Medical Fusion Conference Thoughts

Julie Silver MD at Medfusion 2011

I went to Medfusion last year and was really impressed. This year I was blown away.

I got back from the Medical Fusion Conference last night and I wanted to set down my thoughts while they're still fresh in my mind, so here are some of my take-aways kind of as a stream of consciousness.

• The Aria is a nice hotel for conferences and the Sky Suites are sweet. From the time that I parked the car (I drove down) I didn't step foot outside of the hotel until I left on Sunday. (I've been to Vegas a lot so no need to dawdle.)
• The conference always surprises me with how savvy the physicians are who attend. If you're looking to keep you head down and love to toil in obscurity, this is not the conference for you.

• Dr's Ed Hsu and Italo Subbarao are incredibly fun and very generous: Ed and Italo have written an intense (I'm half way through) thriller on bio-terrorism and I got to spend some time with them that included taking some photos at the room in the Aria referenced in their book.  I'm sending some copies to friends. You can buy Prion on Amazon here.
• Greg handles conferences really well: (The experience now doubt.) They seem to just flow along without a hitch. (Whoever was running the front desk also deserves kudos.)
• I always wish that I had more time: There were a number of writers for Freelance that were there and I would have loved to sit down with and learn something from but I missed completely and probably came across as an ass. My sincere apologies to those that I didn't sit down with. I hope to next year.
• These guys are all really good speakers: From Barry Silbaugh's first talk to the end I was really impressed with every presentation. Super good stuff and everyone brought their A-game.
• I need to work on my public speaking: No one threw cabbages out of kindness but there's room for improvement there.
• The networking is at least half of the value: Medfusion isn't like most of the medical conferences that I've been to where you already have a cadre of buddies or everyone's doing exactly the same stuff and it's not that interesting. (If you're a plastic surgeon, how many other plastic surgeons do you already know who are doing exactly the same thing that you are?) Medfuion really is about opportunity and real changes and deals get done.
• Julie Silver is a fantastic speaker and terrific person. (I owe you $40 Julie.)
• Gautam Gulati is doing some really interesting work and is a great presenter. I'd be taking his class on Medical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Hopkins if I were there.
• Students want this information and access too: There were a number of students at Medfusion this year and they're also excited to know that, as a physician, you can do something that's uncommon or non-traditional and that you can still have and control your own career in medicine. This was personally exciting to me and we'll be launching a companion site to Freelance MD that's targeted exclusively at medical school students and residents. (This will not be 'integrated' in to the Freelance MD physician community since the audiences are completely different.)
• Opportunity is everywhere and there are physicians who are taking advantage of it.
• I dropped the Twitter ball: I didn't see until after the conference all of the tweets that were going out in real time capturing part's of the presentations. I should have been more forward-thnking and used my iPad. I should also have taken more pictures. My iPhone just doesn't cut it long distance.

Anyway, those are a few of my initial thoughts. I look forward to finding out what some others think of their experiences.

Physicians Starting A Company

How do you start a company as a physician?

Many physicians are looking to start new ventures. In this presentation, Dr Michael VanRooyen discusses his esperiences building for-profit companies as well as his ventures building humanitarian solutions.

Michael VanRooyen MD MPH FACEP

Dr. VanRooyen is the Director, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative as well as the Director of the Division of International Health and Humanitarian Programs, Department of Emergency Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard School of Public Health and an Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

Dr. VanRooyen has worked extensively in humanitarian assistance in over thirty countries affected by war and disaster, including Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq, North Korea, Darfur-Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo, both as a physician and a policy advisor with numerous relief organizations, including CARE, Save the Children, Physicians for Human Rights and Samaritans Purse International Relief. He has served as a special advisor for the World Health Organization and as a member of the UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee's Health Cluster. Domestically, Dr. VanRooyen has provided relief assistance at the site of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11th with the American Red Cross and also helped to coordinate the American Red Cross public health response to Hurricane Katrina, sending over twenty physicians from the Harvard system to hurricane-devastated regions.

Dr. VanRooyen teaches courses on humanitarian operations in war at the Harvard School of Public Health. His textbook, Emergency Field Medicine, is considered one of the key reference texts in this area, and he has authored over 50 publications related to international emergency medicine development and humanitarian assistance. Dr. VanRooyen has served on numerous advisory panels and boards, including International Rescue Committee, the National Academies/GAO evaluation of mortality studies in Darfur, and is chairman of the Humanitarian Action Summit. Dr. VanRooyen has also been awarded the Reader's Digest Health Heroes Award, the Raoul Wallenburg Foundation Humanitarian Award, the Hippocrates Society Humanitarian Award and the AMA Pride in the Profession Award. He was given the University of Illinois Alumni Humanitarian Award and was featured as one of two US physicians in the American Medical Association's publication entitled Caring Physicians of the World.

This video is from the Medical Fusion Conference in 2009.

Transcript

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Physician Leadership Of Teams, Part II

Read Part 1 of Physician Leadership Of Teams here.

Developing Your Team and Increasing Its Effectiveness

Leadership involves skills and abilities that are useful whether you are a physician in clinical practice or an executive in industry.  You could be developing a new medical device or managing a clinical trial for a pharmaceutical company.  Simply put, leadership is everyone’s business.  And the ability to build a team and improve its performance is becoming increasing important.     

Charles Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, put it best: “No matter how good you are, the thing that makes the difference between success and failure is how good a team you have.”  The team you build, develop, and contribute to will reflect—above all else—the behavior you model.  The symbolic aspect of your behavior, both as a team leader and as a team member, is often its most influential dimension.

In my experience, the best teams demonstrate a number of key attributes.  Here’s what I’ve learned about high-performing teams—and what we can do as leaders of teams:

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The "Six C's" for Creating a Better Life

I’ve been speaking with lots of doctors about their lives and careers lately, and the vast majority tell me they’d like to be doing something different with their lives.  Not all of them are ready to give up on medicine, but almost all of them wish they could change something about their careers or lives in a substantial way.  Some would like to work less, some want to see a different type of patient or would consider a different practice style, some want to do more volunteer work, and some would like to try a different career altogether.

Sadly, of all the doctors I talk with, only a very small fraction believe they could actually make the significant changes they dream about.  Most of them are so entrenched in the day-to-day grind, so wrapped up in the identity of how their current career defines them, and so unaware of the amazing gifts they possess, they can’t allow themselves to really consider making the changes they think would ultimately make them happier.  Instead, most doctors just keep living lives of quiet desperation, burying their true desires and watering down the impact they can have on the world.

So what does it really take to step away from what’s familiar, yet unfulfilling?  How do some people—even “successful” doctors—make the leap from a career that feels safe, though uninspiring, to a life that is more exciting and rich with opportunity, yet certainly more risky and uncertain? 

Through discussions with those who have accomplished this transition, as well as looking back at my own journey, I’ve identified six major principles, or characteristics, that must to adopted or developed to successfully recreate yourself in some meaningful way—whether it be within the realm of your medical practice or an entirely different pursuit.

I call them The Six C’s

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'Value' Is Different From 'Price'

Woe unto you if you decide everything based on price. Even more woe unto you if you compete solely on price. Price is not all that matters—what is important, at least to some people, is value. And value takes into account training, support, and the intrinsic joy of using the best tool that’s made. It’s pretty safe to say that no one buys Apple products because of their low price.

What I learned from Steve Jobs, Guy Kawasaki

Heal Yourself By Writing Your Memoir

What happens when you have to turn in your white coat for a johnny? 

It's not easy to go from being the doctor to being the patient.  But, sooner or later, everyone faces illness.  In my specialty, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R), we have a saying that "good health is a temporary condition."

I met Kim Allison, MD when she came to the Harvard Publishing course.  Kim had just finished going through treatment for Stage 3 breast cancer.  Ostensibly, she came to the course to hone her writing skills and to figure out how to publish her memoir.  However, I suspect that  she really came to the course to heal.  Healer, heal thyself.

Kim is the director of breast pathology at the University of Washington Medical Center--a difficult job for a breast cancer survivor to return to.  In her new memoir Red Sunshine, she describes what it was like to go from being a doctor to a patient and back to a doctor again. 

Kim writes, "...our stories connect us to a common core and can give us comfort that at least we are not alone in the experience.  Everyone has a story to tell.  This is mine."

Bravo, Kim, for writing your story and encourage others to heal!  What is your story?

2nd Down, The 4th Inning, Friday At The Masters & You

By engaging the middleness of events in our life, we can often find great value.

I am a big sports fan and so I enjoy listening to sports talk radio where there is always talk about different stats from that game or this player. Often, they talk about how well teams play in the very beginning and end of games and ignore the middle part of these games.

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