Physician personal development and growth [PODCAST]

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“COVID-19 has given all of us the opportunity to live in extremely challenging times. We can choose to run away from this challenge or decide to acknowledge it as part of our journey to grow and transform. So, will you face your habitual reactions, biases, and unpleasant emotions and turn these COVID-19 related challenges into opportunities for personal development and growth?

It’s up to you.”

Francis Yoo is a family physician and the author of Physician Freedom: Living Your Authentic Physician Life and COVID Contemplations for Self-Awareness and Personal Development. He can be reached at his self-titled site, Dr. Francis Yoo.

He shares his story and discusses his KevinMD article, “Personal development and growth during COVID times.”

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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 Francis Yoo. He’s a family physician, and he’s a physician coach. He recently wrote the KevinMD article “Personal development and growth during COVID times.” Francis, welcome to the show.

Francis Yoo: Thank you for having me here, Kevin.

Kevin Pho: So we’ll get into your article in a little bit, but first off, can you share your story and your journey to where you are today?

Francis Yoo: After I finished my residency, like any new attending, you just kind of grab a job, get into it, and start living your life and working and see what life is about. Life’s going to be great, and now you’re done with your residency.

After five years of running around wearing a ton of hats, right? I was full time seeing patients. I started off as an associate program director, then took the role of a program director, so coordinating residents and precepting residents. I was a vice chair for the family medicine department for two years. I was doing QI projects for the clinic. I was starting new clinics in different places to help out in different ways.

And then I realized: What is life going to be like 50 years from now? Am I going to be a CMO, a DIO? Not really. I didn’t want to. That’s not really where I wanted to go. I realized that my path was taking me in a direction I did not want to end up in, so I shifted gears. Now, like I said, I’m a physician coach, and I really started to vamp up my private practice.

Kevin Pho: All right, so you are part-time clinical and part-time physician coach. Tell me a little about that transition into these two things that you’re doing.

Francis Yoo: Yeah, actually, I started the practice part time, one day a week, while I was full time working for employed corporate clinical medicine. It was tough. I knew it would be, just because of the number of hours that it takes. At one point, I just said, “I’m going to go part time, start earning less money as a salary, focus, put a fire under my butt, get myself going.” Because otherwise, I can sit on it for years and decades, not getting anything done.

And I just said, “Let’s give myself a timeline.” You know Parkinson’s law, right? The more time you have, the work is going to take that amount of time to do. But if I have less time to do it, I’m just going to get up and do it and get it done and get things rolling.

Kevin Pho: Excellent. And from all the people that you’re meeting through your coaching practice, how has the pandemic affected these physicians?

Francis Yoo: It’s kind of related to the article that we’re going to talk about. It really depends on the person. There are people who are going to be frustrated by the pandemic and remain frustrated. They’re just going to live their drama and live out the story and not get help, not change anything. And there are those people who are going to tough it out and maybe get some help here and there, but in the end, the status quo doesn’t really change.

And then there are those people who say, “This is something, this is a sign, a challenge to do something.” It’s quite easy to see who’s who. Not to judge people, but who’s ready and who’s willing to change, because you can’t really coach someone who’s not willing to get past the status quo.

Kevin Pho: I’ve talked to so many physicians through this podcast, and I think you’re right on the mark. I think that this pandemic is really an inciting event for a lot of physicians to re-evaluate their career choices. I’ve seen so many doctors go part time from full time. Some doctors have gone out of clinical medicine directly, and that’s directly due to COVID-19.

So let’s segue into your KevinMD article, “Personal development and growth during COVID times.” Now, for those who haven’t read your article, can you walk my audience through it and share the story of why you decided to write it?

Francis Yoo: I’ve always been a fan of, maybe not a fan. A part of my life journey was about introspection. That’s what my friends all tell me I’m great at: being aware of what I’m doing, the psychology of why we do things, how we screw ourselves over, or how we have our habits, and all of that. I paid a lot of money, my time, and energy into that, besides medicine, right? Hundreds, maybe thousands of hours.

And I realized this is what’s missing from addressing whatever it is, this issue of moral injury, burnout, or just the lack of wellness and physician livelihoods. Physicians, more than, I would say, others, are trained to be a certain way. Once we get settled in a certain way, you have this paradigm, mindset, this frame that is harder to escape from.

This is my way of challenging people, saying, “Hey, COVID’s happening. It’s tough, it’s hard.” But as I say in the article, if we don’t work out, if we don’t use that machine or that dumbbell to challenge our muscle, to break those muscle fibers, because that’s what’s literally happening, and reforming and becoming stronger, it’s just not good for your physical health. The same way, your thoughts, your relationships, emotions, if they’re not being challenged, if you’re just running away from challenges, there’s no strain, there’s no discomfort, there’s no growth. And if you stay at the status quo, yeah, you might be OK, but I’m sure that a lot of people’s status quos are not OK for them.

Kevin Pho: Now, from your coaching background, can you give some examples of physicians who have challenged themselves because of the pandemic?

Francis Yoo: In general, I would say the most common characteristics of people who really want to change are, number one, in one way or another, they can’t handle the status quo anymore, meaning something needs to change. And that’s different for different people. Some people have very serious challenges; some people just go, “Something needs to change.”

But the second most important characteristic is they’re inquisitive. They’re asking, and they want help. They’re asking, whether it’s online, because there are a lot of questions that are being asked online, finding communities. And when I’m chatting with them digitally or on the phone, I ask a question, and then they have questions. They’re curious about themselves and what needs to be done, and that inquisitiveness gets you places.

Same thing in medicine, whether as a student, as a resident, or you’re doing research: It’s about asking the question and doing something about it to learn more. But in this case, it’s about asking ourselves about our own lives and then trying something, a hypothesis: “Let’s try this, and what am I going to like?” And moving forward. So yeah, being interested and being inquisitive and curious.

Kevin Pho: Now, for physicians who may be burnt out from clinical medicine, what are some of the options that they have to look elsewhere outside of clinical medicine to help alleviate their burnout?

Francis Yoo: You know what, I really love that question, because I think it speaks to one of the terms I like to use, the authentic, right? Being authentic to yourself. And if you really ask yourself, there’s something you like to do besides medicine. Yeah, and some doctors may say, “Oh, medicine’s my whole life.” That’s a different story. I think they basically became their doctor persona.

But really, it can be anything. For me, it’s eating sushi, so I find sushi restaurants. I play the guitar, and sometimes I don’t play for months, and I pick it up. Or sometimes it’s just meeting someone or listening to someone who’s interesting and wants to share something interesting.

It doesn’t always have to be a clinical change, right? If clinical medicine is for you, same, clinical medicine. If clinical medicine’s not for you, you get a non-clinical job. If your current job isn’t what really works for you, you go somewhere else. I think we tend to make that question so complicated. It’s just: What’s the next step? Is this the right place for me to be? Should I go somewhere else, and what are my other options? And if I don’t know, I’ll just ask.

Kevin Pho: Now, for those doctors who are interested in more personal development and growth, especially during the pandemic, what kind of online resources do you suggest that they turn to?

Francis Yoo: The great thing is there are so many resources. People might say that because of COVID, there are more, but in reality, they were always there. And it really depends on how much investment you’re willing to put in, right? For someone, it’s maybe just looking up YouTube videos. For someone, it may be a book. For someone, it may be hiring an online coach right off the bat. It’s hard to give a blanket answer, because people are at different levels of readiness to change.

One thing I would say is start finding like-minded physicians and simply ask, “What worked for you?” There are so many online physician groups and Facebook groups and LinkedIn, and you can simply ask, “Hey, what helped you on your personal development?” And people are there to share. You get 100 comments, or you get people willing to chip in.

You just start trying it out. I’m not going to say to you, “This is going to work for you.” Just start somewhere. Pick up a book, pick up a course, and there’s something in there that you’re going to get that’s going to help you. Even if it’s something you already know, you’re going to know it deeper, and it’s going to help you more.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Francis Yoo. He’s a family physician, and he wrote the KevinMD article “Personal development and growth during COVID times.” Francis, is there anything that you’ve learned during the pandemic that can help some of the other physicians, perhaps on the front lines, who may be struggling with burnout during COVID-19?

Francis Yoo: This is a part of my general coaching philosophy and part of what I start off my coaching with. People apologize for being morbid sometimes, but for me, it’s actually the starting point. At some point, we’re not going to be on this earth.

Let’s say you write your own obituary: “Dr. Yoo lived this way. He did XYZ. He was kind of OK. He helped a lot of people, but in the end, I’m not sure if he was that happy.” You’re being really real with yourself. And the other side is writing your obituary based on your ideal life: “He struggled, but he enjoyed helping out on the front lines, and it was really meaningful for him. And then he shifted gears,” or “stayed in clinical medicine,” whatever.

And then you compare the two, and it just gives you a shocking revelation about why you are doing what you’re doing. It helps ground you in your ultimate vision and what you want to do. So it may be hard. It is a hard pill to swallow for someone who’s really in there, really strained and being challenged, and I get it. That might not be something you want to hear, but sometimes what you don’t want to hear is what you need to hear. And really asking yourself the most important questions will serve you well.

Kevin Pho: Yeah, well, that’s really good advice. People always remember who you are and not what you do. So I think that is sound advice to anyone who may be struggling out there. And my final question, Francis: What is your take-home message that you want to share with the KevinMD audience?

Francis Yoo: Segueing from the exercise I gave of doing the two different obituaries, it’s really knowing yourself, right? I’m more than a physician. And you can say, “Oh, I’m also a son, I’m also a guitarist, I’m an article writer, I’m a book writer, I’m a coach.” You can say all these things, but in the end, there’s something that really unites all people. We’re just people. We have different, maybe, callings, visions, things we want to do.

But ask yourself, really: Who am I, and what am I doing? Helping patients as a physician, as a physician helping other physicians, as a physician, no matter what it is, it’s something meaningful, and it’s something that’s meaningful for you and to other people. And it’s acknowledging that you did a lot of things.

I think physicians are not good at patting themselves on the back, but pat yourself on the back. Give yourself a congratulations, and know that what you’re doing is meaningful. And you just have to find that meaning that’s there and that’s in your heart.

Kevin Pho: And how can people find you?

Francis Yoo: All my social media is Dr. Francis Yoo, D-R-F-R-A-N-C-I-S-Y-O-O. And my new website that’s going to be launching soon is [website removed by the editor].

Kevin Pho: Francis, thank you so much for sharing your time and insight, and thank you for being on the show.

Francis Yoo: Thank you, Kevin.

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