Podcast Episode 18 | Women in Medicine & Social Media with Healthcare

Shikha Jain:                   00:00                Why are you dating this girl? She's going to be a doctor. What a waste for you.

Intro:                            00:08                From Spaugh Dameron Tenny, it's White Coat Wellness, a show for doctors who are ready to improve their financial wellness. We know you work hard to help your patients, but you can't be at your best if you don't have your own finances in order. In White Coat Wellness, we highlight real life stories from physicians and dentists to educate, encourage and inspire you to personal, professional and financial wellness. Now from Spaugh Dameron Tenny, please welcome your host, Shane Tenny.

Shane Tenny:                00:34                All right, welcome back. I'm Shane Tenny and glad to have you with us today. If you're a subscriber to our podcast or listened to some of the previous episodes, you know that we've covered social media, which is kind of a constant topic of conversation and point of interest. We've talked about women in medicine on a couple of different episodes, and today we're just going to come full circle and tackle both topics again with my new friend, Doctor Shikha Jain. Doctor Jane works clinically as an oncologist at Rush University Cancer Center in Chicago, serves in leadership as the physician director of media relations. She's one of Modern Healthcare's top 25 Emerging Leaders for 2019 and received the Rising Star award by the LEAD Oncology Conference this year.

Shane Tenny:                01:20                Her accomplishments are many, and you can find them on her website directly, but I want highlight a couple things that I think are pertinent to our conversation today. Doctor Jain is the co-chair of the Women in Medicine Summit which she co founded in Chicago that focuses on gender equality, and is the co founder of the Rush Center for the Advancement of Women in Healthcare. And on the social media side, Doctor Jain is the founder of the social media group on Facebook, Dual Physician Families and is on the leadership team of SoMeDocs, which many of you are aware of doctors on social media. I'll stop the platitudes. Doctor Jain, thanks so much for being with us today.

Shikha Jain:                   01:59                Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to this conversation.

Shane Tenny:                02:03                Well me too, and I appreciate you squeezing us in after the holiday concert for the kids and making time for us today.

Shikha Jain:                   02:10                Of course. Anytime.

Shane Tenny:                02:11                Absolutely. I thought we might start off by just talking about your advocacy and passion around parity and equality in medicine. Can you tell us maybe just a little background about your career path and what's led you to be a real leader for women in medicine?

Shikha Jain:                   02:27                Absolutely. So it's a long road to get to becoming an oncologist. There's college, med school, residency, fellowship. And when you're in the weeds and you're getting stuff done, you just get stuff done. You pass your test. You take care of patients. You learn as much as you can, and then you emerge as an attending. And everybody faces struggles and challenges as they go through that. It's a very common theme that exists throughout medicine. What I realized looking back at my training and looking back at my fellowship and my early years as an attending, that a lot of the struggles that I faced weren't necessarily because of challenges that were directly related to me. And through social media, I started hearing stories that sounded very similar to challenges that I had faced and things that I had heard that I had brushed off and just moved past and ignored and thought that maybe I needed to improve myself.

Shikha Jain:                   03:18                But it turns out, the more I listened and the more I learned, I found a lot of those challenges were actually based in unconscious biases, implicit biases and discrimination. And that bothers me because I know a lot of brilliant women who have worked extremely hard to get to where they are. And I know a lot of women who worked extremely hard, didn't get the opportunities that they should've gotten because of a variety of things, oftentimes related to their gender. And they left medicine altogether or they left clinical practice and went into only administration or they had to take jobs that they weren't necessarily as happy with when I knew how ambitious and how amazing they could have been. And that bothered me because I felt like we were missing out on some amazing minds in healthcare and in medicine. And so when I started noticing these trends and talking to more people and realizing my experiences weren't individual to just me, I wanted to do something about it.

Shikha Jain:                   04:20                And the way I know to do something is I come up with an idea. I do something that will hopefully have an impact and will not just be a bunch of talking, complaining. I really want to do something where we can create forums, creating networking, create mentorship and create ways that people can develop the skills that they need to advance in a system that is sometimes stacked against them. And not only that, but also educating people because a lot of people don't even know that this is an issue. I've spoken on panels where people say, "You're a doctor. Doctors don't [think 00:04:52] this kind of thing," and I give them a couple of anecdotes and I share a couple of pieces of data and people are shocked with the fact that these types of discrepancies and disparities exist in the healthcare world where we're supposed to be objective.

Shikha Jain:                   05:04                So that's how I kind of got involved in this. I think that the proof is always in the data, and by researching and studying and publishing these types of things, we can show that these disparities still exist. And that really is the first step to creating the plans and the actions that we need to do at a larger systemic level to make those changes.

Shane Tenny:                05:25                Yeah, the proof's in the data, but I like to the point you're making, it's the anecdotes that make it real. It's the stories that make it real. You referenced scenarios, people you've heard of, known, etc. Has there been a time when you, or a story you can think of, where you came up against discrimination or system failures that kind of challenged your own aspirations?

Shikha Jain:                   05:50                Yeah. I've seen it since I was a student. Like I said, I brushed off a lot of them. And looking back at them through a different lens, I now see that the statements that were made or decisions that were made were not because of me. One of my favorite examples, and my husband is going to kill me when he hears that I told this example. But we were in medical school and a surgery resident told my husband, "Why are you dating this girl? She's going to be a doctor. What a waste for you. You need somebody at home who's going to be taking care of the kids and cooking. You shouldn't be wasting your time dating somebody who's going to be a doctor." And my husband, who was then my boyfriend, bless his heart, told him this guy, he was like, "You have no idea what you're talking about. My girlfriend is amazing and I'm not with her because of what her career is going to be. I'm with her because of who she is as a person."

Shikha Jain:                   06:41                So that was something that wasn't said directly to me. That was said to my now spouse. I have been told on numerous occasions that I should wait to apply for leadership opportunities until my children are older. I have been looked over for opportunities because I have been told that people don't want just another pretty face out there. So despite the fact that I'm triple board certified in hematology, oncology and internal medicine, that wasn't as important to this person as a fact that I was, quote, a pretty face, which I mean I guess I could take that as a compliment. So that was another time.

Shikha Jain:                   07:18                And then the biggest thing that I've noticed recently, especially as I'm publishing research on the topic, is I get people who respond and they say, "This isn't good data. This isn't good research. This isn't rigorous scientific studies." And they don't look at the actual paper, they just look at the results. And so the data that we're using, we're using statistical analysis, validated metrics. It's very good research, but people just want to attack it because they don't believe it's a problem. And so that is a common thread that we see on social media, where even the paper that we had come out at ASCO last year looking at the way speakers were introduced, people started attacking the paper when it was a very rigorous scientific paper that came out with a lot of people involved. So those are just a couple of examples. I'm sure I could give you a hundred more that happened to me and others, but it's a very common thread.

Shane Tenny:                08:11                And since this has been an area of focus for you, and in some ways even evidenced by this podcast and the number of times that it's come up in conversations with guests, the publicity around women in medicine ... Is the needle moving? I mean, do you feel the progress underway, or does it feel like a new topic that you're just breaking the ice on culturally within medicine?

Shikha Jain:                   08:40                I think women and men have been working towards this for decades. And I've talked to women who are in their 60s who say, "Well, it's a lot better than it was 30 years ago." So I do think the needle is moving, but I think it's moving at a glacial pace. I think it's moving extremely slowly, much slower than it should be. And there was actually an article that just came out, I don't remember who published it in one of the major media outlets, saying that the United States is actually behind the eight ball basically, and saying that the United States is moving slower towards gender parity than other countries. So I think that things are improving, but I don't think they're improving fast enough. And I think there's enough people out there who still don't think this is a problem that are really putting up more barriers.

Shikha Jain:                   09:25                And a big problem is people don't realize their own implicit and unconscious biases. And because of that, they're making decisions that they might think aren't necessarily contributing to the problem because they don't have that insight or they don't have that education or that knowledge to know that the things that they're doing are actually very detrimental.

Shane Tenny:                09:44                Now, the last couple of years, the number of women enrolling in med school has been exceeding the number of men. And I guess from your research, is that trend likely to continue?

Shikha Jain:                   09:58                I think it will. I think more women will continue to enter medical school. I think the challenge is when you get to the mid career point in your career. So many women who go into medicine who decide they want to have families, oftentimes that happens right in the midst of when they should be going up for a promotion or when they should be applying for grants or when they should be, if they're in private practice, increasing their productivity. So that's a real challenge. And physiologically, women give birth. I mean that is a physiologic fact. So there are physiologic needs and physiologic entities that need to be taken into account. And so until we start looking at maternity leave policies and ways to kind of support women as they go through these types of things, I think that it's going to be a challenge for women to launch their careers in the same way that men don't necessarily have to think about. And after you give birth, there's children that are now in the picture.

Shikha Jain:                   10:57                And so I think that we will continue to see the trend of more women entering the medical field and entering medical school. I think the concern is going to be are we going to see those numbers reflected in our leadership and in the advancement as these women progress in their careers.

Shane Tenny:                11:16                Now, I know that last year, I think Rush U hosted a TEDx experience that you were able to speak at and then wrote an article on that referenced some of the data I think you're referring to here, which if I remember right just from reading your own writing and I'm sure you remember because it was yours, but if I remember right, the data is showing that women's healthcare I guess maybe nationally improves as women advance and leadership and that patients who receive care by clinicians who look like them have better outcomes. Talk a little bit about that and kind of the connection here.

Shikha Jain:                   11:52                So there's numerous studies that have shown that when women are leaders and when women advance in academic medicine, women's health improves. So up until...

Shane Tenny:                12:03                From that institution.

Shikha Jain:                   12:04                At a national level. So specific example I'll give you is back in the day, which wasn't that long ago, maybe 30, 40 years ago, women weren't included in clinical trials, in early phase clinical trials, and primarily women of childbearing age. There were other trials, so observational trials, where no intervention is done. Meaning, an observational clinical trial is something where you just observe people. You don't do anything to them, you just have them fill out surveys or fill out whatever. So there's no negative potential side effects or impact. There is a very large study that was done where women were not even included in an observational trial. That is still how we treat some patients with certain pretty prevalent diseases, like hypertension and heart disease and cardiac problems.

Shikha Jain:                   12:56                So once women gained the right to vote, there was a direct correlation with more women's health are initiatives being implemented. When more women were in leadership positions, that's when we started seeing things like the Women's Health Initiative through the NIH. Once women started becoming more vocal and advocates and having that type of platform, that is when the FDA required women to be enrolled in clinical trials if they were eligible candidates. So we see that at a research and a study level and how we learn about disease and how we learn about the way our bodies process different medications, different dosing of medications, the way women and men present when they are presenting with a heart attack, we're seeing that a lot of the data that we have up until recently is looking at primarily men. So we don't necessarily know how to diagnose women with certain things because we are only looking at data that was primarily researched looking at men. So as women became more leaders in healthcare there, there seemed to be a direct correlation in how women's health was improving.

Shikha Jain:                   14:11                There was a study that came out relatively recently looking at outcomes and patients who had women physicians or men physicians, and they actually found that the patients' outcomes of the patients who had women physicians were actually better than the patients who had male physicians. So there is a plethora of information. The surgeon general actually came to Rush a couple of months ago and I asked the question what do we do about this? And he said, "Well, Doctor Jain, the research is out there, whether it's minorities treating minorities, whether it's women treating women, whether it's people of any background treating people that look similar to them. There's a myriad of papers that show that this is indeed the case, that those patients end up doing better when they see the types of people that represent them in these positions." So I think that I could probably talk for an hour and a half or two hours on all the data that's out there. The question is not if this is a problem and if the data isn't out there, the problem is where are the interventions and where are the solutions that we're coming up with to make this change in healthcare?

Shane Tenny:                15:17                Right. No question there's a connection, it's just how do we remediate the situation?

Shikha Jain:                   15:21                Right, exactly.

Shane Tenny:                15:21                Yeah, yeah. And so this isn't just a topic that you research on and write about, but it's also a topic that I think under the category of if you want something done, ask a busy person. You launched a whole conference on it, I think The Women in Medicine Symposium at Northwestern, and then The Women in Medicine Symposium. Tell me what happened in your mind to think, "Oh, let's start a whole conference. I've got time for this."

Shikha Jain:                   15:45                Yeah. It was definitely something that took a lot more time than I realized it was going to. The Women in Medicine Symposium I started when I was on faculty at Northwestern with a colleague of mine, and we started it. I came up with the idea initially because I said, "You know what? Chicago is a booming area for healthcare, and we have some amazing academic institutions here. Why are we not addressing this problem, not only locally but nationally? We should be leaders in this." So the initial symposium that I founded with this surgeon colleague of mine, we started it at Northwestern, and it was focused primarily on just education. It was a one day conference at that point, and half of the day was spent on talks and education, and the second half of the day we had a couple of breakout sessions.

Shikha Jain:                   16:33                When I left Northwestern and came over to Rush, I wanted to do something bigger and I wanted to do something that was going to have a bigger impact because I saw how much of a need there was for this in Chicago specifically. There's some great conferences around the country, but with five academic institutions in the downtown essentially area, I thought it was a no-brainer to do something like this. So my co founder and I created this summit that is multi-institutional where we had sponsorship or endorsement or participation from every institution in Chicago, as well as institutions from outside of Chicago. We had steering committee members that came from national organizations like The American College of Physicians, The American College of Surgeons, The American Medical Women's Association, the AMA.

Shikha Jain:                   17:19                And by creating this group of very influential women, some who are very junior in their career, some who are students, we were able to create a summit that is a two-day event where half the day again is education, but the second half of the day is breakout sessions where we're really focusing on leadership development, speaker training, how to create a national organization, how to create a way to have this type of dialogue in your own organization, how do identify implicit bias and how to intervene when you're seeing these things happen. If you're junior faculty, oftentimes when you're junior faculty or trainee you don't feel like you have the ability to do anything. So how can you manage up? How can you find ways to really implement changes that will have an impact at your institution, at your organization or at a national level?

Shikha Jain:                   18:11                This year we're broadening our scope a little bit because there's a lot of people in private practice who face very similar problems, and there's the issue where people don't refer to them as doctor, or there's a problem where patients say, "I don't want to see a female position because I don't think women should be doctors." So how do you handle those situations, and how do we utilize those types of situations to amplify the problem, but then also really come up with some solutions? And so the summit also has an opportunity for people to submit abstracts and perspective pieces that we publish in a journal that comes out. It's actually coming out this month with the International Journal of Academic Medicine. We had award nominees that were nominated from around the country that were nominated for either being advocates for women or standing up for women in their career or showing resilience in their career. So we had three awards. One was for someone who identified as a woman, one was for someone who identified it as a man or was a non-binary individual and one was for somebody who showed resilience.

Shikha Jain:                   19:14                So we also have academic scholarship opportunities because studies have also shown that women aren't first authors or published as much as their male colleagues. And there's a variety of data that goes into that and why that is the case and how that negatively impacts women physicians' careers. We also had some networking sessions that were really great because women from around the country were able to connect. The conference is very much a positive event. It's not about complaining, it's about coming up with solutions. And we strongly encourage men to come. We're actually planning on having a track this year that also includes men, and that's going to be an ally track because a lot of times men come to me and say, "I want to do these things, but I don't know what to do. How do I do that?" So I've been talking with several national organizations who are talking about helping us create a track specifically for men who want to be allies. And that will be a part of the summit this year as well.

Shane Tenny:                20:06                And when is the summit in 2020?

Shikha Jain:                   20:10                October 9th and 10th, 2020 in Chicago.

Shane Tenny:                20:13                All right. And that's The Women in Medicine Summit in Chicago, October 19th and 20th.

Shikha Jain:                   20:19                October 9th and 10th.

Shane Tenny:                20:22                9th and 10th, not 19th and 20th. All right, don't be late on my account. Yeah. So if you're listening and this sounds like something that you'd like to attend, then we'll make sure and put the link to Doctor Jain's website and information in the show notes, and we'll give you a chance to maybe shout it out here at the end of the session. I want to talk a little bit about your work in social media, but we were going to take a quick break here. We'll be right back.

Shane Tenny:                20:48                For today's White Coat Wisdom, I want to take a minute and talk about the reality that's going on all around us. In just a month we have gone from economic certainty and prosperity to a state of global fear and confusion. And in the midst of this, it is normal to feel a sense of panic and it's normal to feel afraid. But I want to remind you of two key things. In the near term, as we've often said, it is often more beneficial to focus on your economy instead of the economy. We don't control what happens in Washington or with interest rates or with the stock markets, but you can use this opportunity to thoughtfully consider your own financial situation and needs. Depending on what's happening with your company, your employer, or your practice, you have an idea of what the next few months might hold in terms of your cashflow and income.

Shane Tenny:                21:45                Take stock of the cash you have on hand, the emergency fund. Take inventory of any discretionary spending or savings that could be temporarily suspended to help improve your monthly cashflow to navigate the next few months. Take some time and identify what investments or savings or lines of credit or cash value might be available to you to help provide liquidity to navigate the coming months of uncertainty. And in the longterm, as we lift our eyes beyond 2020, I'm reminded of Winston Churchill's quote when he said, "The farther backwards we look, the farther forwards we are likely to see." And I think if we lift our perspective from the fear and the headlines that are barraging us daily and look backwards at the history that is behind us, we're reminded that we as Americans and we as a global community have overcome enormous crises in the past. The fog of war and the confusion that are present are very real, but we have overcome really scary times before and gone on to reach new highs and new greatness together. And that is today's White Coat Wisdom.

Shane Tenny:                23:16                So Doctor Jain, you have opened my eyes through the first half of our discussion just around your work and the not just the value of finding equality between men and women in medicine as an end in itself, but the research shows the reason why. It improves outcomes. In addition to that, I know that you've become a real, I don't know, a spokesperson or a poster child for leveraging social media, something that elusive and complicated to a lot of your colleagues. You're the physician director of media relations for Rush. By all means, tell me what led to that promotion.

Shikha Jain:                   23:55                Sure. So when I came over to Rush, one thing that they identified was my social media presence and the way I utilized it to communicate important information, to kind of share important studies that had come out and networking and mentorship. And there's a lot of different things you can do through social media that people don't necessarily know you can do. And so they asked if I would be interested in taking on this role to not only continue what I was doing, which is building my own social media presence and ideally building the brand of the Rush Cancer Center and the Rush system, but also kind of educating others on how to do what I do and why it's so important.

Shikha Jain:                   24:35                And so it was something that I was interested in because I think it's very important for physicians to be on some form of social media for a variety of reasons. The biggest one is that there's a lot of misinformation out there, and I tell everyone we took the Hippocratic oath and our goal is to educate the communities that we live in. And our community now is not our neighbors next door alone. Our community is a global community. And with all the misinformation out there, it's extremely dangerous to not have people who have the knowledge sharing that knowledge and educating people. And not only that, finding mentors and finding education for other physicians. And really there's so much you can do through social media. I jumped at the opportunity to take on a role where I can educate and explain why that was so important to me and why it should be important to others.

Shane Tenny:                25:27                Yeah. And what's the role entail? What are you doing?

Shikha Jain:                   25:30                Oh my gosh, I think I could again talk to you about that for about two hours. So some of the things that I've been doing, so I started a podcast at Rush where I interview individuals, physicians, support staff, all different types of people who work within the cancer center specifically just educating on different topics. So we've talked everything from lung cancer prevention to colon cancer to breast cancer, just kind of talking about things that patients want to know and bringing it to a level where explaining very complex and complicated topics in a simple way. I've also done quite a bit on the branding aspect of Rush. So I've created opportunities for partnerships with national organizations like OncLive and The American Cancer Society, looking at co-branding materials so that we can really educate the community and have the Rush stamp of approval on some of the things that are out there.

Shikha Jain:                   26:21                I've done a lot of mentorship through social media. I've written quite a few opeds, and some were featured in U.S. News & World Report, KevinMD, Doximity. So I've done quite a bit of writing as well. And then I've set up several social media training sessions for my colleagues. I had a continuing medical education, or a CME event, where I gave a lecture for an hour on social media and why it's important in healthcare. And then I speak nationally on the topic not only on social media but on physician leadership in general, because physician leadership is such an important topic that needs to be covered. And through social media, you can be a physician leader without ever leaving the comfort of your own home or your own hospital. And I also created a thought leadership initiative for Rush. So those are a couple of the things that I've done over the last couple of months.

Shane Tenny:                27:15                Yeah, it sounds like a huge value to your colleagues. And the only downside to you is every time they see you in the hall, they're asking how to reset their password for Facebook or something.

Shikha Jain:                   27:22                Yeah, I had the [inaudible 00:27:23] conversation where people are like, can you tell me how to just set up my Twitter or what do I do with...

Shane Tenny:                27:27                Yeah, exactly. Kind of like when you're at a conference and the audio video stops working. You don't speak up and make a suggestion because then you end up being the person that-

Shikha Jain:                   27:36                Exactly.

Shane Tenny:                27:38                Yeah. And you're involved I know with the folks at Doctors on Social Media, SoMeDocs. How did that connection come about, or what's your involved there?

Shikha Jain:                   27:49                So Doctor Dana Corriel is amazing. She's a founder of SoMeDocs. And she and I connected, I think it's two, two half, three years ago. And she brought me on to the leadership team at that point to kind of help with just vetting people through the Facebook group. Because at that point the primary platform was the Facebook group, that's where it started. But then as things started to expand to Twitter and Instagram and LinkedIn and the website and all of these things, she talked to me about kind of helping guide the process. I mean, she does 99.9% of the work, don't get me wrong. She is a force. But she brought me on to kind of be an adviser and to also help navigating some of the things and bouncing ideas off of and just trying to figure out troubleshooting as problems arose.

Shikha Jain:                   28:35                So now, she and I have been talking about a couple of different ventures through SoMeDocs that we think would be extremely beneficial to the community and also beneficial to those SoMeDocs brand. So I'm doing quite a bit with her. I have trouble saying no, so I should probably not be doing as much as I am. But I love doing it, and I am so proud of everything that she has accomplished and so impressed by her and everything that she has done that I ... You know how sometimes they say you need to hit your wagon to the winner, and I want to amplify her as much as I can because she is somebody who is really going to continue going places. And my goal and my role and my job is to make sure that she is able to achieve everything that she can because I'm amazed by what she's been able to accomplish and what she will continue to do in the role as a leader of SoMeDocs.

Shane Tenny:                29:30                I have a feeling she probably feels the same way about you because I have a feeling you're going places too.

Shikha Jain:                   29:34                Well, thank you.

Shane Tenny:                29:36                Connecting kind of our first half topic with our current topic, in the social media and your involvements and efforts, is there a difference of any significance between female physician use of social media, male physician use of social media, that sort of thing?

Shikha Jain:                   29:50                So that's something we're actually looking at right now, and Doctor Sasha Shillcutt and Doctor Julie Silver actually published a piece in the New England Journal, I think it was last year or maybe the year before, looking at the advancement of women using social media. And their paper very specifically states that social media is a great way to advance your career, especially as a woman. Because in medicine, in healthcare, one of the challenges, it's a very hierarchical situation, and women have been proven to not ask for things. Women oftentimes don't know how to amplify themselves. Women don't know how to brag about themselves, and so social media is a really great way to disseminate your own research. You can post an article that you wrote and that can spread like wildfire. One thing that I think, especially in the hematology, oncology world that I'm in, we have some amazing cheerleaders who they create ways to brag for each other. So if you don't feel comfortable doing it, someone else will do it.

Shikha Jain:                   30:49                So I think that there are a lot of women on social media. And women use social media in a little bit of a different way we're finding than men, where women often use it for networking and for collaborating and for mentoring. And they use it in a oftentimes in a very positive way to disseminate information. And I have found some amazing mentors through social media. So women and men do use social media in different ways, and I think that's part of the beauty of social media. You can use it in whatever way you want to amplify yourself. You can use it to brand yourself, or you can use it just to post educational articles. There's just so much we can do with it that can really help advance your career and really can help advance other people's careers and help guide other people through the process.

Shane Tenny:                31:35                Yeah. As we wrap up here, I want to ask you about the word wellness, which is fairly well used around. We pirated it for the name of this podcast, White Coat Wellness. You're working on an awful lot of things to help an awful lot of people; your colleagues, your professional acquaintances, your patients. When we talk about wellness or wellness for other white coats, what comes to mind? What's that mean to you?

Shikha Jain:                   31:59                So I am very, very lucky in that I have a incredibly supportive family, and I have wonderful friends. And I would not be able to do what I'm doing without that support system. So I think wellness has become a very common buzzword in healthcare and in medicine, and especially with physicians because there's all this talk about physician burnout, and how does yoga help or does self care help. And in my mind, I think wellness is about a variety of things. I think number one, trying to find a balance that all of us know doesn't really exist, but trying to figure out what your priorities are, prioritizing them, and then trying to stick to it as much as you can. I think a big part of physician wellness is autonomy because we trained for years to be physicians and to take care of our patients. And I think the physicians who burn out and who don't have that wellness aspect figured out are the ones who feel like they have the least autonomy and feel like they are being dictated to and feel like the decisions they're making are not necessarily being valued.

Shikha Jain:                   32:58                So one thing, as a physician leader, I think it's incredibly important to make sure your team feels very valued and to see where people's strengths are and really tell them that they're doing a great job, show them that they're doing a great job and really amplify them. And that's the way leaders can help work towards wellness. For me, wellness is coming home, realizing that I love what I do and I love taking care of patients and I love education. I love doing the media part. I love being an advocate. But at the end of the day, I love my family. When I come home, I'm a mom and I'm a wife and I'm a daughter and I'm a sister. And those are things that are extremely important for me to remember as I'm doing all of these other millions of things because my wellness and my mental health is based on feeling like I'm a complete person and not just one thing defines me.

Shane Tenny:                33:51                And you've got a lot going on in your life. I got to ask you this question because there's somebody listening to this thinking she's amazing. I could never do all that. And obviously, we're all wired differently. So what do you do in your white space? What do you do to come down and to detox and to find space for your own just mental sanity?

Shikha Jain:                   34:08                So I love to run. So whenever I get the opportunity, I haven't had a chance as much ever since ... I have twins and five year-olds so my life is not as easily adjusted for running, but running is something that really clears my head. And then date nights, going out with my husband and just talking about other stuff, spending time with my parents or my brother and just talking about other things. That really I think clears my head more than anything. I love traveling. So when we go on vacation, it's like a kind of reboot for me. Obviously with the kids, we don't ... People with kids say it's not really a vacation, it's more just traveling, but I think of it as a vacation with travel with my kids. But those are things that I do.

Shikha Jain:                   34:50                And for anyone who thinks, Oh my gosh, she does so much. She's so amazing. Please believe me when I tell you my life is not as rosy as you see it on social media. I tell my trainees especially that social media is a very great way to look at people's lives through rosecolored glasses. No one's life is as perfect as it looks on social media. Everyone has their own struggles and challenges and barriers, and you just don't always hear about it or see it. So just know when you're seeing that amazing person who's got a great bungalow over in the Caribbean looking down at this beautiful blue sea, just know that they're showing you the best of them and there might be other things going on that you don't know about.

Shikha Jain:                   35:29                So just live your best life. Try not to compare yourself to other people because social media is the easiest way to get down on yourself and feel like you're not doing enough. But whatever you are doing, even if you're not doing anything other than seeing patients and you're single and you're enjoying life and you're going out with your friends, that is more than enough. You just have to do what makes you happy because we only have one life to live so you got to do what's going to make you happy in that life and don't compare yourself to others.

Shane Tenny:                35:59                Yep. As my sister says, social media is a great place to compare other people's holidays with your Monday.

Shikha Jain:                   36:06                Exactly. I agree.

Shane Tenny:                36:09                Doctor Jain, thanks so much for being here with us today. For anyone who's listening that would love to connect with you either about the summit or maybe for a speaking opportunity or something, how can we track you down?

Shikha Jain:                   36:18                So there's a couple of ways. You can find me on Twitter, @shikhajainmd. You can find me on my website, www.shikhajainmd.com. If you're interested in learning about this summit, you can go to www.womeninmedicinesummit.org. So you can reach out to me any of those ways. On Twitter I'm usually pretty good about responding, so if you ever want to reach out to me, sending me a message through Twitter is easy or there's a way to message me through my website.

Shane Tenny:                36:46                That sounds excellent. Well, thanks again for your time today and making space for us.

Shikha Jain:                   36:50                Thank you so much for having me on.

Will Koster:                   36:55                I'm Will Koster. I'm bringing you this episode's White Coat Achievement, a segment where we highlight noteworthy achievements by your friends and colleagues. People react to trauma in many ways. Today's White Coat Achievement goes to a resident physician who has dedicated his life to helping those during the worst situations as a result of his own traumatic experience at a young age. Dr. Mike Malla is the chief trauma resident at Atrium Health in Charlotte, North Carolina. Dr. Malla recently wrote an essay that brought tears to a room of trauma surgeons. He was sharing his essay because he received an award for his writing. He was asked to share it at the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Traumas - 2020 Annual Scientific Assembly. In his essay, he describes a tough situation he encountered while on the job. Here's a passage.

Will Koster:                   37:47                "Because of my family's loss, I was able to peer deeply into the eyes of my patient's mother when I told her that her son had died. I held her up as I witnessed all of her fall apart in my arms." We think that his current and future patients will be so fortunate to have a passionate surgeon that will serve them and understand their family's pain.

Will Koster:                   38:10                Read his full essay through the link in the show notes. As always, if you know someone who is wearing a white coat and achieving something noteworthy, please feel free to drop us a line. We'd love to hear about it, might even feature them on a future episode. But again, this episode's White Coat Achievement goes to Doctor Mike Mala.

Shane Tenny:                38:33                Thank you for joining us today. We've a lot of more great episodes queued up. Again, they come out every other Monday. If you'll subscribe, you'll know about each and every one and you can listen to them during your white space. Of course, speaking of social media, we're on all the platforms, Instagram, Twitter. We've got the private closed group, White Coat Wellness on Facebook, if you'd like to be part of that conversation. And if you have any ideas, suggestions or critique, you're welcome to just email me directly, shane@whitecoatwell.com. Thanks so much for being with us today, and we'll see you back here next time.

Outro:                          39:05                This episode of White Coat Wellness is over, but you're not alone on your journey towards financial wellness. Spaugh Dameron Tenny has been helping physicians and dentists with their financial planning for over 60 years, and we'd love to answer any questions that would be of help to you. Visit sdtplanning.com today and take your financial wellness to new levels. Once again, that's sdtplanning.com, and we'll see you on the next episode of White Coat Wellness.