Podcast 032226 New Name
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[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to what used to be the Medical Mentor Coaching podcast, but is now, and I'm looking at my notes to make sure I say this correctly. The Academic Medicine Strategy podcast. Yes, and I'm here today with Kirsten Bombdiggity, who is my Chief of Education, who has managed to figure out how we should shorten the academic medicine strategy group to amedsg.
Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. I am honored to be your second podcast guest and I'm excited about the conversation and I think I'm so excited that I'm gonna actually steal the microphone away from you because I think this is a wonderful opportunity to be like. Stacey, what are you doing with your world and the world of academic medicine strategy group?
So last week you were a totally different name. Now we're in the process of changing. So let's start there. What made you decide that you had maybe outgrown medical mentor coaching? First of all, nothing has really changed in our [00:01:00] fundamental focus. We have always been about physicians in academic medicine and so that remains just move to the title.
The other thing is that we are doing a lot more than just coaching. And I think we wanted a name that reflected that. And you are the perfect example of how we've integrated more than just the work that I have been doing alone. But it's now a group of us who are working together. Hence the word group.
This is literally very literal. I'm sorry, but I don't know about if anybody out there, it feels like they're neurodivergent. But I went to my son's ADHD interview today, and by the end I think I am, but I never thought I was I dunno, maybe I'm just appropriating Neurodivergence right now, but I'm so literal and my son's so literal and I was like, oh, this might be what's happening.
Anyway, we're still academic medicine. We have a group of us who are working together. We're strategic now. I don't mean to minimize, we really realized we were working with whole departments who are working with institutions. We were understanding far more than the impact of just one-on-one coaching.
And what was the most amazing [00:02:00] was to look at the things we had instituted at the department level and how they changed the culture, including, I think beyond the people that we actually had one-on-one coaching with. But maybe were in workshops or were in other pieces and culture interviews, which you are carrying out for the group.
And so I think looking at how all that played together and how. We were having an impact and really changing the face of academic medicine. And I hope helping academic physicians love what they do and feel like they have a place and a path was what we wanted to reflect in the name. And so that, that is the reason.
Yeah. I love it. And for those who have never are new to the podcast or newer, so can you give us a quick version of who you are? What did you build? What drove you to do this work in the first place? Sure. So I am an otolaryngologist, pediatric otolaryngologist and sleep medicine physician. I started at my residency and fellowship I did at Medical College of Wisconsin and Johns Hopkins.
And I stayed at Johns Hopkins for about eight years where I had the opportunity to [00:03:00] really work with medical students in junior faculty and fellows and realized that this is the area that I loved the most. I was the medical student coordinator. I went on to be recruited by Cincinnati Children's. Where I went from being a 80% clinician to a 50% clinician really focused on my academic work.
And I went from having, a couple publications a year to 10 to 30 publications a year. Like I really just turned on the afterburners and I was the residency. Research coordinator. So I got to work with all the residents and all the faculty and help all the, those folks figure out how to rev up that engine and love what they do.
And most importantly I first had my recognition about that mismatch between alignment. Of what you wanna be and who you are right now and how important that was. And I have a lot of lovely people who are academic faculty now who I knew at all kinds of different stages of their development.
And when I told 'em I was doing this, they were like, of course you are. Because this is literally who I've always been, is that I have been the person who loved helping people build their path. Move their [00:04:00] research forward and move their career in the direction they wanted to. Whether that was something looked as academic as My Path did where I had 220 publications and co-edited a book and had grants and to somebody who was like, Hey, I think I just really like billing and coding and I wanna do talks on that and then maybe not even, make that my primary academic area.
And so helping people figure out where all those pieces fit and where they can go to do that has been the most fun thing I've gotten to do for the last. 26 years since I became a doctor. So tell me about that gap between what as a common pain point or something where people consistently don't talk about, that isn't necessarily covered in your training as a physician.
And so like that you're just supposed to show up as a physician and be the knowledge master on Yeah. Yeah. The beauty is at least we are knowledge masters. We walk in the door, trained, thoughtful, we're getting ready for boards. We just took them. We're smart. The problem is nobody gives us like the rest of the [00:05:00] story.
So we finished residency and fellowship. There's a lot of support and direction there. People tell us exactly what to do, we do it, we move on. You start as faculty and they say, okay, great. We're gonna give you a package. Hopefully you negotiated for it. If not, here's what's available. And then maybe we'll give you some clinical time.
Maybe we give some or time, maybe we give some research time, maybe give some education time, and then go. You don't know, how do I structure that appropriately? How do I get promoted? How do I say yes to the right things and no to the right things? How do I make sure that I know what I want so I know what to say yes and no to?
And that is the part that you and I have really been diving into is how to help people. Translate those and build their idea career from the beginning so that they understand what the yeses and nos mean. And then also what to say yes and no to. So you love what you do because my goal in life is to make sure you don't leave academic medicine because you didn't get support.
Some people, it's perfect. For some people it's not. But I can't tell you how many people I meet and I tell 'em what I do, and they say, I wish you were around five years [00:06:00] ago, or 10 years ago, or two years ago, because yeah. I might still be in academic medicine if I had that support. And I want to give people that support.
And that's why it's so great that I have you with me, tell people actually get to the bottom of the things that they looked for and maybe aren't seeing. So they can help with that alignment. Because when you're still in the training mode, you're not trained to say no. No, you are right.
And so you're like, no, see, I've learned it. No. I'm learning. But if you out there were like, no, I could never have responded with no. This is part of what you need to do, but then all of a sudden you're supposed to figure out like what your boundaries are and enforce them and without burning bridges, and while building relationships and creating a niche and there are like just some certain tasks that get asked of us that are important.
Somebody has to do it right? Yeah. And trying to decide how much of that is team player versus self sacrifice. No, absolutely. You are completely right and I'm sure in the interviews that you do. For those of you out there who don't know, we started off doing one-on-one coaching. We now work with whole departments.
We're doing that [00:07:00] with several of them and talking to some medical schools where we've done some departmental work and some further work. And Kirsten does a lot of the culture interviews, just understanding what's working and what's not working in departments so that we can give some honest feedback to division chiefs and to chairs and to the broader institution.
So tell me like how much of what you hear is about that misalignment? I think that that there are a lot of physicians who just go into medicine for one reason, and then what I'm hearing is their day-to-day life doesn't align with that. And so trying to figure. Where that disconnect came in and where they got off track, and how much of that ownership is just normal versus, growing and being, in the story versus dreaming about it.
But for a lot of people it is. Figuring out what is it that I'm just just accepting is true? What is it that I'm just saying? Yeah, this is just part of it. Instead of, it could be different, it I could have a different situation. Or [00:08:00] we have people who are considering that the only way to tweak the system they're in is just by leaving, which is ridiculous given the turnover cost on what it takes to get a new surgeon trained up and running, so compared to that, which we've had people estimate it for us anywhere between. 500,000 and a million dollars, a little bit of money thrown in for some culture surveys and some coaching. It's a no brainer, but it is nice that I get to come in because my background, I'm not a physician, I, my background is teaching.
My background is education. My background is listening. I have a whole coaching business on the side where I'm like telling people about how to hack our brains so that we have evidence and can step into favorite versions of ourselves through dopamine and play and curiosity. And it's a ridiculous world, which my last name is a perfect.
Example of that I had, it changed after my divorce, but when I come into this space and I'm doing this culture work because. I had worked with another physician education company for a number of years as their Chief experience Officer. And so what I learned was traditionally I would [00:09:00] say that physicians trust physicians, and that is very important when you're thinking about navigating the physician space.
But when someone like me can come in and, know that environment, know the pain points, know the shame, and the should is and the would is and the couldas when I can come in and ask questions and just be curious. There's almost an extra level of vulnerability that I'm seeing in physicians that they're really trying to just maybe talk about, make space for things that, that wouldn't necessarily feel safe in a colleague to colleague situation. And so the culture surveys that we're doing are huge because I'm just like the wide eye doe in the room. And I honor and respect all that physicians have sacrificed and the performance expectations that are placed on them as.
A culture, that you're supposed to be grateful that you're, you're not supposed to want more time, more money, more, anything like that. Like all of that is bad. Aren't you? You're just greedy and so just trying to realize that you're allowed to have those stories that benefit you.
You're [00:10:00] allowed to want more. You're allowed to want and should want a life that feels fabulous. On all levels, on all cylinders, and in every regard. And so sometimes being able to be the quiet one in the room, I know me quiet, but sometimes being able to be the quiet one in the room that is like the physician whisperer.
If I can write up a report that, that connects these dots, that points out, these are the pain points that your people are feeling. That maybe the department chairs or the deans they just have no idea. And it's not that they don't wanna support their people, but they're in the middle of the, like they're in the wheel too.
They're in the hamster wheel as well, and they're running and they're just, everybody I think is truly doing the best they can. And I see that as a way where often physicians are forgiving of their leadership because there is grace, because they're assuming everybody is just doing what they can.
But at the same time, we aren't. Looking at the system and how can we improve the system? And I love that you're coming in from this person who has done a little bit of [00:11:00] everything, like from top to bottom in, in a department and know the importance of publication and know that isn't necessarily financially rewarding if it is, emotionally rewarding.
There's just so many different puzzle pieces in play that it's like Jenga And I love that when you get into coaching with a client and I will talk to them afterwards, they're like. I really thought that it was this big, overwhelming monster. And Stacey was like, what about this? And then all of a sudden my life was better.
And then there were fairies and violins and everybody was dancing and doing kumbaya and, okay. I'm not sure about the fairies and the dancing, just for full disclosure here. Okay. Okay. Alright. Alright. And also I, it's about individual weakness, right? Like it is about design and I don't know. Like when you're working with, and I know that this is supposed to all be about like the name change, so I need to get back to that.
But I just, I love that you help people figure out how to create a completely different reality without like changing [00:12:00] positions, moving across the country, leaving academic medicine. Like sometimes it's just a matter of being somebody just validating that. What you feel is real and appropriate and makes perfect sense.
And what if, and then going from there. So I think the point you're making there is about intentionality. And I think that's what really is a key for our program. And so one of the beautiful things is that I did start off being the only coach, and now we have other people working with us who we have trained in the same way to understand this whole point about intentionality.
And you made the point about the cost of retention and productivity. When you're a department chair or you're a dean or an institutional faculty development person. Those are the metrics we're looking at because whether you're a surgeon or a medicine doctor, it's two to three times your salary.
That typically ends up being the cost of replacing somebody. And I talked to somebody the other day, I gave grand rounds at Penn and he said, oh my gosh, I know I'm in the middle of it. And it didn't matter which person in their group it was, he was [00:13:00] just like, oh yeah. The cost of coaching is so minimal in comparison, and to create something that's good for the entire.
Group that's not just about the conversation you've had with one person. We do some workshops we do a conversation, with one on people, one-on-one. So they have some individual strategy sessions. But the cool thing is when you talk to one person about one thing and another coach talk to somebody else about something else, and there's obviously different things we're all trying to focus on.
And at the end there's 15 different beautiful moments of education that 15 different people have had. They start talking to each other and that's what I love about it and that is really how we got from a being about coaching strategy. Yeah. To being about faculty development. Because, some of what we're doing is faculty development workshops that only, that their, everybody, resident and fellow, mid-level provider and all the people in department get to be part of, they didn't even need a one-on-one session to say, oh my gosh, I made this huge change in my time management.
Or figured out how to turn my scholarship, my clinical stuff into scholarship. Or I figured out how to coach myself or coach my colleague or. Help a resident and it's the really cool thing [00:14:00] about what we get to do now and it's what sort of the name change was born out of was recognizing that we could be so much more and than coaching, and I love coaching.
It is absolutely my happy space, but recognizing we could turn that and is something bigger was the coolest change I think we've had in the last couple of years. And realizing we could integrate other coaches and integrate other pieces so that we could do that on a broader level. Really cool.
And even being able to see it like across the country too, you know that it isn't just, isolated pockets that you're seeing the pain points. Like I loved when you went to Chicago at the end of last year and you talked with a team there and just being able to give them the same language so that they were all on the same page so that the way that improves efficiency with communication so that people feel seen, people feel like they don't feel invisible and all of that is so incredibly cool and it seems and I might be delusional in my bias, but it feels like most of the [00:15:00] people that. That are taking introducing us to their departments.
Like it isn't like the department is calling us up and being like, Dr. Isman, I would like to talk to you. That's how they all sounded, but let's say they're coming in. Okay, they're not, but they're coming in mostly through physicians who are seeing the work we're doing, or they're working with you one-on-one and they're like, oh.
This would be helpful, not just for me, but I can see this helping my whole department. It's more you create these like raving fans that come along and they're like, come here, I gotta tell my friend about you. And that's how we actually got started with that transition from one-on-one coaching to the department.
What do you see as your vision for the company as we continue to expand like that? I really hope that what we get to do is work, continue to work at a broader and broader levels. I think the department work is really fundamental, but I also would love to be working at onboarding physicians and medical schools.
We have an exciting opportunity that we're gonna work with Marshall University this summer to actually do one of their summer workshops and help meet their chairs and help the [00:16:00] faculty across the medical school really understand the ROI of wellbeing and be looking at things like time management and coaching and some other things that really just.
They can spread. So whether you're talking to the leadership or you're talking to the department members and faculty and staff, I think we have an opportunity to really level up the game. And again, I just think it's so important for us to help everybody feel like they have a starting place, or like you said, if you feel a little bit lost, to have a place where it feels safe.
To be able to say, I need a little bit more support. And so that's why we have things like, onboarding courses for new faculty. Like I would love for every single person in this country to be able to say, I have the game plan to start. Like it is not expensive. It's a starting point. There's group coaching that helps me ask my questions, or I could do some asynchronous stuff.
We can figure out how to make it so that when you're sitting in that new job and someone said, congratulations, they put your name on the door and then they walked away and you're like, now what? Like [00:17:00] somebody, I remember when I started my first job and someone asked how I wanted to drape a patient in the operating room.
'cause I'm a surgeon. I knew how 17 other people like to drape a patient. I didn't know how. I like to drape a patient. If you ask me what my clinic template should look like, I'm like. I don't know, do I like 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, 10 seconds? Like I have no idea what that template's supposed to look like.
So we walk into almost always somebody else's vision of their ideal career. And then we just take some time to figure out if it works. But if we could walk in the door intentional. With some of those things and then be able to build from there. I think it really changes how you feel and the fact that you have somebody to go to.
It's scary at the beginning. Like you don't, yeah, you don't trust any of your clinical opinion for the first two years. So if anybody's in the first two years of practice, it is normal. You're not supposed to even know what you're doing. So we walk in and they've let us loose on our own and not told us if we're supposed to be like confident or not confident or I'd be like, that's a great question.
I'm gonna check on something and I'll be right back and I'd go like Google stuff in the hallway. [00:18:00] I can't be the only one doing it and I don't do it as much now, but even now I'm like, oh, I don't know. Let's look it up. Like I'm doing it in the room now. I was doing it in the hallway pretending I knew stuff like 25 years ago, but I would love to be able to provide that kind of thing.
And that is how we ended up with this name. How do we provide support across the department? We can work with residents, we can work with fellows, we can work with faculty across the spectrum. I think you actually had the greatest, we talked to some faculty who aren't even at the beginning. People are across all sort of the different levels and what are the, what's the feedback you get as we work with people who aren't walking in the door, but who are like, I've been doing this for 25 years and I know what I'm doing. But it's also the same where they, where we found the course incredibly useful for people who.
Who didn't really know how to be a mentor, that's another thing that's not taught. Yeah. You know how to be a, and so I'm glad that you addressed, like for the early career physician, like what your advice is if they're like isolated or unsure, whatever. But let me take you to the the other end of the spectrum and say okay, so if there's a department chair listening and [00:19:00] they recognize the strain that you are describing, like what is the first step for them?
First of all, good on them for recognizing that this is the problem because yeah, many of us, are so busy in what we're doing, so recognizing they need to do something different, and especially if you have retention issues, this is a huge issue, is finding somebody who can get in there and help give your people some strategies and it's figure out what you really want in your career.
Let's figure out how do we align your time with what you're doing. One of the things we do with almost everybody is come up with some time management strategy so everybody gets some time back, which is amazing. And then we look at your promotion plan. Everybody has to have one, whether they've made it with you or worked through it on their own or with their mentors.
And so helping everybody come up with that. And then in most of us in academic medicine are doing teaching or education and coming up with a plan that helps work through that. So I can say, this is my plan. I am intentional in my publication, and you can publish anything. That's the other thing, knowing if I like quality initiatives or education or basic science research or [00:20:00] clinical outcomes.
Whatever it is, we can find a way for you to turn whatever you love in academic medicine and into scholarship so you can get promoted. I love that. Okay. Any final questions? Yeah. That you or statements or summaries? Time? Yeah. Yeah. Tell us. I want you to give everybody the two minute version of why are the chief of education, like what did you actually come from, what did your background look like?
I know you mentioned where you worked, but what's your philosophy and what do you wanna do here? I think that for me, that, i've seen this time, and it again with most of my clients who are not just physicians, but just high functioning in roles of leadership that, that we've, and I tend to specialize more in working directly with women, but there are a lot of people who feel invisible in their own lives, and it's impossible to advocate for yourself when you don't even see yourself when you look at the picture.
And so for me, part of what I love about this work is that. We are validating where they're at, we're validating what they're feeling, and we're giving them an alternative that's filled with hope, [00:21:00] that's filled with joy, that's filled with ownership, that's filled with agency. All of these things that maybe sound kind of woo, and out there and hard to put money on dollars on as far as ROI when it comes to looking at budgets for departments, but it drastically improves the overall culture and.
That's what it's all about. People. People stay for the culture and we want them to love where they're at. We want them and so many department chairs become department chairs because they've been so good at what they do. But it doesn't mean that, again, those department chairs have been taught.
How to manage people, how to listen to them, how to give them ownership, give them agency. You have some that are like total micromanagers and some that are completely checked out and so how do you find that flexibility so that you as a leader can decide your leadership style as well?
What is it that my people are looking for that will help them be happy, wanna stay and love the lives they have? I love that. Thank you. And this is why we are colleagues and. Working so hard on this business because [00:22:00] we really think. Taking care of academic physicians is a mission. And I love that you're in this mission with me.
So if there's anybody out there who does feel like you individually or your department could benefit from, having some guidance and somebody who can listen, someone who maybe is outside your system so you don't have to worry about whether what you're saying is sanctioned or not. But also who could help you get on the page so that you can get promoted and do all of the beautiful things in that system that made you do it.
I talk all the time about the fact that most of us in academic medicine spent our entire lives dreaming about this job. So we wanna make this job exactly what you dreamed about.
Thanks for letting me ask you some questions. It was wonderful to have the microphone and be able to pick your thoughts and hear about the passion that kind of drove all of this and I'm very proud to work with somebody who was so passionate about it that she was able to just in a very short time.
Change this into a company that could have an impact across the country, that could have an impact, at different universities that, that the word of mouth [00:23:00] is spreading. And I'm really excited to see as we gain CME accreditation, which is like the next step. And as we continue to grow and as and as you have a book that comes out later this year, see how I just put that on the hook for you?
Woohoo. Yep. Yeah. Do all of that. That, that we continue to help physicians love the lives they have. Thank you so much for being here, proving my second guest on, actually my first guest on the Academic Medicine Strategy podcast. I love it 'cause this is our first episode of that. So thank you all so much.
Please rate and review on whatever you are looking at for at us, on whether that is on YouTube or one of the podcasting apps. Please share this with a friend if there's anybody that we can help or if you know a department chair or a dean or head of faculty development. Who we can help, or the person who organizes grand rounds since I organized those.
Yes. Yeah. Yes, we would love to do grand rounds. But we just we hope to make them get the message out there because we wanna help as many academic physicians as we can and make this really an environment where everybody feels seen and heard and gets to [00:24:00] live the life that they wanna live. Ki thank you for being with me today, and thank you all.
We hoped that you will be with us next week.
