Leading with Health

This week on Leading with Health, I talk about consumerization in healthcare and the role of healthcare marketing. How does the drive to make a profit impact the main issue of patient care? Here are the articles mentioned in the show:

In another record year for pharma TV ads, spending soars to $3.7B in 2018

Startups are selling you pills through Instagram. Why don’t they say which ones?

You can subscribe to Leading with Health on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify - and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.

And guess what? I love hearing from you! You can reach out to me at [email protected] or tweet me @MMSJennifer or find me on Instagram @LeadingwithHealth. And if you haven't already, stop by my site and download your free copy of 100 Quotes from Women in Healthcare.

Technology is not neutral and that can have disastrous consequences in healthcare. So in this episode I explore the risks of bias in healthcare technology. You can find the full list of articles and reports mentioned in the show here. 

You can subscribe to Leading with Health on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify - and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.

Guess what? I love hearing from you! You can reach out to me at [email protected] or tweet me @MMSJennifer. And if you haven't already, stop by my site and download your free copy of 100 Quotes from Women in Healthcare.

How do we take data and use it to tackle real world problems like opioid addiction? Christa Hyson of The Health Collaborative joins me in this episode to tell me how she gets it done!

You can subscribe to Leading with Health on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify - and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.

And I love hearing from you! You can reach out to me at [email protected] or tweet me @MMSJennifer. And if you haven't already, stop by my site and download your free copy of 100 Quotes from Women in Healthcare.

 

In in this episode, I explore how we disconnect from ourselves and how that impacts society. And also why the most successful healthcare businesses market via connection. I reference a totally awesome book, too - When Doctors Don’t Listen, by Leana Wen, MD and Joshua Kosowsky, MD.

You can subscribe to Leading with Health on Apple Podcasts, Google Google Podcasts, Spotify - and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.

Hey, I love hearing from you! You can reach out to me at [email protected] or tweet me @MMSJennifer. And if you haven't already, stop by my site and download your free copy of 100 Quotes from Women in Healthcare.

I read an article this week that started me off on a tangent tackling workplace harassment and exploring the layers underlying Imposter Syndrome. Here is the article I mention in the episode, >Tulane Medical School Professor Says Top Male Doctors Created ‘Hostile’ Workplace For Women.

Highlights include:

7:18 – JM: “Men’s tirades at work take advantage of women’s rape trauma past.”

8:48 – JM: “We (women) are all abused really young or are all aware that we might be and it’s to an extent that we respond differently than someone who is not in our group (for instance, a man). Then, throughout the course of our lives, men poke at this. And we respond with the fear of someone who’s actually being threatened at a very severe level because that is the reality. But then they get to say, “Oh, they’re overreacting, I didn’t do that,” as if it was a little thing. But they are specifically poking at it because they know it isn’t a little thing.”

10:55 – JM: “Sexual victimization teaches us not to believe ourselves. We’re taught that it’s our fault and, most importantly, we’re taught that our perceptions are completely wrong.”

12:25 – JM: “I think the reason women have so much doubt in their capabilities is because on a fundamental, personal level they are told that no matter what happens to them, it doesn’t count.”

12:47 – JM: “So how do you overcome that and believe you’re anything other than an imposter?”

13:12 – JM: “Instead of admitting when they’re blowing up at you in a closed office that they are throwing 2,000 years of rape culture at you and triggering your own personal rape history, they’re saying, ‘Oh well, I might have been a little stressed out and maybe I spoke too loudly.’ But that’s not what really happened in that room. That’s not what’s going on.”

14:44 – JM: “It’s amazing how, if you don’t say it right, that’s turned on you. Except what no one is saying, of course, is that there is no way to ‘say it right’. They don’t want to hear it. There is nothing you can do to say it right because they have already decided not to hear it.”

15:02 – JM: “When we talk about Imposter Syndrome, when we talk about women’s self-confidence, we make it sound like, ‘Oh, we’re just taught to be more deferential’ like it’s a little teeny icing on the cake of patriarchy. But it isn’t.”

15:25 – JM: “What is going on there is that these early traumas are being allowed to be retriggered to keep women quiet in the workplace. And to keep women from even advancing in their own minds, no matter how successful they are.”

Leading with Health is the podcast where women dive into societal change through the lens of healthcare. Host Jennifer Michelle has a Master’s in Public Health and Epidemiology and is a certified EMT. As President of Michelle Marketing Strategies, Jennifer specializes in healthcare marketing. Jennifer is available to speak at conferences and also provides free marketing consultations. Contact her here.

What is the role of compassion in healthcare? That’s the question Dr. Emelia Sam addresses on this episode of Leading with Health.

Dr. Emelia Sam is an unlikely combination of maxillofacial surgeon and personal development and spirituality blogger. With over two decades in the clinical arena, she is using her unique background on her mission to humanize healthcare. She blogs at emeliasam.com and is the author of Compassionate Competency: Healing the Heart of Healthcare.

Highlights include:

3:28 – ES: “I always felt like the treatment we were giving was somehow incomplete.”

3:55 – ES: “There was this culture that tends to see people as cases and treat the case and not address the person.”

4:40 – ES: “I would tend to get caught up in the patient’s backstory, what happened before the trauma.”

7:05 – ES: “Something clicked and I realized that I get to be that happy. I deserve that, as well.”

7:16 – JM: “We’re so used to being told that it’s awful experiences that are wake-up calls so I love it when something that wonderful as ‘I get to be that happy is a wake-up call’.”

8:44 – ES: “I would have found the time for my writing. Even if it was just waking up half an hour earlier in the day. I needed to carve out that slot for my creativity.”

9:53 – JM: “A lot of people feel that they have to keep the more empathetic, warmer side of themselves out of the professional realm.”

10:27 – ES: “From the time that you start your training, there is this mentality of ‘suck it up and get it done.’ At any cost.”

10:46 – ES: “As a student and certainly as a resident, you learn to put your own needs on the backburner and only attend to not even the patient, but the case that is in front of you.”

12:11 – ES: “Once you cross-over the professional threshold, once you are in that environment, you are supposed to leave your true self at the door. That makes no sense when we are talking about care.”

17:26 – ES: “It’s all about having compassion for others and for ourselves.”

17:45 – ES: “Most of the curriculum is devoted to clinical competency. … And for quite a few years now we’ve also been talking about cultural competency. And it just occurred to me one day, what about compassionate competency? Why don’t we talk about the human connection?”

18:55 – JM: “It’s about being comfortable with your own experiences and also having support to learn about that.”

19:02 – JM: “With medical training, you’re often taking people who are still very young in their lives – still in their 20s – and throwing them into really difficult healthcare situations.”

19:03 – JM: “These are family dynamic issues and these are social support issues and it’s a big ask of someone young, without a lot of life experience,
to throw them into these situations.”

21:40 – ES: “How are we actually communicating with our patients? How effective are we being? And how does that communication, the ways in which we communicate, affect us?”

24:33 – ES: “I would like to see Compassionate Competency adopted as a standard resource in healthcare training facilities across the board. I would love to see pre-professional students and professional students having this early on in their arsenal, if you will. I want to see Compassionate Competency as the standard.”

Discussions of social determinants of health center on social programs as if they are equally available to everyone. The truth is, access to healthcare and social services is based on a punitive model that intentionally limits availability. So that’s what I dive into in this episode – here are the resources I mention:

• $1,000 a Month, No Strings Attached
• For Trans Women Silicone Pumping Can Be a Blessing and a Curse
• UK Biobank Requires Earth’s Geneticists to Cooperate, Not Compete

Highlights include:

3:42 – “’Pumping’ refers to a kind of underground plastic surgery. Pumping is often turned to when licensed medicine isn’t accessible — typically because of a combination of social, financial and discriminatory barriers in health care.” Source: For Trans Women Silicone Pumping Can Be a Blessing and a Curse

5:30 – “Being able to pass as cisgender can, in some cases, be a matter of life and death.” Source: For Trans Women Silicone Pumping Can Be a Blessing and a Curse

5:54 – “Society defines who is worthy of health care, who is worthy of culturally competent care, who is worthy of even having access to health insurance,” Ruby Corado says. “And if you conform to [those] standards … then your privilege is that you can go to a doctor and get treated.” Source: For Trans Women Silicone Pumping Can Be a Blessing and a Curse

6:15 – JM: “It’s just pure luck whether we fall into a group where we get access to care or not.”

7:20 – JM: “We decide that some people are worth more and some people aren’t. It’s not random – it’s based on one group saying they want all the goodies and leaving all the other groups to scramble.”

10:03 – JM: “These judgments are more about the people making them than about the people receiving them.”

10:10 – “A nonprofit organization was looking to give 20 African American single mothers living in public housing $1,000 each month for a year. They’d be able to use the money in any way they pleased. … For decades, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to push families out of poverty by adding restrictions to government welfare programs. There were work mandates, time limits, benefit caps — rules aimed at pointing families toward what the government thinks are good choices. Now, there is increasing interest in trying out the reverse.” Source: $1,000 a Month, No Strings Attached

11:30 – JM: “Think about how you would like it if someone tried to tell you how to spend your money. Or tried to tell you whether you were worth having a place to live. Think about how punitive our entire social welfare approach is. It’s all about ‘Are you worthy?’ of whatever the benefit is – and the benefit is so meager.”

12:07 – JM: “Hierarchies want the top to flourish and everybody else not to.”

13:25 – ““At the end of six months, none of the women reported using an emergency lender. Nearly all said they had enough money to buy school supplies, when fewer than half had said that before. They reported cooking more balanced meals, visiting the doctor and attending church more often. … ‘The beauty of all of this has just been how folks are light,’ Nyandoro said. ‘They aren’t walking around with the heaviness of life that, unfortunately, so many times low-income folks have to carry.’” Source: $1,000 a Month, No Strings Attached

14:43 – JM: “What if, we every time we wanted to add restrictions, we considered removing them, instead?”

16:09 – UK Biobank Chief Executive Dr. Rory Collins says, “The idea is to democratize research so scientists who might struggle to get funding and other resources can also make important contributions, using this dataset.” Source: UK Biobank Requires Earth’s Geneticists to Cooperate, Not Compete

16:25 – “(UK Biobank Chief scientist Dr. Cathie Sudlow) expects collaboration, rather than traditional competition, will be what really drives medical science forward.” Source: UK Biobank Requires Earth’s Geneticists to Cooperate, Not Compete

18:28 – JM: “How much of our society would be able to flourish if we stopped the judgment and stopped the restrictions and said, ‘What if we just gave you what you needed?'”

20:30 – JM: “It’s about making sure that women never feel adequate. And the result is that there is a huge amount of emotional energy that, instead of going to something we want, winds up going to this impossible and unnecessary task of changing our physical form.”

21:15 – JM: “What if we just had freedom to be beautiful the way we are?”

21:54 – JM: “What if we shook off all this baggage that we have been given that says we’re not worthy of even the most basic things, like being considered attractive or having a place to live or having food or being worthy of being listened to.”

23:27 – JM: “There is a difference between setting a boundary on something that has happened and is not being respectful of the gift that you’re giving and just restricting everything so that you’re not even allowing the other person to have the life that they deserve.”

Leading with Health is the podcast where women dive into societal change through the lens of healthcare. Host Jennifer Michelle has a Master’s in Public Health and Epidemiology and is a certified EMT. As President of Michelle Marketing Strategies, Jennifer specializes in healthcare marketing. Jennifer is available to speak at conferences and also provides free marketing consultations. Contact her here.

Mass shootings are a symptom of a broader societal problem – one that often lands at the feet of medical professionals. So in this episode, I explore mass shootings, suicide, domestic violence and violence against healthcare workers.

We are in the midst of a perfect storm in the home healthcare world. People are living longer, we have multiple generations needing care – and a shortage of workers to take care of them. That’s the revelation brought by Charmaine Conaghan, who joins me on this episode of Leading with Health.

Are we so sure that a positive mental attitude is the right goal? What is the line between being “positive” and being “real”? Join me on this episode to explore when positivity becomes negative.