Hi, everybody. This is Dr. Incorporated bringing you another episode of The Truth About Employed Physicians. I hope you work this week, it’s been a good smooth week, but I tell you those weeks when you’re not on call when you’re just doing your job coming home. They go to see your family, having a little bit of separation from job and home life.

It feels good. It feels good to take care of patients and do the right thing, which I know a lot of you do every day, but it also feels good to have time off of work. And I hope you’ve been able to enjoy that this week. Thank you for all you do and for taking care of patients all over this country.

Today, we’re going to pick up another conversation with my son, John, that we’ve been having about young physicians and physicians in training. John is a medical student third year going into the fourth year, and we’ve been talking about various aspects of the physician life that are all going to come out in a book.

Hopefully will be out this spring or summer that talk to young physicians about the challenges and the good things that lay high lay ahead for them. But today’s subject is going to be on the subject of teamwork and the team Alife. And John, I know that you are a guy who grew up in school playing team sports.

What sports did you play in school? Played football and wrestled. All right. Both of those teams are team sports. Yeah. What aspects of those teams’ sports did you like the best? How did the comradery probably is probably the number one thing, the working towards a common goal together? Probably the, just the effort that’s put forth with a group of people that are similar minded and similar have similar interests.

You bring you together. So it was probably the, yeah, I played sports through school and recreational sports after I got out of high school as well. And there were just a lot of things that are really good about being on a team of any variety. Really I think can make you a better person, in the long run, it’s obviously team life is better than just individual life.

Now having said that individually physicians tend to be very individualistic as well. They like having sort of their sense of control over things. And doctors had been accused of not being great team players at times because of the way that they like to do life, the way they like to I guess feel like they’re the King of the castle, so to speak in your experience doing rotations, have you ever seen that play out?

I feel like that’s definitely true. Not necessarily for everyone, but I think generally doctors know that they’re probably the smartest person in the room, at least on the topic at hand medical topic. And so it makes them feel. Individualized. Like they don’t need the feedback and the assistance of the other people that are available.

They can if they wanted to, they could do the whole thing on their own. They’re just when you be there just to. Be nice to anyone who works with them. That all the way through the hierarchy of medical education too, but there’d be the chief resident, the resident, the intern, the medical students, all the people that go down through that chain.

You see that play out. But I think you probably have also seen a lot of teamwork though, too. You’ve seen rounding with a clinical pharmacist. You’ve seen nurses that probably do some of the roundings too, that you’ve seen time in the O R where you realize as a doctor, that you really have to be able to work as a team to accomplish the best clinical care for the patient.

You can’t just be on an Island doing it yourself. In fact, the results will not be nearly as good. Yeah. And then if you have a team of people right there you can see, the difference and the teams that are run really well and the teams that are not run well. And the efficiency of getting things done of communication within the team and taking all the different problems that rise up versus the teams that don’t communicate.

Don’t communicate well, don’t have good comradery. Don’t want to say have common goals. There’s a lot you can just see when you’re doing your rotations, you can see the difference, and yeah. What do you want, is that a good team you say to yourself? To be that doctor, that’s going to help have a or create a good team environment in the future, because you can see the difference that it makes at least from the outside in both the work satisfaction of the physicians and their staff and their patient, and also the patients get the benefit as well.

So I feel like it’s almost the team. Cause doctors don’t really operate on an Island, just a whole bunch of people around them, who they can make or break whether their day is going to go well, whether they’re going to get things taken care of, they’re going to slot patients into spots where they need to be and have the, or have the instruments ready at the right time and hand you the tools that you need at the right time and have that anticipation.

And to me, it feels like it, it makes me think of the same as a happy wife, I feel like it’s, medicine’s like happy team, happy medical life, because. That’s a good point. If the day’s going good for the team, then the day is probably going to be going good for you because they’re going to be having that good flow.

And just, you can see the benefit of putting the oil on the skids and the team. It benefits them and it really escalates to benefit you big time. That’s exactly right. Whether that’d be the surgical suite, the hospital-based clinic, or the primary care clinic out in the community. A lot of people are as well.

I certainly know from my own experience in the community-based primary care clinic I, really have to have a team of people around me. Really helps me do the work every day. And as a physician, about 10, about 10,000, no five, 5,000 patients, but about 10,000 in our clinic between me and another physician and a couple of nurse practitioners.

We’ve got a little over, nearly 25 employees in our one little office that all really have to work together as a team for, providers to really do all that work. It’s not just about providers. It’s about the team of people around us that can make that efficient. And the funny thing is in an office like ours, I’ve often said that the.

Patient experience is driven by their encounters on the phone with our phone staff, they’re driven by those encounters at the front desk when they check it can, and those are, can be just as important and shelter patients as they can be to getting back to the exam room with me. If a patient has a bad experience on the phone with somebody, it’s going to be tough to make it go well.

Even in the exam room, when I get them when I finally get to see them. And so it’s funny, it’s an odd thing that happens because you usually are our least employed or least paid person is often the person working on the phones or that front desk receptionist, but they play a very critical role to both patient satisfaction, but also to my provider, my, my own personal satisfaction, because like you said if that team is going and it’s going well for the patient and it’s typically going to go well for me.

Sure. So the team’s only as good as the weakest link. Absolutely. Absolutely. It is. And that is, so true. And you really have to learn that, to do that in medicine, as part of our experiences and being doctors, is learning to manage teams. Have you ever been to a code at the hospital yet? Yep.

Yeah. Okay. And so when you’re at a code at the hospital what usually happens to the doctor at a code? The doctor is usually the one who’s telling people what to do. They’re like the manager of the situation is correct not, and there’s usually a whole bunch of people there and they’re saying you did this, you do this, check this, do this.

And so they have to be a good communicator and take control of a chaotic situation in order to get the team on the same. Yeah. All those, all the people who come to a code event of any type Have done training for those codes but, at the end of the day, if there’s a physician president and the code, usually they will take on that leadership role.

A manager just depends on the context of the situation, but most of the time they do, that’s what people expect from physicians. We, often take on those roles and to be team leaders, but it’s the team of people around us. If you’ve been at a code and watched it play out, you realize the physician has to have people there.

Making things happen because he can’t do it or she can’t do it all on their own. You need a team of people to manage that. And that’s even not just true in the middle of a crisis, like a Cobra. That’s just true in day-to-day life and in medicine. But at the end of the day there in our lives as doctors, we really need teams of people around us.

And because we can’t accomplish it all, you can’t do it all. So that comes up, brings up the subject of the outsourcing. Okay. I’m offloading things that maybe we’re not so good at, or maybe things that we don’t want to do ourselves. And so outsourcing becomes a really important skill and habit for physicians to build the right team of people around them that can help really gain back time.

One of the greatest. Assets that a physician has always struck searching for is time personal time, typically to get back into their day and outsourcing is a great secret. To gain regaining some of their own personal time back as a medical student, you struggle with some of that, like kind of what can you outsource and how can you gain time back?

Or is it there’s not much you can do with that economically. There’s not a lot about seeing you as a medical student because he has pretty limited resources. So there’s not, you don’t really have anything to trade in order to get your time. You give your time in order to get resources, which is your medical education.

And here Student loans, all these different things. You’re giving up time from your future and things like that. So it’s not a whole lot of outsourcing to be done as a medical student at all. I don’t feel like, yeah. And a lot of doctors tend to be self-sufficient so, they don’t always outsource, but almost to their detriment.

They don’t. I remember there was a time in our home. We have five young children, five kids under five years of age. And my wife who is a stay at home. Mom, your mom. She was very busy with those five kids. I go to work, I had an easy job. I’d go to work, and get to take care of patients. But then I, come home and she’d been there all day working and so forth.

And during that zone of time, we chose to hire a housekeeper to come in a couple every couple of weeks just to tidy up the house and clean things up. And it wasn’t because of mine. My wife wasn’t capable of housekeeping. She was a very good housekeeper. As a matter of fact, did a great job with everything.

But what we both realized was that. It was going to benefit her. If we could outsource a little bit of that deeper cleaning that needed to happen every couple of weeks with five kids at home definitely needed to do some deep planning periodically, but it also helped her emotionally and physically because it took the burden off of her and certainly took the burden off of me and we could afford it.

It was a pretty simple expense, but that’s an example of outsourcing that happened. When we could have done it herself, but we really chose to allow somebody else to help us, man. That was a wise back in the day when we did that, it took a while for me to convince her that would be a good idea, but yeah.

Once she caught onto it. Your mom really did enjoy that. And it didn’t continue as our kids grew, as you guys got bigger and could become more self-sufficient and, other things change, we didn’t need a housekeeper anymore. And because you guys became the housekeepers cause we want you to work major and you’re keeping the house.

But nonetheless, other things got outsourced and we quit doing our own individual taxes and began to have accountants and professional people help us with our finances and do things like that. It brings up a whole nother subject about outsourcing. So when it comes to financing for you, because quite honestly, you’re probably living on a lot of student debt loans.

Do you and your wife do your own finances, or do you do your own taxes? Do you know, do you outsource any of that stuff? How’s that look for you. We did pretty much all of our finances on our own. We have someone do our taxes for us pretty inexpensively. So it’s worth it to us to do that. Just cause there are a few things that add some complexity to doing it ourselves.

But for the most part as a med student, things are relatively simple for most people because. You’re not making money, your budget. Yeah. That makes sense. I’m D, not the T not the typical student who is not married to somebody who’s working. And so it’s nice. So yeah, for us, yeah. For, us, it’s a little bit different and we’re fortunate to not have to take out quite as hefty of loans as a lot of people have to, because we don’t, take out loans for living expenses and all those things.

But I would like to do a lot of it ourselves, so yeah. At this point, just because things are not too crazy yet. Yeah. You guys haven’t gotten into the mode of outsourcing meals like freshly and all those companies that will deliver meals to your home and that are pre-packaged and pre-done and all that sort of business.

No, we’ve definitely taken advantage of the. Like free start-up referrals from friends to get free meals for a few meals here or there, but we’ve never continued them cause they can be pricey. So should there be only two people? You can, it doesn’t take a whole lot to make a meal and you guys have a pet.

You have a dog. Do you outsource, any of the dogs in life? Nope. You do it all yourself. Yourself. Does that fall on you mostly or your wife? Mostly? It’s a split arrangement. Just depends on what’s going on. Whoever has the time available, we’ll take care of it. All right. But the day may come when there may be some outsourcing and stuff there, depending on how the two of you are doing right where you live too.

So there are a few extra obligations to having a dog right now because we live on the fifth floor of an apartment building. So there are some verses. Being able to just let your dog go run, in the yard, which our dog would love to do make sure your dog would love to do that. But the neighbors might not like that.

So your wife works. But you’re in medical school, which is like working. Okay. So it really two people in a marriage who are, I see him gets paid to work. The other one pays to was true but, I see outside, yeah. As being a much more common element associated with dual working marriages.

Or relationships or people are living together and both of them are working and they don’t have time to manage all the stuff. I see a lot more outsourcing that way. Yeah. And I have to imagine that for, as you were getting on the edge of going into residency where you finally start earning a little bit of money you and your wife might end up with some.

Potential outsourcing opportunities when that happens because there’s just if you’re both working, it’s going to take time. Yeah. Have you guys had conversations about any of that kind of stuff? Not really. That far away, to have too much that really needs to be outsourced. Yeah. Yeah. I can remember those bridges.

How many elements of outsourcing can, occur? I remember the day that I started working here in this community, it was well almost 25 years ago. Somehow I got referred by another person for a guy to come by who was basically going to tailor individual clothes for me he’s going to be my personal tailor.

He was going to. Make my clothes shirts, outfits as a doctor. And I think that’s the thing. Some doctors do that, or they have their own personal tailors and they outsource all their clothing and outsource their laundry and outsource all kinds of stuff. I’m. I’m still pretty self-sufficient which didn’t really fit well for me because well, I probably would have fit well if you’d done it.

Yeah, really well good for her. Cause it was tailored, but no, unfortunately, I’m the kind of guy that probably still has some of the clothes from 25 years ago in my closet that I still wear. Your mom makes fun of me that way, but anyhow, that’s a whole different story. Outsourcing is a very common part of real team life.

That’s important for physicians. Because we have to learn how to let others into our world to help support us with various elements of life. Another example of outsourcing that your mom and I did back in the day, so we could have dates. I was away and would outsource childcare. We would ask grandma and grandpa to come over and babysit, or we might hire a babysitter to come over to watch all of you, why we would go out on a date.

And so that’s another example of outsourcing where. It was important to do and ask others to help accomplish a goal that we couldn’t quite reach ourselves alone. And this becomes really, important. So I know, again, it’s not too much of the issue for you in medical school or not Susan, not too much of what you do, but in the coming years, you’re going to be feeling the effects of some of this yourself and inserting it out.

I know, just in terms of outsourcing even. You like to do just some minor serve investing. You’re were a guy that likes some finances and so forth. And do you outsource that stuff or do you manage it all your own? At one point it was outsourced to some investment advisors who did a lot of the management of it, but now I do it all on my own.

Yeah. That’s what I like to do for fun. So I spent my, Free time working on the, yeah. And I’m just the opposite, by the way, listeners. I don’t have that much fun doing that and I’m, happy to outsource that and how the financial planner investor advisor does all that work for me. And I’m more than happy to pay them a fee, a fixed fee for doing that all year long.

I would definitely encourage you if you have somebody in that role for you as a team player that Done on a fee-only plan. Those are the best financial planners and investors to help you with that, as opposed to a sliding scale. I think you finished physicians can get taken advantage of with that, but, and how I liked to outsource that you don’t, and that’s the whole point.

It’s a very individualized piece. When it comes to the team that you develop around you to help support the life that you want to live. Some things you might choose to keep into yourself, some things you might outsource. And that’s just individualized. So I look forward to hearing from you as an individual physician, a medical student, or a resident about what things you outsource, what things that you incorporate in terms of your own team, that make a difference in your life that really most importantly allow you to Regaine time in your life.

That you can have control over to either use individually, or do you use with your family loved ones or to do activities that are enriching to you? This could be medical activities could be non-medical activities, but I’m very interested in hearing from you about how you’ve managed this and how this has made your, medical world successful as well.

Best of luck to you this week, as you continue to take care of patients thank you for all that you do.