Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Catch up on old episodes!

Join us on this episode as we host Jennifer Shaer, a pediatrician and chief wellness officer at Allied Physicians Group. Jennifer explores the power of intuition in pediatrics and beyond. Discover the hidden neural connections in our bodies that contribute to decision-making and understand why it’s crucial to listen to our instincts. Gain insights on finding balance between the brain, heart, and gut, and learn practical steps to improve your well-being. Tune in to unleash your inner wisdom and embrace a holistic approach to decision-making with Jennifer Shaer.

Jennifer Shaer is a pediatrician and chief wellness officer, Allied Physicians Group, and a certified executive and life coach. She is founder, Shaer Coaching, and can be reached on Facebook.

She discusses her KevinMD article, “Why your intuition is key to better physical and emotional health.”

The Podcast by KevinMD is brought to you by the Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience.

With a growing physician shortage, increasing burnout, and declining patient satisfaction, a dramatic change is needed to make health care more efficient and effective and bring back the joy of practicing medicine. AI-driven ambient clinical intelligence promises to help by revolutionizing patient and provider experiences with clinical documentation that writes itself.

The Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience, or DAX for short, is a voice-enabled, ambient clinical intelligence solution that automatically captures patient encounters securely and accurately at the point of care. Physicians who use DAX have reported a 50 percent decrease in documentation time and a 70 percent reduction in feelings of burnout, and 83 percent of patients say their physician is more personable and conversational.

Rediscover the joy of medicine with clinical documentation that writes itself, all within the EHR.

VISIT SPONSOR → https://nuance.com/daxinaction

SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST → https://kevinmd.com/podcast

RECOMMENDED BY KEVINMD → https://kevinmd.com/recommended

GET CME FOR THIS EPISODE → https://earnc.me/nkyZ0W

Powered by CMEfy.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast and get CME for this episode by clicking on the CME link in the show notes. Today we welcome back Jennifer Shaer. She’s a pediatrician and chief wellness officer at the Allied Physicians Group. Today’s KevinMD article is titled “Why your intuition is key to better physical and emotional health.” Jennifer, welcome back to the show.

Jennifer Shaer: Oh, thanks so much for having me, Kevin.

Kevin Pho: So we’ll talk about your article in a little bit, but for those who didn’t listen to our other episode together, just briefly share your story and journey to where you are today.

Jennifer Shaer: Briefly, I would say that I’ve had a path to become a pediatrician and, as you mentioned, have grown into the role of chief wellness officer at Allied Physicians Group. I also practice as a physician coach, where I help physicians who are sort of feeling unfulfilled really reconnect with their purpose and redefine their careers and their lives so that they can be happy.

Kevin Pho: And during your role as chief wellness officer, how would you say the state of physician burnout and the obstacles that face physicians today have evolved over that time?

Jennifer Shaer: That’s a good question. I mean, everybody would say that COVID has pushed physicians into a deeper state of burnout. I don’t know that it’s so much that COVID has done that as that we’ve just sort of opened the awareness to it. Things have been challenging in the environment of practicing medicine for quite some time, and I’m happy there’s a bit more awareness around it now and we can talk about it.

Kevin Pho: All right. And in your role as chief wellness officer, or from what you see as a coach, what are some of the common issues that you see physicians struggling with today?

Jennifer Shaer: The issues that physicians struggle with today are largely two-part. One is the institutional issues around the EMR, the rules and the regulations, and all the things they have to deal with. And then there is the personal resilience piece that they are really struggling with. Most of us haven’t learned the skills that it takes to build the resilience to deal with the pressure cookers that we are under. So it’s a two-pronged approach.

Kevin Pho: And as chief wellness officer, tell me some of the challenges that you face navigating those two sides. So you have the physicians on one side, and then you have administration and the institutional challenges on the other side. As chief wellness officer in the middle, how have you navigated those two sides?

Jennifer Shaer: Yeah, that’s a great question. For me, my biggest and first challenge is always trying to maintain my own sort of inner hum and presence so that I can be the space that everybody needs to bridge between the administration and the physicians. Because at the end of the day, everybody really does have the same mission. Everybody really just wants to take care of the patients. It’s just that they don’t always speak the same language, and I find that I try to help bridge that gap. But I always need to be calm first, which is challenging because it’s quite chaotic for me as well.

Kevin Pho: All right, let’s talk about your KevinMD article. You talk about intuition, “Why your intuition is key to better physical and emotional health.” Tell me how your article came together.

Jennifer Shaer: Thanks for asking. I will say, just as kind of background, that I became very interested in the whole mind-body connection about 15 years ago, when I was the camp doctor at my daughter’s sleepaway camp. I was assigned to the very first week of camp, when all of the kids were homesick, and I was always put on infirmary duty. Other than the poison ivy and the cuts and the bruises, most of the children were coming in with stomachaches and headaches and all these physical symptoms. When I saw the tears in their eyes and asked them, “Are you homesick?” it was fascinating to me to see that as the tears would flow and they could admit that they were sad, all of a sudden their symptoms kind of melted away. I sort of couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and it sort of led me down this journey of looking at that mind-body connection.

In my current role as a physician coach and wellness officer, I just see us as physicians so much not paying attention to the physical symptoms that we are feeling, our intuition, and the stresses that we feel, the anxieties and the pressures. We just kind of push them down, whether we just put our heads down and work harder, or we come home and we eat or we drink or whatever we do.

I just want to kind of raise awareness that pushing it down is like ignoring it. It’s like treating a fever in a patient without getting to the underlying cause of what’s causing the fever. Yes, take a Motrin, but also let’s dig in and see what’s going on. Because when you stuff that stuff down, it’s going to kill you. The science around what stress does to your physical body is just fascinating.

Kevin Pho: So give an example of what kinds of things clinicians would push down on a daily basis. Just paint a picture of that.

Jennifer Shaer: Yeah, I mean, everybody probably has their own picture of what that looks like for them, but it’s the pressures and going about and just doing. For everybody, we’re so used to focusing on everyone except ourselves, right? So it’s all the needs of every patient and every this, and just doing everything for everyone, and then coming home and just, I don’t even know where to start, because everybody has such a personal story about it.

Kevin Pho: So tell us, what are some of the consequences of that if we don’t listen to our instincts, if we don’t listen to our gut?

Jennifer Shaer: Right. So it gets physical. You can actually get yourself sick. You can develop hypertension; you can develop all sorts of medical problems. The epigenetics around this, I’m not an expert on it. I just love reading it, so I’m not about to start teaching about that. But it really can even change your genes. There are studies that show that holding this stuff in and not processing your emotions can actually cause cancer and all sorts of things. So it’s worth looking at.

Kevin Pho: So what do you propose as steps that we can take to fix that? As physicians, you’re right, we do sometimes downplay our own needs. We downplay our gut feelings and what we need to do to take care of ourselves. What can we do to fix that?

Jennifer Shaer: Yeah, I think that the number one thing is first to have awareness of what your feelings are telling you and why. I’m not saying that you should always feel happy at all, and we got where we are as doctors by pushing through difficult times. Similar to the children who are at sleepaway camp, they are able to hold space for both their sadness and the fun that they’re having so that they can move forward and continue to have a fun summer. So for us, yes, I’m going to have a hard day. I can acknowledge that and be aware of it, but then I can build sort of safeties around me to balance it out and to not let that just eat away at you. Just sort of accept what it is and change what you can. There are many, many things in your environment that you can change.

For example, if you’re stuck doing three hours of charts at night, there are strategies that you can build into your day, whether it’s hiring a scribe or developing quick text, specific things you could do, or even, God forbid, seeing a couple fewer patients a day, losing a little bit of money to protect your own well-being. It’s just developing the awareness and then changing what you can and accepting what you can. So if the environment becomes too toxic, I’m not afraid to say that you should find something else to do. But that’s not the first go-to, because we’re too important, and our mission is too big.

Kevin Pho: Now, what if some of those solutions are outside of a physician’s control? You mentioned things like seeing fewer patients, perhaps hiring a scribe, but not all employed physicians are in a position where they can do that, where they can push back against the powers that would make these changes. So what kind of advice do you have for physicians who are in employed situations where they may not have as much agency to do what you suggest to fix this?

Jennifer Shaer: Right, and that is such a good question. That’s where so much of the burnout and stress on physicians is coming from, right? So it’s a matter of changing what you can change, letting go of what you can’t, and raising the issues with the powers that be to make the case that, “If I had a scribe, I could see even more patients, and I would be more efficient,” and things like that. And if you have a completely, ridiculously uncaring environment that you work in, then there are no handcuffs on you. You should look for something else, because your own health and well-being is more important than anything else.

Kevin Pho: So tell me what kinds of feelings, emotions, or situations physicians should look out for in order to take that next step. Because you mentioned that if these feelings continue to be pushed down and if physicians aren’t listening to their intuition, it could lead to physical manifestations of that. So what kinds of things should they be looking out for in order to realize, “Hey, I think that there’s a problem”?

Jennifer Shaer: Yeah, I mean, when you’re consistently feeling it, and different people feel different things, right, it’s that pressure in the chest, it’s that feeling of disengagement, of feeling totally ineffective. It’s these doom-and-gloom sort of feelings. And whether it’s your heart racing or a clenched gut, whatever it is, they’re usually telling you something is not right.

Kevin Pho: You wrote in your article that the heart is your inner compass. So tell us more about what that means.

Jennifer Shaer: Yeah, I mean, we are very, very cerebral. We listen to our minds and what our minds are telling us all the time, and really, it’s your heart that sort of knows what you want to do. Your heart is what I call sort of your GPS, and my advice is always to let your beautiful mind sort of be in service to your heart’s desire. So you became a doctor for a particular reason. Does that still resonate with you? If so, then get that mind to work thinking about how you can make it better. What types of things can you put into place so that you can follow your passion?

And then I talk about the gut as sort of being what lets you know whether or not you’re off track. So if all of a sudden you start going down one path and you get that gut-wrenching feeling in your stomach, it means maybe you’re doing something a little bit the wrong way, and it helps you get back on track. You have to know the big purpose of what you want to be doing, because then you can sort of tolerate the stressors along the way, because you know you’re doing it for a good cause.

Kevin Pho: So tell us a success story or case study, either in your role as chief wellness officer or through your coaching practice. What’s a success story where you coached someone to implement some of these changes and they turned out better for it?

Jennifer Shaer: Well, that’s such a good question. In talking with people, I always use the expression that we either coach people into or out of their careers, so to speak. I worked with somebody who actually just felt so burned out and overwhelmed and realized over time that they really did truly love what they were doing. They were able to sort of put up some boundaries and parameters around their workday, to leave work at work and to come home and enjoy home. They didn’t want to quit. Well, at least initially they wanted to quit, but by the end of our time together, they realized that a lot of the stuff was what they were putting on themselves. It was their own inner beating themselves up, that they weren’t doing enough or doing everything. They’re actually now more re-engaged. They’re working a little bit fewer hours and found this really nice balance where they didn’t just completely throw in the towel. So I think that would be a nice example.

Kevin Pho: How long did it take that clinician to change their mindset? Because, as I said, through training, clinicians are not trained to take care of themselves. How much effort, how long did it take you to change that clinician’s mindset?

Jennifer Shaer: Well, only you can change your own mindset, right? So it’s a matter of sort of holding the space and helping develop a little awareness around the role that your mind is playing in your day-to-day. Sometimes people are so stuck in their victim mindset that they have no control, and you can’t get through. This particular person did great. It only took a few months to sort of change the mindset, re-create the vision, and take the steps to make the change. But you have to be open.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Jennifer Shaer. She’s a pediatrician and chief wellness officer at Allied Physicians Group. Her KevinMD article is titled “Why your intuition is key to better physical and emotional health.” Jennifer, tell us some of your take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience.

Jennifer Shaer: The take-home message, I would say, is that life is short. Figure out how you want to spend your time here. Don’t have regrets when you look back at the end of the day. We’re here, we’re part of a much larger world, and we play a tiny little piece in it. What part do you want to play? And don’t be afraid to make that choice.

Kevin Pho: Jennifer, thanks again for coming back on the show and sharing your time and insight.

Jennifer Shaer: Thank you so much for having me.