This is a time for national unity, not sensationalism [PODCAST]

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“Recent articles have accused some physicians of hoarding medications for themselves during our international medical crisis. Authors such as these should be ashamed of their coverage and wasted ability on sensationalism when they could be spending their time informing the public about the dangers of COVID-19 and the actions communities, hospitals, physicians, businesses, and public servants are taking on a daily basis to protect our great nation and the world from the perils of this invisible enemy.

As a physician, I urge my colleagues to keep fighting to help restore order and health in our nation and to remember the promise we made in our Hippocratic Oath: ‘So long as I maintain this Oath faithfully and without corruption, may it be granted to me to partake of life fully and the practice of my art, gaining the respect of all men for all time.

There is hope we will defeat this invisible enemy and return to the normal way of American life: travel, commerce, vacation, celebrations, and sports. I ask that we help each other and not spread fear and disinformation during this period. Many people are in need, so reach out to your local hospital or medical school and ask how you can help by donating food or funds to help medical students, physician trainees, and other health care workers. This is a time of national unity and to rise as one and to share resources with each other, help the elderly, and listen to the advice of medical experts.”

Shady Henien is an interventional cardiology fellow and CEO, Physician Promise.

He shares his story, explores the cardiology-coronavirus connection, and discusses KevinMD article, “This is a time for national unity, not sensationalism.”

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Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show we have Shady Henien. He just finished his interventional cardiology fellowship, and he wrote the KevinMD article “This is a time for national unity, not sensationalism.” Shady, welcome to the show.

Shady Henien: Kevin, thank you for having me. It’s great to see you again.

Kevin Pho: So we’re going to get into the article in a bit, but first off, tell me your story and your journey to where you are today.

Shady Henien: It’s been a wonderful ride so far. I grew up in Easton, Pennsylvania, in a wonderful family. I went to Wilson Area High School, played football there, and was student body president. Then I had the wonderful opportunity to go to the University of Pittsburgh, where I studied neuroscience and political science, and I was also student body president out there. Then I went to medical school at the University of Iowa, where I was student body president and learned a lot about, obviously, what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. I decided that I wanted to be a cardiologist, so I went down the internal medicine route. That took me out to Connecticut, where I went to Yale at Bridgeport Hospital, where I did my internal medicine training.

At that time, I learned a lot about myself, about leadership, and about different areas that I would look to focus on moving forward in my professional life. At that time, I had the opportunity to join the American Medical Association. I ran for a national position, and I was humbled to be selected by my peers to be the national chairman for the AMA Resident Fellow Section, where I had the opportunity to meet you many years ago, and also to work with residents and fellows from around the country.

From there, I transitioned off and went to fellowship at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. I did my cardiology training right there, and then I decided to stay on another year and do my interventional cardiology fellowship at Brown, which I just completed a few days ago. So it brings me here today, and I’m just so humbled by all the people who have helped me along the way during this time period.

I also realized that in order to do the kind of things that I want to do in health care policy, as well as streamlining health care to make it more for patients, I needed an MBA. I was so fortunate that my program directors gave me the opportunity. I applied to a number of MBA programs and was accepted to Cornell University, where I graduated with their MBA just a month ago. That was a phenomenal ride. I met so many wonderful people from around the country, especially in the New York area. And so now I’m at the beginning of my career. I’m going out to Illinois this next week for one more year of training, structural cardiology training, in Springfield, Illinois.

During this ride, I met a lot of amazing people. I’ve started a company with a couple of my classmates. It’s called Physician Promise, and I’m the CEO. To date, we’ve incorporated in March, and we’re going to be live later this summer. It’s a telemedicine platform to help patients that are suffering from very sensitive medical topics. We’re the only telemedicine platform out there right now that’s focused on couples’ health. So if you can imagine, the patients that we see on a regular basis have a lot of sensitive topics, whether it be erectile dysfunction, hypoactive sexual desire disorder, premenopause, skin issues, or hair loss issues, things that they don’t want to readily talk about, especially with their loved ones, but especially with the doctor.

This is an opportunity for them to come as a couple to learn more about their disease states and how they can help one another, and then get the care that they need from one of our physicians at Physician Promise. We also have everything that’s going to be done on the site, where the medications will be prescribed. It will be sent to one of our pharmacy partners, it will be filled there, and it will be mailed to the patient.

Kevin Pho: So there’s a lot to unpack there, obviously a very busy journey thus far, so we’ll get into that in a bit. First off, let’s talk about how the pandemic has affected you from a cardiology standpoint. You mentioned you just finished your cardiology, or interventional cardiology, fellowship. How has the pandemic affected you and your practice over the last few months?

Shady Henien: Sure. Ever since this became a national issue, obviously a worldwide issue, we knew about it since the wintertime, but really America, and in our hospital, started taking a lot of extra steps, I would say probably around the January, February time. How it’s affected me is, obviously, as a cardiologist, an interventional cardiologist, I didn’t expect to see that COVID would be affecting a lot of these patients. But as you can see in the literature and the published reports that have been out so far, there are patients who present with acute coronary syndrome and actually abnormal coronary arteries. So now we’re learning that the coronavirus is also causing a vasculitic process, which is so surprising to me, and I think it’s surprising to a lot of interventional cardiologists. I give my hats off to all the first responders, the front-liners, the nurses, the staff, EMS, the police, the firefighters, everybody who’s helping our communities to get our patients the care that they need.

Other than that, we see that our patients are nervous about coming to hospitals, because they don’t want to contract, obviously, the coronavirus, which is completely understandable. So now what’s happening is that a lot of patients are becoming understanding of what telemedicine can do for them, and what we’re seeing is a big shift. We had the early adopters of telemedicine a few years ago, but we’ve crossed that chasm now. The entire country knows about telemedicine, and digital health is the future of care. For things that are not, obviously, having to put you in a hospital, but for things that can be followed up on, or making new diagnoses through questionnaires, or physical exams through Zoom, this is making health care a lot more readily accessible to patients, especially thinking about the rural areas. These are people who have difficulty getting to a tertiary care center, let alone to a PCP’s office. As long as they have Wi-Fi, they’ll be able to get the care that they need.

But otherwise, from a cardiology perspective, it’s really shown me how to work as a team, both with our internal medicine colleagues, working with the nurses and the staff, administration, as well as the local government. I think everyone’s doing their part, and as long as everybody just wears their masks, they don’t have to go out, we’ll get to recovery very soon.

Kevin Pho: And from a cardiology standpoint, is there something that you know now that you wish you knew back before the pandemic started?

Shady Henien: Oh, absolutely. Nobody knew that this was going to be such a big deal regarding coronary. We did a case a few months ago. There was a patient who had COVID, and he came in with a STEMI. Of course, he had coronary disease, but he also had a lot of ectasia, so big openings, or big widening, in his arteries. Now, who knows? Potentially he could have been born with that. This could have been hereditary, but also it could have been caused by corona. We will never really know about that. From the published reports nationwide, we didn’t know that this was going to cause such a big acute process, and the manner of death is V-fib, which is surprising to me. I thought it would just be more of a respiratory compromise.

Kevin Pho: So let’s get on to your KevinMD article. You wrote this back in March, and it’s titled “This is a time for national unity, not sensationalism.” I want to read an excerpt from your article. You write, “Recent articles have accused some physicians of hoarding medications for themselves during our international medical crisis. Authors such as these should be ashamed of their coverage and wasted ability on sensationalism when they could be spending their time informing the public about the dangers of COVID-19 and the actions communities, hospitals, physicians, businesses, and public servants are taking on a daily basis to protect our great nation and the world from the perils of this invisible enemy.” Now, those are fighting words. Tell me the story behind that article. Why did you decide to write it?

Shady Henien: Kevin, I was outraged, and that’s just to say the least, to see that the authors are wasting their skill and their reach to write such sensational articles about physicians, accusing physicians of using their knowledge and their access to medications for self-gain. That was absurd. Physicians, nurses, EMS, all the first responders are risking their lives every single day for Americans, as well as all patients that arrive in the emergency room and the offices and clinics across this country. And to have authors from the New York Times and ProPublica publish such outlandish articles accusing physicians of hoarding medications in a time of crisis, where physicians are dying, nurses are dying, first responders are dying because of coronavirus, and for them to publish an article of such outlandish language and to paint such a negative portrayal of what physicians are doing in their communities, that really hit home.

A lot of times, I think, as physicians, we sit back and we see all this nonsense that’s being written about our colleagues, or about our care, or about the care that’s occurring in the country, or about how the health care system is running. But enough is enough. I’m seeing my own friends who are physicians getting severely ill nationwide from coronavirus, and I’m not going to be able to sit back and let these authors write such outlandish articles. Potentially, maybe you may have one or two or 20 physicians who may have ordered themselves some hydroxychloroquine. We know very well today, and even back then, there is no randomized controlled evidence that hydroxychloroquine is going to cure coronavirus, and now we know today for sure that hydroxychloroquine does not cure it.

So for these authors to go out and not give any citations, not give any names, there’s really no credibility behind this article. And for them to just paint a picture that all physicians, that’s how it came out, all physicians were hoarding these medications, or at least the majority of physicians are doing that, how does that paint a picture to our communities nationwide? Now did they start to double-think about what physicians are doing, what their ulterior motives are? When in fact these physicians, you and I and our colleagues around the country, some of us are unable to go home because we don’t want to get our loved ones sick. What’s happening? They’re staying in the hospital for extended periods of time. I know some nurses who are stuck in hotels because they don’t want to go home and get their loved ones sick, and they’re doing these one-week stints on and off so that they don’t affect anybody. Tell me what other profession is doing something like this.

So instead of applauding and thanking the first responders, the physicians, the nurses, the EMS, the police officers, the firefighters, everybody who’s involved in this, and also the local government officials who are helping hospitals have a good infrastructure so that they can deliver the care that they need to the patients, they publish an outlandish article like this in what I thought were very reputable sources. Now I’ve lost a lot of respect, especially for those authors and for the publications themselves.

Kevin Pho: So those of us in health care, we don’t have a lot of media training. We’re not trained to respond back in the media in kind. So what do you suggest that the medical profession do whenever we feel that there’s an article written about us that’s unfair?

Shady Henien: I think you are a perfect resource for that. You are a wonderful mentor for that. The work that you’ve done with KevinMD has been phenomenal. It’s really an inspiration to all of us as to how we can use our skill sets to educate our population, to educate our communities about what it means to be a physician and how to live a healthy life. So applause to you, a hundred percent. When I met you many years ago, I was very inspired by what you told us and how you use digital media and used being an author within, in congruence with, your profession.

Now, how do the rest of us do this? Just speak your heart. We’re physicians. We have spent so many years in training. Think about all the exams we’ve taken. Think about all the papers we’ve written in the past. To tell me that a physician is unable to write an article is very silly. So I think, as any physician out there, if you see something that rubs you the wrong way, please pick up the phone. Call your local editor, call, whether it be you, Kevin, or a local radio host or a TV station, and let people know. People need the truth when they’re reading these articles that are being unopposed, unanswered for. That’s it: The communities are going to start losing trust. The moral fabric of what health care is meant to have done, back since Socrates’ era and the Hippocratic oath and all that stuff way back then, is starting to erode because you have these types of authors that are going unopposed and unanswered.

So now it’s the time for physicians to really unite with one another to educate their patients. We’re not here to help these newspaper articles make sure that they get their ads and get their money by sensationalism. We’re here to preach the truth to our patients, to help them get the care that they need, get the access to care that they need, and also to give them the advice that’s necessary so that they can live healthy lives. So in sum, if you see something, just write that article first. That’s number one. Make sure that the articles are in, and then start sending it off to a whole bunch of editors. You’re going to get denied from some, but who cares? You will find one newspaper source that will say, “I would love to publish this piece.” And then from there, you start building credibility with that newspaper source, and you’ll start to get a following on social media, and it’ll be easier for you to start getting these articles published, because people will then begin to trust what you’re writing.

Kevin Pho: Well, thank you for sharing that inspiring advice. I think one resource that I found particularly helpful was the OpEd Project. So if you just Google that, it has a list of opinion sources that you could reach out to and contact, share your story, and really get the word out from our perspective out there.

I normally ask my guests something that they’re passionate or curious about, but I want to ask you something on a different tack, because earlier on you talked about your company. I’m curious, you’re so busy as an interventional cardiologist. What was the impetus for you to go ahead and get your MBA and then be a CEO of a company?

Shady Henien: Yeah, thank you, Kevin. So I grew up, and I don’t want to boast or anything, but I grew up and I’ve had such amazing opportunities given. I’ve been blessed with so many different skill sets, and I didn’t want them to go away. I thought to myself, “All right, I’ve been blessed. I had wonderful training in medicine. Now, how can I use these other things, such as leadership, public speaking, and decision-making? How can I bring these all together?” I knew I had the raw tools, but how do I make something of it? And I thought an MBA was the best way to go about it. So the MBA helped me to take the raw tools that I had and put them into different frameworks so that they can become effective and add value to others.

So the things that I’ve worked on in the past that I told you about all came to fruition. And now, with the business training and the medical training, I’m able to streamline a lot of different things to add value both to physicians as well as the patient, and take out a lot of the different middlemen that add a lot of that pork into health care that makes it very expensive. It’s not the physicians that are making health care expensive. You can look up any of these articles, there are plenty of articles published about this, but it’s the added rules in health care, and I’ll just leave it at that, that are unnecessary to be there. So remove them.

Kevin Pho: Thank you so much for sharing that. We’re talking to Shady Henien. He just finished his interventional cardiology fellowship. He wrote the KevinMD article “This is a time for national unity, not sensationalism.” Shady, what is your take-home message, as it relates to the article, to the KevinMD audience?

Shady Henien: Great, thank you. As physicians, we work very hard, I would say probably since high school. Nobody just wakes up and says, “I’m going to be a doctor tomorrow.” You need to have committed your life to education, to learning, to dedicating your time and your energy and your thoughts on how to become a physician. This is a time where America needs physician leadership, where they are getting so many sources of information from a lot of different media outlets. Some of them are fake, some of them are OK, some of them are evidence-based, and some of them are just, you know, not even worth listening to.

So as physicians, we had that knowledge. We were gifted, and we were trusted by our communities and our country to care for them. This is our opportunity now to help our patients better understand how they can get the care that they need, and also to be safe. Because America was not built to be inside of our basements or inside of our rooms. America was built for commerce, for enjoying life, and vibrant celebrations and graduations and prom and sports, and we’re all going to get back there again. But I think we need more physician leadership to help educate everybody about what to do, as well as to help our local as well as federal elected officials on how to make decisions.

Kevin Pho: OK, well, thank you so much for your time and insight. How can people reach you?

Shady Henien: They can reach me multiple ways. I’m on Facebook. My email is [email removed by the editor]. They can also go to our website, [website removed by the editor], and start to interact with us and send whatever notes. They can join our mailing list. Those are probably the easiest ways for them.

Kevin Pho: Fantastic. Thank you for joining me on the show.

Shady Henien: Thank you, Kevin. All the best to you.

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