Third Opinion MD

In the season 1 finale of Third Opinion MD podcast, I’m taking to the streets of Portland, Oregon with my friend and colleague, Alisha Harrington, to speak to real people about their experiences with the healthcare system. You see, I strongly believe that true healing comes from real listening, and I wanted to hear the unfiltered stories of people in everyday settings. Alisha and I visited food carts and a local park and interviewed people about their experiences with doctors and healthcare.

I know that many of their stories will sound familiar to you, and you may have experienced something similar in interacting with the healthcare system. In this episode, I’m also sharing 8 “dos and don’ts” for you to use on your own healthcare journey, so you can get the best results possible. You can find these listed below, as well.

Read the full show notes, and transcript on my website.

Some of my pearls of wisdom around how to best interact with your healthcare system:

• Write down the specific department, and the direct phone number for the doctor you are working with, or have been referred to. It’s easy to get lost in a phone tree or get bounced around in referrals.
• Request and keep a copy of your health records, preferably every year or six months. Read through them. Ask questions or ask for revisions if something is incorrect or no longer accurate about your current health status. Maintain your records because you will likely change doctors. In being your own best advocate, it’s important that you also keep the records and understand your own health history.
• Remain calm and in control of your emotions when you are working with people in healthcare. It’s reasonable to be frustrated and feel overwhelmed. For the best care, keep to the golden rule of “treat others as you’d like to be treated.” It goes a long way with doctors who are limited by time to engage with you..
• Don't let insurance coverage dictate what you should do for your health. Self care is the key to supplementing what insurance won't.
• Use the Patient Elevator Speech to use your time at your doctor’s appointment wisely and efficiently. You’ll want to consider 10 points, some of which include:

1. When your symptoms started, and where they are located (pain, nausea, anxiety, etc).
2. The quality and intensity of a symptom, especially regarding pain. 
3. What you were doing when the symptoms started. 
4. If there is anything that makes the symptoms better or worse.
5. If you’ve had the symptoms before (a prior episode).

 Resources

Sign up for my newsletter to receive the 11 Dos and Don’ts to Get the Best Results from Your Healthcare System

Download the full Patient Elevator Speech

In this episode, I want to take you with me on a scavenger hunt, to look  at my past, present, and future. In episode 1, I talked about my mother, Christina Stemmler, M.D., who was an integrated physician. She studied Chinese medicine, she was a family physician, and she had a profound effect on me and my interest in healthcare. She died in 2008. Throughout her career, she gave several talks and was a prolific writer; so, I have the opportunity to introduce you to her in this episode from rare audio recordings. I’ll be talking about her because I’m, right now, at the point in my life where I really want to understand the “before and after” of me.

In looking to the future, I am also introducing you to my nephew. He is my sister’s son, and he is 7 years old. One of the things that fascinates me about him is that I’ve never taught him the concepts of energy medicine or Qi, that life force energy that is so essential to health according to Chinese medicine. However, in this interview you will hear his wisdom as he talks about energy with an unfiltered understanding, and the connection he has to his environment of before and after. It’s profound to hear him speak about his experience, and I’m delighted to share it with you.

Moving forward in this podcast, I’m going to continue to uncover clues about my mother’s life and her legacy before she died. This is more than just detective work. It’s a gift left in her writing, in her recordings, and from my memories. It’s a treasure not just for me to understand my true essence and calling, but an opportunity for you to learn from two generations of women propelled to make changes in the understanding and delivery of healthcare. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to episode 1, An Introduction to Third Opinion MD: Time to Take the Doctor Out of the Equation and Put You in Charge of Your Health, I introduced my mother as one of the reasons why I am producing this podcast.

In this episode, I share:

• Looking forward and backward in my family’s timeline to see how our lineage has connected with healing and energy.
• What it means to be an integrated physician.
• Recordings from my mother, Christina, when she gave lectures to her patients as an integrated physician.
• An introduction to the future through my 7-year old nephew. I sent questions to my sister to interview him about his grandmother, Christina. His answers demonstrate how easily children can understand energy and healing.
• My family’s history of trauma, including every generation moving to find a better future.
• My mother’s history of having been a doctor and a healer. She studied both Eastern and Western medicine, much like I did.
• How our history can inform our present, and how it can impact our future.
• Why the entirety of a person’s history (personal, family, social, cultural, spiritual) is important in understanding their current health.
• Review the steps I teach you when we work together so you can form your own third opinion.

In this episode of the Third Opinion MD podcast, I’m honored to be interviewing a renowned qigong master, Master Liu He. Master Liu is a part of the Ling Gui lineage of qigong, a school with teachings that have been passed down for 2,000 years. I have worked with Master Liu since 2015, and have found that her presence and teachings guide me and ground me in profound ways.

Master Liu began her training at the age of 4 under the guidance of her grandfather, a highly respected qigong master and Chinese medical doctor who treated the last Emperor of China. By age 14, Master Liu attained the level of qigong master and was given permission by her grandfather to teach others; a privilege traditionally reserved only for men.

Her life has been dedicated to sharing with others all that has been given to her. She teaches medical qigong and healing techniques extensively throughout China, Europe, and the United States, and is currently on the faculty of the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine in Portland, Oregon.

In this episode, Master Liu and I discuss:

• The definition of Qigong (Qi is translated loosely as “energy” or “life force”, and Gong as “practice” or “cultivation”)
• The role Qigong plays in your energy and health
• Some of the differences between Eastern and Western Medicine
• How integrating Eastern and Western practices in medicine can help us better develop our own third opinion in medicine
• Cultivating good health
• Our minds as fourth-dimensional space, and how this is different from the standard Western thinking
• The roots of Qigong, and its relationship to Traditional Chinese Medicine, yoga, Yin Yang theory, and Five Element theory
• Approaching Qigong from a beginner’s mindset
• Learning to trust our senses and bodies

Resources:

Master Liu’s Website: https://linggui.org/ 

Master Liu on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/masterliuhe/ 

Read a transcript, and the full show notes for this episode on my website.

To learn more about Third Opinion MD, please visit my website by clicking here.

I offer one-on-one integrative health consultations blending Eastern and modern medicine philosophies, putting you in charge of your health management and prevention. You can learn more by visiting my website, here.

Dr. Barbara de la Torre started Third Opinion MD as a way to spark a wave of change in the way we practice medicine, how we care for ourselves, how physicians are treated, and how we can navigate through the existing healthcare system. Information on this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for the advice provided by your physician or other healthcare professional. 

This is the second part of a two part interview with Dr. Shelly Smith-Acuña. You can read about, or listen to, the first part of this conversation here. I highly recommend tuning in to part one first.

For both parts of this interview, I’ve proposed that Dr. Smith-Acuña and I take a unique look at the health care system. We are blending her background in Psychology and Systems Theory with my own experience of the healthcare system as a doctor. We set the scene for this discussion by having all of the “family members'' of the healthcare family attend an intensive psychotherapeutic session together. We are sending all the players of healthcare to get therapy because, let’s face it, healthcare systems are really dysfunctional.

 In this episode, Dr. Shelly Smith-Acuña and I discuss:

• Structure as the fifth principle, and the hierarchy that comes into play within the healthcare system. Structure encompasses sharing power and sharing responsibility, along with good communication.
• How definition and clarity around the structure of a system gives everyone working within it a better sense of how to interact and work.
• History and development is the sixth principle of Systems Theory. This involves understanding both the history of the doctor’s profession, or health history of an individual patient. Events such as trauma are not always considered when approaching care, and they have an impact on outcomes.
• The role of transference and countertransference: unconsciously patients and doctors experience and react to one another based on their past personal experiences and what they encountered in their families of origin.
• Social and cultural narratives is the seventh principle of Systems Theory. Each of us has encountered both social and cultural experiences that inform who we are now, and how we understand any given situation. These narratives also impact language shaping experience and form dominant narratives.
• One example of this is a dominant narrative around passive-aggressive care. Within a healthcare system, the patient is often expected to be a passive recipient of care, with doctors using aggressive approaches and language around care.

Resources

Systems Theory in Action: Applications to Individual, Couples, and Family Therapy by Dr. Shelly Smith-Acuña, 2011.

 Wise Mind, as explained by the founder of DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy), Marsha Linehan in this short YouTube video. This Venn diagram is an amazing summary of where two people can be in healthcare interactions, from successful to polarized.

Correction and more information on the 20th-century physician, William Osler. Dr. Osler was actually one of the four founders of The Johns Hopkins Hospital rather than Johns Hopkins University as explained in the episode. For more information about William Osler, click here.

Read a transcript, and the full show notes for this episode on my website.

To learn more about Third Opinion MD, please visit my website by clicking here.

I offer one-on-one integrative health consultations blending Eastern and modern medicine philosophies, putting you in charge of your health management and prevention. You can learn more by visiting my website, here.

Dr. Barbara de la Torre started Third Opinion MD as a way to spark a wave of change in the way we practice medicine, how we care for ourselves, how physicians are treated, and how we can navigate through the existing healthcare system. Information on this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for the advice provided by your physician or other healthcare professional. 

Recently, I discovered a fascinating book, Systems Theory in Action: Applications to Individual, Couples, and Family Therapy by Dr. Shelly Smith-Acuña. She is the dean of the Graduate School for Professional Psychology at the University of Denver, and is a licensed  psychologist who specializes in couple and family therapy. While I was reading her book, I couldn’t help but imagine how each of these different players in the healthcare system struggle for different reasons. In this episode, I’m sending all the players of healthcare to get therapy because, let's face it, healthcare systems are really dysfunctional. 

In this episode, Dr. Shelly Smith-Acuña and I discuss:

• The definition of Systems Theory, and how it relates to psychology
• The healthcare system as a family unit includes: the server (healthcare workers), the bureaucrat (administrators), the patient, the guard (insurance companies), the dealer (Big Pharma), and the judge (state medical boards).
• The seven principles of systems theory: context, causality, communication, change, structure, history, and the social cultural narratives ( first four reviewed in this episode, part 1):How context can give us a better understanding of the relationship between the parts and the whole in healthcare systems
• The nature of causality (or cause and effect), andhow we tend to blame from a linear perspective rather than consider a more shared responsibility.
• Communication: the inconsistency between message sent and message received, the intent and the impact of communication, and how communication can have various purposes like: establishing status, solving problems, creating emotional bonds
• How the healthcare system both creates and resists change

Resources

Systems Theory in Action: Applications to Individual, Couples, and Family Therapy by Dr. Shelly Smith-Acuña, 2011.

Burnout in Healthcare Workers: Prevalence, Impact and Preventative Strategies. Local and Regional Anesthesia 2020:13, pp.171-183. A graph called the job demand-control model, introduced by Karasek in 1979 focuses on the balance between the magnitude of the demands (height of strain) and the level of control (decision latitude) in a person’s work situation. This article refers to the research on burnout in the 1970s mentioned in the episode.

Read a transcript, and the full show notes for this episode on my website.

To learn more about Third Opinion MD, please visit my website by clicking here.

I offer one-on-one integrative health consultations blending Eastern and modern medicine philosophies, putting you in charge of your health management and prevention. You can learn more by visiting my website, here.

Dr. Barbara de la Torre started Third Opinion MD as a way to spark a wave of change in the way we practice medicine, how we care for ourselves, how physicians are treated, and how we can navigate through the existing healthcare system. Information on this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for the advice provided by your physician or other healthcare professional. 

Welcome to the first episode of the Third Opinion MD podcast!

As a medical doctor with a background in the American medical system, I’m concerned by the level of care that patients receive and more informed of the constraints in the current medical system. I’ve left the traditional medical world to create something new because I want more for all of us as patients and more for myself as a professional. My guess is that you also experienced some of the setbacks of our current healthcare system, and that you want to find something that supports you in a more holistic way. This podcast is part of my mission to change healthcare for the better while helping all of us to return to the basics of good health.

In this episode, you’ll learn more about forming what I call “your own third opinion.” I want you to trust your instincts, and for you to become your own best advocate. This takes understanding the current system, knowing how to navigate it, and learning how to speak up for what you need in a way that gets better results.

I’m just as frustrated as you are about the system and the way it works. The pandemic shed light on how bad things were and how healthcare can become worse. You might jump to the conclusion that the healthcare system is broken and that we have to replace it. You’ll discover in this episode that the better thing to do is to discover what works well within it, what we can do to navigate through it, and how to find ways to bring in other systems.

 In this episode, you’ll learn about:

-        Creating your own third opinion

-        My background as a doctor

-        Why I’ve chosen to focus on educating rather than treating

-        The events and people who have influenced how I practice medicine

-        How my mother’s death changed how I understand medical care

-        How to fix what is not working in healthcare

-        A parable about what happens when we just look at one part of a larger ecosystem

Read a transcript, and the full show notes for this episode on my website.

To learn more about Third Opinion MD, please visit my website by clicking here.

I offer one-on-one integrative health consultations blending Eastern and modern medicine philosophies, putting you in charge of your health management and prevention. You can learn more by visiting my website, here.

Dr. Barbara de la Torre started Third Opinion MD as a way to spark a wave of change in the way we practice medicine, how we care for ourselves, how physicians are treated, and how we can navigate through the existing healthcare system. Information on this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for the advice provided by your physician or other healthcare professional. 

Season 1 trailer introduces an innovative podcast on how to liberate your perspective of health through a better understanding of Chinese and Western medicine. Recognize what your body tells you, know what to do. It’s time for a Healthcare Evolution in each of us. Listen to episodes about the existing healthcare system (the good, the bad, and the ugly), how to navigate through it to get the best care, understand the differences between Eastern and Western medicine, and what makes Chinese medicine unique and important for being and staying healthy.