The SurgeonMasters Podcast

Pump the brakes on your week and take 10 minutes to make your life as a surgeon just a little better…

On this episode of the podcast, Jeff welcomes back Karla McLaren to talk about System Change!

While we can all benefit from the many strategies that we teach on these mini-podcasts, Karla shares with us a concern that we are focusing too much on self-care for surgeons, instead of looking at the systems in which we work. She illustrates her point with a key example - the undervalued emotional work that we do.

Karla offers three steps to help the system become more emotionally intelligent:

• Step 1 - Awareness: Become aware of the emotionally laborious work surgeons endure every day with patients, colleagues, and management.

• Step 2 -  Take Inventory of the emotional work you're doing daily, and the emotional work that people are doing for you.

• Step 3 - Acknowledgement: Look at emotional work as work and treat it seriously.

If you’re not familiar with Karla McLaren, M.Ed, she is an award-winning author and social science researcher. Her lifelong work focuses on her grand unified theory of emotions, which revalues even the most “negative” emotions and opens startling new pathways into self-awareness, effective communication, and healthy empathy. She is the founder and CEO of Emotion Dynamics, LLC. Karla is also the author of The Art of Empathy: A Complete Guide to Life’s Most Essential Skill (2013), The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings are Trying to Tell You (2010), and the multimedia online course Emotional Flow: Becoming Fluent in the Language of Emotions (2012).

Awareness of emotional labor is a perfect example of how surgeons can improve their effectiveness inside and outside of the OR.

Pump the brakes on your week and take 10 minutes to make your life as a surgeon just a little better…

This week on the Mini-Podcast Jeff talks about the goals of the SurgeonMasters Podcast, and encourages listeners to “Help Us Help You!” SurgeonMasters is passionate about making a positive impact on the lives of surgeons and we believe that the life improvement strategies the podcasts provide help surgeons build a foundation for further skill development and well-being. 

We know how busy surgeons are and we aim to provide convenient and easy learning opportunities with minimal time investment.  Repetition is key, and dedicating small amounts of time, like 10 minutes to listen in to the SurgeonMasters podcasts, help surgeons take control of their growth and development to customize strategies to suit their own lives and maximize the benefits. 

SurgeonMasters applies the 8 PRACTICEs methodology to drive performance improvement and surgeon wellness through our podcasts:

1. Passion for performance improvement
2. Reciprocity of roles and relationship
3. Attitude resilience
4. Communication with mutual understanding
5. Time management
6. Inspire others to share their goals
7. Complex problem solving through simplicity
8. Energy for personal practice and wellness

Let us know how we can help! We welcome our surgeon listeners to do 1 of 3 things this week:

• Provide feedback to drive performance improvement
• Send us any ideas or topics you’d like to learn about
• Give us the names of educators that want to teach or have expertise on life improvement strategies

Send us an email at [email protected] and help us help you!

Pump the brakes on your week and take 10 minutes to make your life as a surgeon just a little better…

On this episode Jeff welcomes Matthew Twetten, MBA, a health policy expert in physician payment and coding, to talk about financial wellness and being properly reimbursed for MORE of the work we do.

Our time is a valuable commodity. To make the most of our time, it's important to educate ourselves on the rules and processes of billing and coding. This may require additional work and better communication (with the insurance company, patient and billing department), but it will pay dividends in the end.

Matt offers three steps to improve your ability to get paid and receive proper compensation:

• Step 1 - Have a mindset that you deserve and need to get paid, to be sustainable

• Step 2 - Assign a value to yourself and your time

• Step 3 - While staff can track your time, you need to set your value and set the standard

If you’re not familiar with Matthew Twetten, MBA, he is a health policy and physician payment / coding professional. He has served in the government relations department of the North American Spine Society (NASS) and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). He is currently an independent RUC and CPT consultant to several medical specialty societies and various stakeholders.

Email [email protected] if you would like to contact Matt. 

Getting paid is a perfect example of how surgeons can improve their effectiveness inside and outside of the OR.

Pump the brakes on your week and take 10 minutes to make your life as a surgeon just a little better…

On this episode Jeff welcomes Dr. Todd Swenning who tells us how he put into action a brewing interest in humanitarian work with a 2017 trip to Paraguay, and how rapidly that is fostering his growth as a surgeon, a leader, and even a father. 

Dr. Swenning initially became interested in humanitarian work after hearing stories from friends and colleagues about how inspiring it was to provide care to people who otherwise have no means or access to the level of medical care that we have in the US. His active participation in humanitarian work has even improved his performance in other, seemingly unrelated areas, including his time management and organizational skills. He's also appreciative of the opportunity that it creates to be more present, and more appreciative of what we have.

Todd also offers two simple steps to advance your own interest in humanitarian work:

• Research - Whether about a suitable partner organization, the location, or the type of work, or whether about your needs to expand your effort through industry or volunteers, do a little research.

• Reach Out - talk to prior participants who have been on these missions to give you a better insight into the time commitment, the type of resources available and the resources you need to bring.

If you’re not familiar with Dr. Todd Swenning, he is actively involved in policy making and advocacy with the Orthopaedic Trauma Association as well as the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.  Dedication to education has resulted in his teaching principles of trauma management and patient advocacy both nationally and internationally.  Research projects in both fracture and trauma management have laid the foundation for his passion for trauma and fracture prevention and preparedness.

Participating in humanitarian work is a perfect example of how surgeons can improve their effectiveness inside and outside of the OR.

Pump the brakes on your week and take 10 minutes to make your life as a surgeon just a little better…

This week, we are welcoming to the mini-Podcast Dr. James Dahle, a practicing ER physician, and the founder and author of The White Coat Investor. This week, Dr. Dahle talks to us about our own financial literacy and whether we need a financial advisor. Physicians are intelligent enough to learn finance and disciplined enough to follow a good plan, but may not have the interest to do. If this applies to you, then it might be good idea to get a financial advisor. When looking for an advisor, you want to find a a fee-only advisor and you want someone who is going to be a fiduciary for you, who will put your interest first.

How does he suggest we start practicing financial literacy? By doing the following:

• Step 1 - Find out how you're paying your financial adviser

• Step 2 - Find out how much you have or will be paying your adviser annually

If you’re not familiar with James M. Dahle, MD, FACEP, he graduated from Brigham Young University with a BS in Molecular Biology in 1999 and the University of Utah School of Medicine in 2003. He trained at the University of Arizona Emergency Medicine Residency Program from 2003-2006, and then served four years with the Air Force and the Navy, practicing medicine in an academic institution, a small community hospital, a trauma center and in military facilities on four different continents. He is now a partner with Utah Emergency Specialists, seeing patients in a community hospital ED just South of Salt Lake City.

In residency, he developed an interest in personal finance and investing. In 2011, he started The White Coat Investor, now the most widely-read physician-specific personal finance and investing website in the world with over 900,000 page-views per month. In February 2014, he published a best-selling book, The White Coat Investor, A Doctor's Guide to Personal Finance and Investing. He also runs a successful podcast, videocast, CME conference, newsletter, forum, and a scholarship program giving back to medical students. Most recently, he launched the online course "Fire Your Financial Advisor: A Step by Step Guide to Developing Your Own Financial Plan. His financial articles have appeared in numerous online and printed publications, including ACEP NOW, and he is a sought-after speaker best known for helping physicians and other high-income professionals get a "fair shake" on Wall Street.

Financial Literacy is a perfect example of how surgeons can improve their effectiveness inside and outside of the OR.

Website