Last month marked the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Two weeks after that tragic day, The Onion, the famed comedy newspaper, put out an issue with jokes about 9/11. How did they do that? Scott Dikkers, one of The Onion’s founders teaches us how. His rule is that comedy is meant to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” That’s why they put out that issue. To comfort the afflicted. As physicians, that’s what we do! How can we be funny, even in the face of tragedy? Mr. Dikkers teaches comedy writing and has turned what seems unteachable into a science. He has described funny filters and all comedy fits into one of those filters. He teaches us which are the best for the exam room, how to recover from a failed joke, how to work humor into our office visits and lectures, and what jokes comedians can’t use, but we can!   Scott Dikkers founded the world’s first humor website, TheOnion.com, in 1996. A few years earlier he helped found the original Onion newspaper. He’s served as The Onion’s owner and editor-in-chief, on and off, for much of the last quarter century.  He led The Onion’s rise from small, unknown college humor publication to internationally respected comedy brand.  He is also a New York Times best seller, and Peabody Award winner.  He documented his process for creating humor in his book, How to Write Funny, and the second in the series, How to Write Funnier, and next on the way, How to Write Funniest, which are the basis of the Writing with The Onion program he created and teaches at The Second City Training Center in Chicago. Scott offers other courses and free resources for comedy writers on the How to Write Funny website. Today's sponsor is CompHealth. To find out more visit financialresidency.com/comphealth  

Physician's Guide to Doctoring

Learn to Make Your Patients Laugh with Scott Dikkers of The Onion

This was one of my favorite interviews. I was a fledgling podcaster at the time when I interviewed, Dr. Stephanie Sogg, a clinical psychologist at the Harvard Weight Center. She had been quoted in an article in the Huffington Post that lambasted physicians for not knowing how to talk to our patients about their weight. Interviews like this were the reason why I started podcasting. I emailed her and asked her if she could teach us the right way to have these discussions and she agreed! Talking to patients about their weight is fraught with landmines created by inordinately complex psychosocial issues. It is very easy to alienate a patient. Dr. Sogg teaches us the power of language and this has come up in other interviews since. Changing racial language from minority to minoritize and slave to enslaved changes the perspective of the listener. It subtly influences how that person is perceived. The same applies to discussing weight; when we change our language about body habitus to be less stigmatizing, it subtly influences the listener, be it our patients, students or colleagues. We also need to change the way we talk about food. According to Dr. Sogg, the only bad food has gone bad, tastes bad or is poisonous. Dr. Stephanie Sogg is a clinical psychologist and an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School. She has treated patients with obesity at the MGH Weight Center since 2003. Dr. Sogg earned her PhD in clinical psychology from Rutgers University in 1998, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship with Harvard Medical School. In addition to her clinical work, Dr. Sogg conducts research on obesity and bariatric surgery, and the intersection between obesity and addiction, and has published widely on obesity and related topics. She is an author of the Boston Interview for Bariatric Surgery, and of the official ASMBS Recommendations for the Pre-Surgical Psychosocial Evaluation of Bariatric Surgery Patients. She is the director of the Weight Center rotation for Behavioral Medicine psychology interns, and is active in national and international scientific obesity and weight loss surgery societies. She is currently serving as a member-at-large on the Integrated Health Executive Council for the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. Today’s sponsor is Locumstory. You can find out more by visiting: www.locumstory.com 

Harness the Power of Language When Discussing Weight with Stephanie Sogg, PhD

This episode is going to flip the script. I’m going to be the one interviewed. I was interviewed by Dr. Indu Partha, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tuscon, on her podcast, The Ajo Way, Primary Care Pearls from South Campus. We talked about dizziness. If you are an otolaryngologist like me, you can stop listening now, but for everyone else who finds dizziness to be mystifying, this will be a good primer to understanding otologic causes of dizziness. We aren’t getting granular here; no need to differentiate the saccule from the utricle. You’re getting lost in the weeds. If you have trouble differentiating postural dizziness from positional vertigo, this episode is for you. 

Don't Make Vertigo a Diagnostic Dizzy Spell.

Dr. Junaid Niazi is a board-certified internist and pediatrician who works as a primary care physician for a large healthcare organization in the upper Midwest by day and by night he’s known as Prosperous Life MD. He is a physician life coach and he blogs and coaches physicians on all things wellness, productivity, finances, and careers. He also has a group coaching program to help physicians complete their charting at work and that’s why he’s on the show today. His interest in charting also landed him as an Information Services Medical Director, where he optimizes the EHR for physician use and patient care.   He is going to help you conquer your charts and go home on time! How? By standing over you and forcing you to finish the chart before moving on to the next patient! How? By convincing you that whatever you can do with that extra time is going to be more rewarding than whatever it is you’re doing to waste your time instead of charting.  Are my kids more fun than scrolling on Twitter? Usually. What’s your reward? Finish your charts!!! We also talk about Parkinson’s Law, why it isn’t some forgotten formula from physics class or your neurology rotation, and how realizing its truth will help you get stuff done. He’s also anti-To-Do list? Why are to-do lists the devil and make you feel like garbage and ultimately less productive?   Dr. Niazi completed his undergraduate studies at Rice University, medical school at Baylor College of Medicine, and residency at the University of Minnesota. He is married to a pediatrician and has two rambunctious toddlers. Today's sponsor for the podcast is Locumstory. To find out more visit - doctorpodcastnetwork.com/locumstory

Stop Screwing Around and Get Your Charts Done! with Junaid Niazi, MD, of Prosperous Life MD

Dr. Linda Street is a board-certified Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialist and Life Coach who focuses specifically on Physician Negotiations. She is the Founder & CEO of Simply Street MD Negotiation Coaching where she helps female physicians take charge of their lives and negotiate for the salary they deserve. She lives and breathes to close the gender gap, starting with you! She also hosts the Simply Worth It podcast where she discusses physician contract negotiations. Find her at www.simplystreetmd.com We start out discussing how it is critical to change your mindset when you finish your training. You have been the toilet paper on someone’s shoe for the last decade and now you’re the prize, so negotiate like it. One of her main points is that you’ll never know what you can get unless you ask. Negotiation isn’t a zero-sum game with a winner and a loser, so there is no reason for it to be an adversarial relationship. It is about finding a way to work together. And think about your priorities – it isn’t just about money. Are you burned out and need a change of pace? or looking to supplement your income? Then maybe locum tenens is for you. Reach out to www.doctorpodcastnetwork.com/locumstory to learn more.

Physician Contract Negotiation: Know Your Worth And Ask For What You Deserve with Linda Street, MD

Jen Barna, MD, is a board-certified practicing radiologist, and founder and CEO of DocWorking, a company that helps physicians achieve their best in life and medicine by providing expert coaching, courses, and other resources in the form of a subscription called DocWorking THRIVE. Jen and the two lead coaches at DocWorking, Gabriella Dennery, MD, and Master Certified Coach Jill Farmer, started DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast in February 2021, now ranked as a top physician podcast. I’ve had a few physician coaches on in the past, and she has come the closest to convincing me to actually get a coach myself. We discuss why she decided to start a business that revolves around coaching physicians, without actually being the coach herself, and how she got it started, her other business ventures, including Qelse (https://www.qelse.shop) an e-commerce boutique that creates designer walker/mobility bags, stroller bags and caddies. We also discuss some of her most valuable takeaways from having been coached and why an outside coach should be part of residency training. Dr. Barna’s subspecialty is breast imaging, and she practices in the northeastern US since 2006. She earned her medical degree and completed her Diagnostic Radiology residency at the University of Tennessee School of Medicine. She earned a masters degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Washington University in St. Louis, and her undergraduate degree from Stony Brook University in New York. Try the Deputy app for free by visiting -doctorpodcastnetwork.com/deputy

How to Use Coaching and Community to Your Advantage with Jen Barna, MD, of Docworking

Dr. Sarah Smith is a family physician and charting coach. She specializes in helping physicians with our charting backlog so we can get home on time without the looming cloud of unfinished charts and callbacks.  We discuss how to add efficiency to your day by making sure you are laser focused on your patient and you aren’t finished until that chart is closed. This frees up mental space for the next patient, making that visit a bit more efficient. By the end of your morning, have a plan for how you are going to tackle callbacks. We also discuss dictation, scribes, templates, and how this is all easier said than done. She went to medical school at the University of Western Australia and has worked in primarily rural communities as a family physician, and is now in Edson, Alberta, Canada. Dr. Smith is a certified life coach and knows firsthand the experience of never being done and having unfinished charts and inboxes begging for your attention.  She has hundreds of hours of experience coaching many physicians in the outpatient setting with improving their office and workplace efficiency and finding solutions to getting their work done during their clinical day. You can find her at chartingcoach.ca.   To learn more — and try Deputy out for free — go to www.doctorpodcastnetwork.com/deputy

Physician Charting Coaching - Strategies to Save Time, Improve Efficiency, And Get More Done!

Micheal Reddington is a Certified Forensic Interviewer (CFI) and the President of Inquasive. Inquasive is a company that integrates the components of non-confrontational interview techniques with business research for executives. Michael uses his Forensics background and understanding of behavior through interrogation to teach businesses to use the truth to their advantage. Now he teaches the same interview techniques to Physicians.  In this week's episode, we discuss techniques to achieve better interactions with patients. It is not easy in many cases to convince them to relay the correct information. It is hard to diagnose a patient if only half of the needed information or the wrong information is received. For many patients, it is about trust that the physician will give them the correct diagnosis. This trust is a key component for a physician to provide the best care possible. The techniques discussed in this episode will answer how to use them in daily patient interactions and many more questions!   The sponsor for this week's episode is Vive Funds. Reach out to Veena and her team at Vive Funds to find out how you can be a successful investor too! Vive Funds creates opportunities for you to build your portfolio. You can find out more by visiting: www.doctorpodcastnetwork.com/vivefunds 

Interview techniques for physicians? The best one you need to know!

Jonathan Howard, MD, is double boarded in Neurology and Psychiatry and as he puts it in his Twitter profile, the author of several non-bestselling neurology textbooks. That’s not why he’s being interviewed. H wrote his own book on fallacy and errors in medicine entitled, Cognitive Errors and Diagnostic Mistakes: A Case-Based Guide to Critical Thinking in Medicine. I keep trying to interview him about the book and he keeps changing the subject! In the last interview, we discussed cognitive biases in vaccine hesitancy and used by antivaxxers and this time we talk about how biases influence how we perceive the danger that covid-19 poses to children. He teaches us about the contrast effect and why it can be used to dangerously minimize the impact of COVID on children, but how we also need to use contrast as a frame of reference when determining risk. Dr. Howard did his residency and fellowship at NYU, where he is now an associate Professor of  Neurology and Psychiatry, specializing in Multiple Sclerosis. He is the neurology clerkship director and director of neurology at Bellevue. He can be found on Twitter at @JHowardBrainMD and blog articles on sciencebasedmedicine.org.  If you want to boost efficiency across your practice and make staff scheduling easier, try the Deputy app. You can try this award-winning technology for free by going to www.doctorpodcastnetwork.com/deputy 

COVID in Kids - How to Assess Risk and Avoid Cognitive Illusions

Omar M. Khateeb is a marketing leader based in Silicon Valley. He actually started out going to med school before going into marketing. He has developed marketing strategies at two publicly traded surgical robotic companies through their IPOs as well as co-founded and successfully launched a consumer product for men’s fashion. Having successfully crowdfunded and launched a consumer product, Omar brings his knowledge of B2C marketing through digital channels to a B2B world. His areas of focus are category design, driving adoption of new technologies, and developing strategies to channel attention towards generating demand. He is currently the head of growth at Gentem, an end-to-end billing and revenue cycle management company for physician practices. His career in marketing has made him a student of influence, so we discuss Robert Cialdini’s 7 principles of persuasion and how and why physicians should be utilizing them with our patients. These are reciprocity, scarcity, authority, commitment, consensus, likability, and unity. You can follow with Omar on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (@OmarMKhateeb) or Youtube (Mind Loom with Omar M Khateeb). For a free billing assessment with Gentem: https://gentem.com/request-demo/

Practicing Principles of Persuasion with Patients with Omar M. Khateeb of Gentem Health

Scott J. Allen, Ph.D., is the Dr. James S. Reid Chair in Management at John Carroll University. He is an associate professor and teaches courses in leadership, management skills, and executive communication. He is also a communications coach, consultant, author, podcast host, and entrepreneur. For almost two decades, he’s worked with clients to improve their leadership and communication skills. Maria Soriano Young, M.A. is a Communication Manager for the Chair of the Heart, Vascular, & Thoracic Institute at Cleveland Clinic. Her background includes 11 years in higher education, having taught a variety of courses at John Carroll University, including business communication and first-year writing, directed the Writing Center, and coached graduate assistants to become effective teachers. Their book, Captovation: Online Presentations by Design, is one of the first comprehensive guides to crafting, revising, and delivering online presentations that are engaging and effective. We first go through the basics of presentations and common pitfalls, like huge, packed slide decks. We then go through the intentionality of the online presentation, from staging, to vocal tonality and cadence, and various ways to keep the audience’s attention from props to the chat function to pregnant pauses and more. And we end on the challenge of the hybrid lecture. Are you coaching curious or a coach yourself looking to improve your services? Then head to doctorpodcastnetwork.com/PhysicianCoachingAlliance to learn more. 

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Zoom Presentations

Nate Brown is a perpetual student of the world’s greatest experiences and the people who create them. Having spent the first decade of this career managing a complex technical support environment for Occupational Health and eLearning software, Nate transitioned to Customer Experience 2015. After authoring The CX Primer, Brown was dubbed the “CX Influencer of the Year” by CloudCherry in 2019, and a top global CX thought leader by over half a dozen organizations and associations. As a passion project, Nate created CX Accelerator, a first-class virtual community for Customer Experience professionals. Nate currently serves as the Chief Experience Officer for Officium Labs and can be found at a variety of conferences speaking and training on the CX topics he loves. Find his podcast at Podcasts — Officium Labs We discuss the brand promise – what does your brand stand for and what promise is it making and what expectations are you setting? He teaches us about the peak-end rule. Your patients will remember the first and last impressions most, so what are you doing to maximize their experience at those key points. When his daughter had surgery at Vanderbilt, they were given a “journey map,” so they’d know what their day was going to look like and this concept could be applied to many of our patients’ journeys. Lastly, with a coming “great resignation,” what we can do to create a culture of appreciation within our practices. This week's sponsor is Advice Media. Don’t delay booking your demo today for a $60 Amazon Gift Card and some awesome insight on how to improve your digital presence, go to www.doctorpodcastnetwork.com/advicemedia 

What Promises Does Your Brand Make to Patients With Nate Brown

Dr. Jeff Bailet is president and chief executive officer of Altais, a subsidiary of Blue Shield of California. Altais was formed to help physicians and their practices reduce administrative burden, spend more time with patients, and improve access to quality, affordable health care. Dr. Bailet has more than 25 years of healthcare leadership experience having served as executive vice president of Blue Shield of California’s Health Care Quality and Affordability division, executive vice president at Aurora Health Care and President of Aurora Health Care Medical Group and CMO of PacMed Clinics, a multispecialty medical group in Seattle. He also currently chairs the federal Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee (PTAC), established by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). Like me, he’s a board-certified otolaryngologist having completed residency at UCLA and holds a master of science with concentration in Environmental Health. Given his breadth of leadership experience, we discuss how he arrived there, advice he’d give up and comers and then broader questions like where he’d like to see change about the US healthcare system and why physicians need a seat at the table. We also talk about trends physician practices, why smaller practices are good for patients, and what to look for if you’re considering merging with a larger practice or selling your practice. As a physician, you routinely check your patients' health. But when was the last time you checked the financial health of your practice? Request your free revenue cycle assessment and learn more from today's sponsor, CareCloud, at www.doctorpodcastnetwork.com/carecloud

When Physicians Should Outsource, Sell, or Lead with Jeff Bailet, MD of Altais

Jessica Elizabeth Isom, MD MPH is an early career community psychiatrist, public speaker, medical educator and consultant for diversity, equity, inclusion and antiracism projects. Dr. Isom draws on her psychiatric training and humble background to connect across differences in power, education, and perspective to foster a collaborative approach to achieving racial justice and equity in medicine and beyond. She gives us a framework for addressing racist patients, family members and guests. This is three steps and works in many situations. Call it out, leverage the institution and set a limit on the behavior. Interrupt. Educate. Set limit. She also gives us ways to address racist language from attending to attending or even trainee to attending. We also discuss when it is OK for a patient to request a physician of a certain gender or racial background Dr. Isom is currently an attending psychiatrist at Codman Square Health Center in Boston where she is providing expertise on antiracist transformation of staff and programming with a specific focus on the opioid use disorder services. She received her MD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she also received her MPH with a focus on public health leadership. She currently serves as a leader within the American Psychiatric Association Assembly representing Early Career Psychiatrists and has been elected to the Councilor Position for the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society. Currently, she is devoting considerable time to growing her consulting company, Vision for Equity LLC(vision4equity.com), which she intends to expand into a nationally sought out team of antiracism coaches and organizational trainers. She can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @drjessisommdmph. Are you too busy to build the professional digital presence your business needs? Then reach out to Advice Media at www.doctorpodcastnetwork.com/advicemedia.

Learn How to Stand Up to Racism in Healthcare With Dr. Jessica Isom

Kyle Bradford Jones, MD, FAAFP is an Associate (Clinical) Professor in Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine. He graduated from the Medical College of Wisconsin in 2009, and completed his residency in Family Medicine at the University of Utah in 2012. Since then, he has worked at the Neurobehavior HOME Program, a clinical program for individuals with a developmental disability, where he leads the Primary Care and Utilization Management Teams. He is author of the best-selling and award-winning book Fallible: A Memoir of a Young Physician’s Struggle with Mental Illness.  We started with how he realized that he was struggling with his mental health, how it has become an asset in his patient care (and caring for his colleagues and trainees), some surprising data about the frequency of mood disorders and suicidal thoughts in our trainees, and how we need to give ourselves some grace in light of all of the paradoxes we are forced to grapple with in healthcare. Are you too busy to build the professional digital presence your business needs? Then reach out to Advice Media at www.doctorpodcastnetwork.com/advicemedia

Fallible: Why Focusing On Physician Mental Health Helps Everyone with….

This is a podcast that answers the question, "what should we have been learning while we were memorizing Kreb's cycle?" This is a practical guide for practicing physicians and other healthcare practitioners looking to improve in any and all aspects of our lives and practices. Physician and non-physician experts are interviewed on a wide range of topics to help us help our patients, practices, colleagues, communities and most of all, ourselves. If you want to share you expertise on the podcast, please email me at brad@physiciansguidetodoctoring.com or @physiciansguide on Twitter.

hubhopper

Physician's Guide to Doctoring

hubhopper