for High Performing Healthcare Enterprises by Don Burroughs  
• The Innovator's Prescription by Clayton Christensen and Jason Hwang 

In this episode, Peter and I put together the culmination of our first season of podcasting. We took lessons from leaders in medicine, business, and the military to bring you 5 rules for leadership. 

This episode contains lessons from previous guests including Drew Dudley, Dr. Ed Creagan, Dr. Simon Fleming and more. 

We hope you enjoy this episode of Leading The Rounds!

Rule 1:  Chase Purpose 

• “Leadership will always start from the inside out. The leader that you are is honed and developed well before a leadership appointment.” - Hamza Khan 
• “Leadership is spending just as much time, and just as much energy and resources setting and chasing goals for your character.” - Drew Dudley 

Rule 2: Bend, Don't Break 

• “You somehow have to find a way to embrace failure and learn tremendous lessons from it that make you instantly better than you were before.” -Steve Stylianos 
• “As your body acclimates… you become more comfortable being uncomfortable.” -Dr. Edward Barksdale 

Rule 3: Be Curious 

• “Ask questions, be curious, keep learning and you’ll never get old.” - Steve Swensen 
• "Ask them about their pets." -Dr. Ed Creagan 

Rule 4: Cultivate Empathy 

• “I try to interact with everybody assuming that not a single person has been nice to them all day" - Drew Dudley 
• “Unless we are sick in our life, we know nothing.” - Dr. Ed Creagan 

Rule 5: Change the Culture 

• “Better cultures get better outcomes… toxic cultures directly kill and harm patients.” - Dr. Simon Fleming 
• “It’s not weird to want what is right and to fight for justice.” -Dr. Ijeoma Opara 

Our Book Suggestions: 

Caleb: 

• Mindset by Carol Dweck 
• Shoe Dog by Phil Knight 
• An American Sickness by Elizabeth Rosenthal 

Peter 

• Start With Why by Simon Sinek
• Essentialism by Greg Mckeown 
• Dare to Lead by Brene Brown 

Big thanks to everyone who helped make season one possible. We appreciate all of the leaders that have helped make this possible. 

If you enjoy what we're doing at Leading the Rounds, subscribe and give us a positive rating. You can also connect with us at leadingtherounds.com and on social media. 

In this episode we interview Dr. Edward Barksdale. He is the newly elected American Pediatric Surgery Association President. He is also the Division Chief of Pediatric General Surgery and Thoracic Surgery at UH Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital. 

He recently Launched the Anti-fragility Initiative, which takes a unique approach to addressing Cleveland’s teen poverty challenge and has already received over $2 million from the Governor of Ohio.

We hope you enjoy our conversation where we talked about living in the moment, committing to excellence, leading from a place of purpose, leading as an introvert and the difference between success and significance.

As always, if you like what we’re doing give us a positive rating and follow our social media pages for more content. 

We hope you enjoy this episode of Leading The Rounds. 

Questions we asked included: 

• You met Dr. MLK when you were a child. Tell us about that story and how it impacted you? 
• How do medical trainees work to live in the moment? 
• What advice would you give to someone struggling to find their purpose? 
• What does excellence look like for you? 
• How do you know if you are adding value to interactions? 
• How can someone overcome their introversion as a leader? 
• What are some of your favorite books? 

Our favorite quotes: 

• “It doesn’t take wings, a halo, or anything from divinity for you to a leader and have tremendous impact”
•  “Don’t look back, you’re not going that way” 
• “History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history.” -James Baldwin
• “[Don’t] be a human doing, but strive to be a human being”
• “Success is the pursuit of maximizing your talents to the best level you can, and then giving that away.”
•  “A smooth seas never made a strong sailor” -Franklin D. Roosevelt
• “Hope… is the ability to work for something because it is good, not because it stands a chance that it will succeed” -Václav Havel 
•  ““If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.” -Seneca
•  “You’ve got to get your boat in the water”
• “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” -Ernest Hemingway

Book suggestions:

• Altruism, by Matthieu Ricard 
• Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor, by Sylvia Ann Hewlett
• The Second Mountain, by David Brooks 
• Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  
  

If you enjoy what we're doing at Leading the Rounds, subscribe and give us a positive rating. You can also connect with us at leadingtherounds.com and on social media. 

In this episode we interview Dr. Jeffrey Upperman. Dr. Upperman was recently appointed as the Surgeon-in-Chief of Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital. Prior to that, he served at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and received recognition as an expert in trauma, disaster preparedness, and injury prevention. 

Upperman is a retired lieutenant colonel in the US Army Medical Corps and was chief of surgery during operation Iraqi Freedom 2. He serves as a sworn member of the National Advisory Committee for Children in Disasters. 

Upperman has published over 180 peer-reviewed publications, 200 abstracts and 20 book chapters. His research includes sepsis, inflammation, trauma and disaster preparedness. 

He is happily married to his wife of 26 years who is also a physician and has three sons. 

In this episode we discuss his background playing sports, his journey to pediatric surgery, excellent performance, disaster preparedness, and more. 

As always, if you like what we’re doing give us a positive rating and follow our social media pages for more content. You can also follow today’s podcast guest on Twitter @PedsTraumaMan. 

We hope you enjoy this episode of Leading The Rounds. 

Questions we asked included: 

• How did your background in athletics influence your mindset as a surgeon? 
• How are surgery programs working to balance hard work vs overworking/burning out? 
• How has your background in the military influenced your leadership as a physician? 
• How did you become involved in disaster preparedness? 
• Has this background affected how you view the pandemic? 
• What could we have done differently in the pandemic? 
• Should information be censored to  promote positive communication in pandemics? 
• What are some of your favorite books? 

Our favorite quotes: 

• “You can’t hurt me” 
• “When you look at NFL, college, and high school football teams, they do more film review than surgeons do.” 
• “You control your lifestyle, but you don’t get to make boatloads of money and also sit at home all the time.” 
• “My life's mission is to improve the health of people” 
• “When you’re in certain environments, you need to learn how to make lemonade.” 
• “They were just unprepared because they didn’t want to read.” 
• “I am sick of lessons learned” 

Book suggestions:

• Philippians 
• Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them by Gary Hamel 
• Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott 

If you enjoy what we're doing at Leading the Rounds, subscribe and give us a positive rating. You can also connect with us at leadingtherounds.com and on social media. 

In this episode we interview Dr. Ijeoma Nnodim Opara. Dr. Opara received her medical degree from Wayne State University School of Medicine (WSUSOM) and completed a Med-Peds Residency at the Detroit Medical Center where she served as Chief Medical Resident. Currently, she is a double-board certified and an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. 

She is the Associate Program Director of the Internal Medicine-Pediatrics residency, and attending physician with Wayne State University Physician Group.

She is certified in Clinical Teaching by the Stanford Clinical Teaching Program and an inaugural fellow of the Academic Leadership Academy of Wayne State University. She is passionate about mentorship and medical education.

She is the founding director of an innovative residency curriculum called “Health Equity and Justice in Medicine”, and co-founding director of Wayne State University Global Health Alliance program and co-created and co-directs the Global Urban Health & Equity curriculum . 

Her areas of academic interest are in health equity, justice, social and structural determinants of health, global health, and inter-professional education.

 She has a long history of leadership in service to the African immigrant and African American communities and co-founded Africans in Medicine, whose mission is to unite African medical professionals to further the health interests of Africans living on the continent and in the Diaspora. 

Dr. Opara is committed to activism, advocacy and clinical care for disenfranchised populations and works vehemently to uplift them. She is recipient of “Most Engaged Physician” award given by the Detroit Medical Center in recognition of her excellent track record in community service, collaboration, and advocacy. She has also received “Faculty of the Year” award. 

In this episode we discuss her immigration from Nigeria, her role as the Ada, the importance of relationships, and her passion for global health. This interview is great for anyone looking to learn about culture, community, and the health of the world. 

Questions we asked include: 

• What was it like moving to the US and adjusting to a different culture? 
• How has your culture affected how you look at leading others? 
• How has being the Ada influence your leadership? 
• What is your method of self-reflecting and personal growth? 
• What would you tell someone who is looking to be a leader in global health in the future? 
• Favorite books? 

Our favorite quotes: 

• “I value relationships over efficiency” 
• “Business becomes much richer when it’s grounded in a trusting relationship” 
• “Hubris is always a risk” 
• “Self-awareness is one of the most important traits of anybody” 
• “Everybody is a leader… it’s just a question of if you have a title or role.” 
• “When you see your sister hurting and you help her feel better, that is leadership” 
• “You’re a leader way before you get the title” 
• “[Representation] doesn’t just matter, it is everything” 
• “It’s not weird to want what is right and to fight for justice.” 
• “There is a lot that we can learn from the rest of the world” 

Book Suggestions: 

• Caste by Isabele Wilkerson 
• Stamped from the beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
• Black Detroit A People's History of Self-Determination by Herb Boyd

If you enjoy what we're doing at Leading the Rounds, subscribe and give us a positive rating. You can also connect with us at leadingtherounds.com and on social media. 

In this episode we combine with another podcast to interview. Dr. Stephanie Faubion M.D. She has practiced in the Women's Health Clinic at Mayo Clinic for over 10 years. She has a broad interest in women's health and her research encompasses sex- and gender-based differences in disease, menopause, hormone therapy, healthy aging, and sexual health and dysfunction in women.

In her roles as the Penny and Bill George Director for Mayo Clinic's Center for Women's Health and medical director for The North American Menopause Society, Dr. Faubion is acutely aware of the need to improve the evidence base for medical practice. Her role in the research community is guided by the need to develop research strategies that will improve the clinical practice as many research questions come directly from the clinical dilemmas faced every day in medical practice.

Dr. Faubion's research group has developed a clinical database: the Data Registry on Experiences of Aging, Menopause and Sexuality (DREAMS). This database, developed in 2005, already has extensive longitudinal data with over 7,000 patients and has facilitated multiple research projects. In this context, Dr. Faubion has encouraged and directed strong research collaborations with established clinical and basic science researchers within the institution.

We are also joined today by Aleesha Kotian and Charlotte Thill of From Skirts to Scrubs, a podcast that intersects gender studies, history and medicine. For more information we encourage our listeners to visit their website or check out their social media. In this episode we talk about how to be an authentic leader and why we need to move to a place where gender isn’t a qualifier for leaders in medicine.

Questions we asked include: 

• What is her leadership background? 
• How has being a woman shaped your leadership abilities? 
• How can we address equality from a top down and bottom up perspective? 
• Will this problem fix itself over time or do we need to do more? 
• How can there be more support for women entering back into the workforce after taking time off for family? 
• How can we support and normalize men taking time off for raising children, family, etc? 

Our favorite quotes: 

• “You are a woman leader, but you lead regardless of your gender. For you being a woman is both critical and unimportant.” 
• “Being a woman is not important when I’m leading a team… it doesn’t factor into my decisions.”
• “If you’re not authentic to yourself, you’re not going to be a good leader.” 
• “The definition of a leader means people are following you” 
• “Do we have the right person for the job, or are we just picking the next white male candidate?” 
• “We have to rethink how we are cultivating leaders and engaging people” 
• “If you’re climbing a ladder, you need to be bringing at least two or three people up with you.” 
• “Lose your self limiting beliefs” 

Book suggestion: 

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

If you enjoy what we're doing at Leading the Rounds, subscribe and give us a positive rating. You can also connect with us at leadingtherounds.com and on social media.