Success in Medicine

I really enjoyed speaking to Dr. Stefanie Simmons, because her work with the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes' Foundation is an example of how advocacy in action can lead to change, even over the course of just a few years.

Dr. Simmons is the Chief Medical Officer of the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes' Foundation. Over the course of her career, she has served as a clinician, an educator, a healthcare executive, and now Chief Medical Officer.  In this conversation, we speak about her advocacy work, and how the foundation has been able to make significant strides in promoting healthcare well-being.

In speaking with her, she is clearly energized by her mission: to support healthcare providers in rediscovering the joy in their work, in order to improve the quality of their lives and improve the care that they provide to patients.  She explains that her work is focused on advocacy, awareness, and advancing solutions.

As part of her work with the foundation, she meets with state and federal legislators. She also conducts outreach to healthcare organizations to increase the awareness of the drivers of burnout. The foundation also helps to advance solutions to accelerate the pace of change, including via the Impact Well-Being Campaign.

The goals of the foundation include, among others, safeguarding access to mental healthcare for healthcare providers. The work of the foundation began with the tragic death of Dr. Lorna Breen in the spring of 2020. One of the contributing factors to Dr. Breen's mental health crisis and suicide was her fear that if she sought treatment, she would lose her medical license. This fear stemmed from the fact that many states ask questions on licensing applications as to whether physicians had "ever" been treated for a mental health condition. 

The foundation and other organizations have been working to change these questions. Instead of asking about past treatments, the focus should ideally be on current physical and/or mental impairment.  In 2021, there were 17 states that avoided the use of invasive questions about past treatment for mental health conditions. Now, there are 27 states, and 11 more are considering making changes. This is a remarkable improvement over the course of just a few years. 

 In this episode, Dr. Simmons shares her own experience of postpartum depression, and how she did not seek care because of concern about licensing issues. One of the things that has motivated her throughout her career is her wish to leave this place and the rules that govern us better than she found them.

For students interested in advocacy work, or how they can continue to advocate for professional well-being as clinicians, this episode provides inspiration and actionable takeaways.

I really enjoyed speaking with Dr. Marcy Youngdahl, a Family Practice physician who is the Director of Integrated Counseling and Health Services at Trinity University in San Antonio. I always enjoy speaking with physicians who have been strategic in their career choices, moving from one setting that was not ideal to another setting where they are strongly energized at work.

I was also excited to speak with Dr. Youngdahl because this is an area of medicine that I did not know much about previously. In this conversation, she highlights what drew her to College Health.

• She really appreciates the combination of clinical care, alongside a public health focus.
• She also highlights one of the features of her career that she finds especially energizing: the chance to spend time educating her patients.
• This conversation is also interesting because she describes her previous private practice in Family Medicine, and what prompted her to seek a change.
• Specifically, she describes how important it was for her to practice in alignment with her values, and how that prompted her to go in a new direction with her career. 

I so enjoyed speaking with Dr. Mohit Khera, who is Professor of Urology and Chair of the Department at the Baylor College of Medicine. He is also Director of the Laboratory for Andrology Research.

• Dr. Khera is very busy, but one of the things that struck me about our conversation is how much he enjoys the different areas of his work: the clinical care, basic science and clinical research, education of students, residents, and fellows, and administration.
• He describes Urology as "the most amazing field", and he feels that Urologists are "the happiest surgeons." He is able to make diagnoses and then perform procedures to address those diagnoses, and is able to impact his patients' quality of life in significant ways. 
• When I asked him how he is able to accomplish so much without burning out, there were several areas that he pointed to.
• The first was the importance of collaboration. He gives much credit to his clinical and research teams, and talks about the fact that he spends a lot of time choosing new members of his team, because they become part of his family.
• He also says that his background as an MBA analyst has helped. His work week is very structured, and he explains that to be successful, he pays attention to not only clinical care, but also areas such as throughput, finance, and other areas.
• Dr. Khera talks about how much he loves the challenge and variety in his work week, which is why he’s embraced these different facets of urology.
• He also describes the great satisfaction he derives from the clinical area of men’s health, because he is giving patients their quality of life back.
• I was also struck by how he brings a holistic approach to the practice of Urology, speaking to patients about the importance of nutrition, exercise, sleep, and stress management.  As he puts it, men’s health is a great gateway to overall health.