The Doctor's Mentor® Show: Ideal Medical Practice | Business of Medicine | Entrepreneurship | Exit Strategies | Docgitimacy

Lori L Barr MD: Practice, Career and Lifestyle Mentor and Radiologist
  • 4.8 (16)
  • MEDICINE
  • UPDATED MONTHLY
The Doctor's Mentor® Show: Ideal Medical Practice | Business of Medicine | Entrepreneurship | Exit Strategies | Docgitimacy

Before medical school you want to help people feel better. Once you start training and get into your practice,whether it is private, hospital-based, institutional, academic or corporate, you discover the distress of toxic work habits, stressed health professionals and bureaucracy. You are in danger of becoming a faceless white coat that doesn’t have a clue how to feel good! This show meets doctors and allied health professionals where they are, from medical school, residency, fellowship, practice and through retirement and helps them refocus on what is really important in life: to live, to laugh, to love and to build legacy. Get a timely dose of the skinny, skills and science doctors need for maximum vitality as leaders. You hear humor, success and failure from surgeons, radiologists, anesthesiologists, cardiologists, pediatricians, family practice docs, chiropractors, dentists, physician assistants, physical therapists, psychologists, bestselling authors, doctorpreneurs, online entrepreneurs, military leaders, lifestyle design experts, celebrities, performing artists, financial experts. From burning man to big data to biohacking, learn actionable strategies for medical practice optimization, personal productivity and professional power and influence so you implement a better practice daily. When a doctor's life improves, those who live and work with the doctor also experience more joy, more fun, and more moments worth living. Join us weekly and find out what is possible!

  1. What Doctors Don’t Tell You With David Vogt

    09/28/2024

    What Doctors Don’t Tell You With David Vogt

    How we communicate within and without influences our ability and our patients' ability to feel better. Are you open to hearing a patient's perspective on communication with doctors and ways to encourage your patients to become more confident communicators? Mr. David Vogt's story is insightful. This is only a part of our interview. More patient-focused portions can be heard on the podcast "Think & Grow Well" Series 2 Episode 1.  My book, Think & Grow Well, helps individuals strengthen their minds, bodies, spirits, and awareness before a health challenge strikes. Ready to explore opportunities to integrate a Think & Grow Well Implementation Program into your practice, email me at lori@thedoctorsmentor.com. ©️The Doctors Mentor® LLC 2016-2024

    34 min

  2. 09/20/2023

    Prepare for the Unthinkable

    "The heart, mediastinum, pulmonary vascularity, pleural spaces, and bones appear normal." [phone rings] "New paragraph." [phone rings] [Telephone receiver is picked up.] “Hello?” “Is this Dr. Lori Barr?” “Yes.” “This is the nurse practitioner in the Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital Emergency Room. Your parents have been in a motor vehicle accident. I have your mother here and she is experiencing amnesia but she knew enough to tell me to call you and had your phone number in her purse.  I don’t know about your father’s condition.  He was life-flighted to Huntsville from the accident scene.” [introduction] "There is only one other time in my life that I felt like I dropped into a Twilight Zone episode. That was the time I woke up alone in the dark in the middle of the night in a big house to something calling my name from the foot of my bed. That’s a story for another episode, or perhaps another podcast. It is good to be back, offering you as my protege tips to maximize your practice satisfaction and your opportunity for a rich full life with those you love.  This episode is designed to leave you with five vital steps to help you prepare for the unthinkable. Preparation allows you to gain the most from this kind of growth opportunity rather than just by being devastated by overwelm. You see the morning I received that call it was New Year’s Eve and I was sitting at Dell Childrens Medical Center in Austin, Texas, in my office reading X-rays because I was on call. And that call wasn’t the first on-call call I was expecting that morning.  Usually, it would be one of our assistants letting me know that there was a stat read on a neonatal study from a hospital other than the one I was sitting at or perhaps one of the pediatric hospitalists or ER docs needing an emergency upper GI to evaluate a patient for malrotation and midgut volvulus.  That call from the Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital nurse practitioner changed our lives forever. Thank goodness I’d had a number of mentors over the years who assisted me in being prepared for my family’s moment of crisis. Here is what I learned from them: 5 VITAL steps for being prepared for the unthinkable. The “V” in vital is for Verify: Verify that your family members are totally prepared for a brush with or actual death. This means actually investing in a meeting with an estate planner and making sure that you have a will at a minimum and a full-blown estate plan if you or your family’s holdings are sufficient to justify the cost. This also means thinking about what you want to happen if you or a loved one is at a crossroads where there is a question about continuing life support or not.  It is one thing to start thinking about this and another thing to put it in writing. Follow through so your family doesn’t feel like you left them with no guidance.  Cremation or burial. Viewing or not. Is there a burial or cremation policy? Has a resting place been purchased? How do you access these things? In my case, I am an only child raised by a United States Coast Guard Officer, Sonny Barr, and his wife, Lee Barr, a world-renowned speech pathologist and audiologist.  My father had planned for disaster since he first enlisted in the Coast Guard. My mother learned the drill as soon as they wed. Both were happy as independent successful humans who enjoyed times they shared and times of solitude. They thought of almost everything when it came to a brush with death, except a scenario that compromised them both at the exact same time. They were great mentors to me in this and so many other aspects of my life. The “I” in Vital is for Identify. Identify any weaknesses in your emergency scaffolding. By this I mean take a look at the people around you, your workplace environment, and your pooled resources. Are you on sure footing in your practice or workplace where you know for certain you could provide a  family member with the same level of love and support you give to your patients if an emergency calls you away on short notice? Do you have at least one practice partner who absolutely has your back no matter what and you have theirs in return? Do you understand who to contact if you need to leave your responsibilities unannounced in the hands of another provider? Is your practice or employer equipped with a mechanism that allows you to use family leave if necessary? You need to understand how family leave actually works in your setting.  In some cases you may be considered “essential personnel” and thus your employer may not have to consider you for family leave. Your training may cause your injured or sick family member’s doctor to make medical decisions based on your availability and if you are then not available, that can lead to problems.  For example, a loved one suffers a head injury and is deemed to have a concussion.  Under average circumstances, they might be observed for 24 hours in a hospital or acute care environment to ensure no deterioration of neurological status occurs yet since you are a doctor, their provider decides it will be even better for the patient to go home with you where they can get more rest and you can still do the neurology checks in a kinder, gentler and less expensive way. That’s all great until you have to go to work during that same 24-hour period. In my case, as soon as I got off the phone with the nurse practitioner from the ER, I called my practice partner who I knew would know exactly what to do in this scenario.  I told her what I knew and I said, “What do I do now?”  She said, “You book a plane ticket to leave as soon as possible and I take a shower and come to the hospital.”  Honestly, until you’ve experienced something like this, you really don’t know how much it means to know someone has your back.  I am forever grateful to all of my practice partners at Austin Radiological Association who assisted me by taking my call, selling me their vacation, switching shifts, and bending over backward to make sure I could take care of my folks. In my case, I had both an extremely favorable practice setting and people who had my back. Now let’s talk about resources. Do you and your family have enough insurance coverage and emergency funds set aside to deal with disability or death? How accessible is it and what is the process? You will need cash and you might need credit. You may need legal assistance. I was glad I had listened to my mentor, Mike Koenigs, who years ago suggested that I determine my Fiscally Unfettered number, or as he said, F. U. number.  The amount of money you need to accumulate to have the freedom to leave any work or practice situation that is no longer serving you. Depending upon the emergency, you might actually have to give notice to your current practice or employer.  Are you fiscally ready for that? Are you emotionally ready for that? We who practice the arts as physicians, nurses, chiropractors, lawyers and other credentialed professionals tend to overly identify with our titles and roles.  That can lead to unnecessary stress if a job change is required to maximize your support as your family faces a crisis. The FU number may change during different points in your career so be prepared to revisit this as time passes. The “T” in Vital is for Talk. Talk before an emergency like this happens so the action plan is easier to implement. Talk even more after something like this happens. Effective closed-loop communication is essential in preparation for an untimely emergency and assures your loved one gets the care they need. It is worth your time to talk to your family about what you would do if there is a local disaster or if someone is seriously injured. Have a written action plan with the five W’s: Who, What, Where, When, and Why. Make sure the plan and important information like medication lists and insurance cards are readily available.  My favorite tool for this is Evernote. It is readily available on all mobile devices and on laptop computers and desktops. It is easy to create and upload notes, take notes, and to share notes. We have a family Library that we share. The OCR reader is excellent so that even if your notes are handwritten or there is a word or number embedded in a picture, the search tool will find that note. It is pretty amazing. In our case, the paramedics on the scene did an incredible job keeping each of my parents’ possessions with them so they had what they needed when they needed it in each of the two hospitals they were in roughly seventy miles apart.  I was able to notify my aunt and cousin who assisted my mother in one town and another cousin who assisted my father until I could arrive about seven hours later. The “A” in Vital is for Allow. Allow your training as a health care provider to assist you as you order your immediate action steps. You’ve been trained to take your own pulse first when there is a healthcare emergency, and the same serves you in this instance. The hospital is like Disneyland.  You wouldn’t dream of letting a small child go to Disneyland by themselves. Consider the same with a hospital or convalescent care facility. Both are busy places and while the care teams want the best for their patients, there is a difference between what the customer experiences and what the employees live day after day to make the magic happen.  As a health professional, you most likely understand this more than your siblings who have other professions. A simple tip like, “ Wear warm clothes and bring an extra blanket, hospitals are usually cold,” can make a difference. Your insider knowledge can be instrumental in improving the outcome for your loved one. For example, you may understand how different care teams make rounds and at what time.  You can prepare a list of questions or have whoever is at the bedside call you when the care team arrives for rounds.  This is how errors are prevented

    15 min
  3. Practice and Rehearse Before You Talk to Patients

    11/30/2018

    Practice and Rehearse Before You Talk to Patients

    Practice is the act of repeating an action until it becomes natural. Rehearsal is stepping through the motions before an actual event. Both are valuable in the context of conversation with a patient.

    8 min
  4. How to Turn an Ordinary Human Into a Superhero

    11/29/2018

    How to Turn an Ordinary Human Into a Superhero

    Dr. Lori Barr gives examples of the four questions you can ask as a leader, mentor doctor or podcast host that will turn your colleague, protege, patient or show guest into an instant superhero.

    14 min
  5. Questions Doctors Ask Me: How Do You Choose Guests for a Show?

    11/28/2018

    Questions Doctors Ask Me: How Do You Choose Guests for a Show?

    Doctors ask me, "Dr. Lori, how do you decide who to have as a guest on your show?" There are four lens you can assess potential guest through that allows you to be strategic about who you interview. Listen to start using these lens.

    6 min
  6. The Secret to Being a Great Mentor

    11/27/2018

    The Secret to Being a Great Mentor

    Use this strategy that launched the career of Timothy Ferriss to add value to your proteges you mentor.

    4 min
  7. 3 Tips to Get the Most Out of A Scientific Meeting Even If You Cannot Attend In Person

    11/26/2018

    3 Tips to Get the Most Out of A Scientific Meeting Even If You Cannot Attend In Person

    Dr. Barr shares three tips for getting the most out of a medical meeting even if you cannot attend in person.

    5 min
  8. Questions Doctors Ask Me: Who Would Want to Listen to My Show?

    11/25/2018

    Questions Doctors Ask Me: Who Would Want to Listen to My Show?

    Doctors look sheepishly at me sometimes and ask, "Who would listen to my show?" There is a better question for them to ask regarding their ideal listener. Listen and find out.

    8 min
See All (74)

4.8
out of 5
16 Ratings

About

Before medical school you want to help people feel better. Once you start training and get into your practice,whether it is private, hospital-based, institutional, academic or corporate, you discover the distress of toxic work habits, stressed health professionals and bureaucracy. You are in danger of becoming a faceless white coat that doesn’t have a clue how to feel good! This show meets doctors and allied health professionals where they are, from medical school, residency, fellowship, practice and through retirement and helps them refocus on what is really important in life: to live, to laugh, to love and to build legacy. Get a timely dose of the skinny, skills and science doctors need for maximum vitality as leaders. You hear humor, success and failure from surgeons, radiologists, anesthesiologists, cardiologists, pediatricians, family practice docs, chiropractors, dentists, physician assistants, physical therapists, psychologists, bestselling authors, doctorpreneurs, online entrepreneurs, military leaders, lifestyle design experts, celebrities, performing artists, financial experts. From burning man to big data to biohacking, learn actionable strategies for medical practice optimization, personal productivity and professional power and influence so you implement a better practice daily. When a doctor's life improves, those who live and work with the doctor also experience more joy, more fun, and more moments worth living. Join us weekly and find out what is possible!

Information

To listen to explicit episodes, sign in.

Stay up to date with this show

Sign in or sign up to follow shows, save episodes, and get the latest updates.
Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada