image from Dall-E via Bing Chat. “2 physicians with a hilarious and terrifying mentor experience.”
This is an interview between Dr. David Bar-Shain, originator of the PACmentor program. The PAC is the Physician/provider Advisory Council comprised of physicians who attend the Epic User Group, and Dr. Bar-Shain is a senior informaticist at MetroHealth in Cleveland, Ohio. I took the transcript of our 30-minute conversation and broke it down into 2-minute reads.
- I. Find a mentor. Mentor’s job. Confidence. Curiosity. 1-pager. Stories.
- II. Book club. Being Boring. War Stories.
- III. Is Mentorship = Therapy? The Psycho 80.
- IV. Meetings. Coaching. Peer Mentors. Networking. Blind-spots. Listening.
- V. Lateral thinking. More Book Club. Persistence of Memory. Stumbles.
- VI. Failure Resume. CT ruined healthcare. Mentor a mentor? Downstream.
Ready? Here’s part 2 of 6. If you have time to listen, the full 30-minute audio interview is here. Here’s the audio-only interview (33 minutes).
Book club
DB: And they’ve also told me that you’ve assigned books to them.
CT: I enjoy reading and frankly, I’ll say my guilty pleasure is audiobooks because there’s no time It’s a long work day and then exhausted in the evening.
DB: And so what hours are there to sit down and read or playing the ukulele or maybe that’s work hours.
CT: I’m on my bike riding and sometimes I’ll listen to an audiobook while I’m out on the trail.
DB: With one earbud in.
CT: With a one -earbud in, yes? Right, exactly. And I can consume books like Switch or the Righteous Mind or Thinking Fast and Slow and realizing there’s things outside of healthcare that explain how our brains work and how do I apply that to our design and informatics. There are many great ideas outside of healthcare. In addition to improving your design of your Epic EHR, yes, but also there are many tremendous ideas outside of healthcare.
We used Net Promoter Score as a physician satisfaction tool that in 2011-2012 weren’t being used in healthcare. We began using this as a satisfaction score. We heard from others: “Where did you get that?” It’s an industry standard outside of healthcare. Why are we not using these tools?
I like reading outside of my industry. That’s a very small lateral move to bring that into health care and use it here. I enjoy talking about books and new ideas.
DB: If you give somebody an assignment and ask them to read the book, how long do you give them to consume the book?
CT: Oh, it’s nothing that formal. I will usually say, well, from this book, I have this idea, And it’s not an assignment. It’s if you choose to read it, this is where I got this idea. I’d talk about it with some excitement, apparently according to my mentees. “You said that so interestingly that I had to go read the book.” “Fine, let’s talk about it next time.” You should you choose to. It’s not an assignment.
A boring mentor? Do’s and Don’ts
DB: Tell us more about your techniques.
CT: Well, I had one of my mentees say “Gee, the last person I had as a mentor spoke for nearly an hour about what they thought I should learn about leadership to the point where I ended up doing Epic in-basket work while they were talking because it was just not applicable to me.”
And I am surprised by that because I believe that during a mentor-mentee meeting, the mentor should be listening more than half the time. In a patient interview, if the doctor is talking more than half the time, you’re not really getting it. Part of it is just being all ears and trying to withhold advice until the mentee’s done talking, explaining what position they’re in and what advice they’re looking for.
I find that to be tremendously rewarding because hearing the story of where they’re coming from is very gratifying for me to connect with another person on a human level.
Mentor war stories
And I’ll end up telling you a story personally as well. “Oh, oh, yeah, I did that 10 years ago. I stepped in exactly the same thing and here’s what happened.” And they’re respond: “Oh, I’m not the only one.” I think those war stories can really help somebody in that regard.
“Oh? you did that too?” “Yes, I did.” I Sometimes I feel like being a mentor is in some ways being a therapist. I apply this to being in patient care as well.
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
