It’s not every day that a dermatologist from Wausau, Wisconsin gets to interview an internal medicine physician from Seattle, Washington. January 29th was one such day, and I’m so glad this conversation was recorded.
Dr. Stephen Lewellis and I first connected on LinkedIn (shout out to Dr. Dana Corriel, founder of SoMeDocs) and it became apparent that we shared a number of philosophical approaches to patient care.
In fact, what originally started out as a book interview turned out to be a far more interesting and wide-reaching discussion on so many things that are important to many of our physician colleagues in today’s challenging healthcare systems.
During the first 30 minutes we dove into the background leadup to my pivoting from a 25+ year clinical medicine career—
⚡️ Growth of a company does not always lead to happiness
⚡️ Stress of a physician owner/shareholder
⚡️ Administrator/physician relationships
⚡️ The business of medicine
⚡️ Physician’s moral/ethical codes and moral injury
We also looked at my new business model, myMDadvocate—
✅ The power of focus groups
✅ Cultivating new (better!) relationships with colleagues
✅ Communication of my new entrepreneurial journey
✅ Meeting unmet needs in the healthcare arena
✅ Maintaining my physician expertise, not becoming “just” a coach
✅ Sharing a few patient stories
✅ Vulnerability of starting a novel business model
Then there was a 7 minute interlude where we actually chatted about my book, The Menopause Menu—
📚 That’s at 31:30 for those who are interested!
This was followed by 15 minutes as we considered—
⚖️ The legal differences between a physician consultant/advocate versus a coach
⚖️ Valuing our time like attorneys do (time=money)
⚖️ Transparency with billing for medical services
⚖️ Direct care philosophy
⚖️ Respecting boundaries
And we ended with a quick review of—
🗝️ Creative entrepreneurship
🗝️ Autonomy
🗝️ Avoiding moral injury, doing what is right
🗝️ Reflecting on the journey thus far
Here’s the link to our wonderful discussion that Dr. Lewellis has creatively called “A Renaissance Medicine Woman & Entrepreneurial Physician Advocate” (scroll down to our podcast).
Thanks for the great ride—I hope you enjoy the replay!
