Physicians and the importance of servant leadership [PODCAST]

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“Dear resident physicians: Soon you’ll finish residency, and you may be wondering what’s next. Some of you will start fellowships, but most of you will practice your specialty. You may be looking for opportunities that are a good match with your needs and wants. Virtually all of you are looking forward to greater income. I hope that this ending is also a beginning – a renewal of your commitment to the life-long learning that is medicine.

One of the current concerns of our society is the possibility of a physician shortage. Some of that shortfall is attributed to a mass exodus of physicians experiencing “burnout.” Pervasive pessimism is the rule. It’s time to break the rule. You can thrive, not just survive.”

Faith A. Coleman is a family physician.

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “Physicians and the importance of servant leadership.”

This episode is sponsored by Tradeoffs, available on your favorite podcast platform.

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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 Faith Coleman. She is a family physician, and she wrote the KevinMD article “Physicians and the importance of servant leadership.” Faith, welcome to the show.

Faith A. Coleman: Well, thank you for having me.

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

Faith A. Coleman: You know, when you get to have this many years strung together, there’s too much to tell, and you don’t know where to start. But, you know, there were a number. At one time, I looked at psychiatry, and at another, I looked at surgery, and it was serendipitous how I ended up in family medicine, and I found out that it’s the right place for me. So I worked in hospital-owned practices. I’ve been on the faculty of a family medicine residency and a few med schools and really enjoyed the academic stuff, but since about 2012, I’ve gone back to journalism full time. So I’m writing articles, preparing manuscripts, and writing material for med students to study to prepare for their boards and, you know, material for docs who want to recertify in their specialties. And there’s a lot of that stuff out there, and I can get more work than I can do.

Kevin Pho: So I’m always interested in hearing what physicians are doing outside of the exam room. So tell me a little bit more about your writing career. Exactly what kinds of things are you writing?

Faith A. Coleman: Well, I got my bachelor’s in journalism. And you probably remember the Medical Economics company and what they put out. I went to work for them when I finished my bachelor’s. I knew all the time I was planning on going to med school, and things worked together. It just exactly fit in that year. It just so happened that year, Medical Economics was having a national essay contest to choose their interns for the summer, and so I was awarded that and did that. But I always planned to go to med school, so that’s what I did.

I wasn’t doing much journalism or writing during med school or for the first few years. But I went back to it, starting with selling pieces about parenting. And then quickly, a physician who wants to write can pick up, you know, a ton of work. I do a lot of the content that a site uses to launch that site, you know, like the first 50 articles, the first 100 articles, and that kind of thing.

Kevin Pho: But let me ask you, for those physicians who are interested in writing, how do they go about finding these opportunities?

Faith A. Coleman: They’re very easy to find, and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the way I did it. There are more writing companies than there should be. Everyone’s trying to turn that into a business. I did have good results, though, from the one I signed up with, which was called Upwork. The people who want writers will go on there. They post their job. You explain who you are and why you’re good for them, and you bid on their job. And I was real fortunate. I was selected for most of the jobs that I bid on. But after two or three years, you know, I’d had enough of that and the constraints and all, and I could see that it really wasn’t necessary to do that anymore.

But you can go on Indeed. Oh, it’s good for finding jobs, you know, and recently I’ve been looking at work for St. Jude Children’s Hospital that is on there. NBC is on there. And one time I was looking at that to either be writing for the show or be on the show. You can put in “medical writers,” and you’ll start getting things. And it takes a while to kind of, well, I guess it’s like being an intern. You don’t know what you’re doing the first few weeks, but then you kind of get the hang of it and start doing that.

So you can go there and put in “medical writers” and “medical editors.” Put together a good CV, and ask for help with that from one of the companies that does resumes and gives advice, which is usually free. Write some things you can hand in as a portfolio for other people to look at. And keep trying. I feel especially fortunate because of, you know, my education and the demand for it. I can get some of the premium jobs. So any of your other listeners or readers or whoever would be able to do that too.

Kevin Pho: Now, writing on the side as a physician, can that be a legitimate source of income?

Faith A. Coleman: Definitely. For my first few jobs, I took very low pay. I did something to put in a portfolio. But after that, it was just within months that I could, you know, get the pieces I was writing. One of my first ones was a research advocacy company that wanted a white paper about the Physician Sunshine Act. And so I bid $800, I won it at $800 to do that, and they decided to do it. And that was, you know, a few pages’ worth of work. At times, you reach a point where you want to ask for more, because it looks funny if you don’t and you have all these credentials. So, you know, you can start with $10 an article and go up to, well, right now I’m working for Healthline, Healthline Media, taking research articles and turning them into things that people can read and get something out of, and that’s $200 for about 700 or 800 words. So even a few hours a week makes a difference.

Kevin Pho: All right, let’s turn to the KevinMD article that you had published, and it’s titled “Physicians and the importance of servant leadership.” Now, for those who didn’t get a chance to read the article, can you just walk my audience through it and share the story of why you decided to write it?

Faith A. Coleman: This hospital recruiting site asked me to write something to the graduating residents who are looking forward to finally getting into practice. And this is what I came up with, and I guess it’s kind of the way I lean anyway. So it’s a letter to residents as they’re graduating, you know, with some encouragement. And I still think medicine is a great thing to do, and I think you can still find a lot of satisfaction there when you teach yourself to see it more often.

And, you know, I could never have imagined that medicine would be something that I would think of leaving. But once the electronic health records came in, you know, I was using one of the first ones, and what a nightmare. And it’s taken over so much more now. But I wanted to share with them these little bits that can comfort or fulfill you, even while you are having to conform to all the rigorous regulations and, you know, those sorts of things. So I put in some guidance in there. And it was about being a servant, which I think is the key to really being fulfilled in it.

Kevin Pho: So go into more detail. What does servant leadership mean to you?

Faith A. Coleman: When I decided to go to med school, I knew I didn’t know how to articulate it, but I knew it was about being a servant. So I’ve taken that path toward it. And I think that docs really need to be very grateful for the brains they were born with. You know, you can look around in the world, and, you know, I was walking through the nation’s greatest retailer one day, and their employees were there, and I heard them talking. Their definition of their ship coming in is getting on at that retailer so that they can have medical insurance for their family. And, you know, I didn’t know how they managed to be in such good spirits all the time, but they do, and those people are really turning the world.

And it’s not by my doing that I was given a brain, you know, or the constitution to be able to do this. So I can’t take credit for that. But, yeah, it occurred to me a few times that it might be good to schedule medical students to do a stint as a new employee at that retailer, but I’m not sure everybody would get what I really would hope they would get out of it. It is definitely a privilege to be able to do this despite all the constraints.

So, you know, my thing was the possibility of a physician shortage, and pervasive pessimism seems to be the way to look at medicine, and I just don’t want to believe that. So I was encouraging the readers that they could thrive, not just survive.

Kevin Pho: There’s so much pressure on clinicians and other health care professionals, especially during the pandemic. What kind of advice can you give to these health care professionals to maintain that idealism and to continue becoming servant leaders in the face of everything that they’re facing today and all the hardships that they have to experience in medicine today?

Faith A. Coleman: One of the first questions I’ll often ask someone, or did when I was doing clinical work, is, “What do you like to do for fun?” And it gets the conversation started. And so it’s a good way to start looking at the patient as being human.

And, you know, I saw that in one of my partners. I can say this because I told him, you know, so this is not a surprise to him. But when he went into the room with the patient, he wasn’t really in the room. And so as he’s, you know, walking in, he’s trying to walk back out again. And he just didn’t find any enjoyment in that. He was in his mid-30s at that time, and I thought, “Oh, Lord, how do you go on doing this for 20 more years, you know, hating it?” But he found it attractive because he wanted, you know, a big mansion and all those kinds of things that a lot of money can buy.

But it’s really in touching people. I asked my patients, you know, “Why does this work? What’s your opinion of me? Am I giving you good care?” And the one thing, I mean, it sounds self-serving, Kevin, but the first thing, almost to a person, they said, “Well, you care.” And that goes a long way. One of the quotes I used in this article is from John Maxwell: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” And there’s a lot of truth in it, despite all the technology. It’s the human part that’s healing too. They need to come into the office. I don’t know if this telehealth stuff is as good as people are saying, or needed as frequently. For me, it’s being done more than it should be. There’s a difference in being face-to-face, and you can’t substitute it.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Faith Coleman. She’s a family physician, and she wrote the KevinMD article “Physicians and the importance of servant leadership.” Faith, as you reflect on your medical career, what are some pieces of advice and take-home messages that you would like to leave with my clinician audience?

Faith, thank you so much for spending time with me and sharing your time and insight. Thanks again for being on the show.

Faith A. Coleman: Thank you very much.

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