Life hacks for the physician scientist

0:00 Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients. When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research program. Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit. However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.

0:40 For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene. Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast. I'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is an absolute pleasure to be talking with you today. Thank you so much for tuning in. Today, I am talking about seven life hacks for physician scientists to grow their careers. Yes, seven life hacks for physician scientists to grow their careers.

1:20 And I'm excited to bring you this episode because, wow, we all need life hacks. We absolutely do. One of the things I realized recently is I read a book and it was such a great book. And I remember thinking, hmm, I have this mentor. He doesn't even know he's my mentor. He's my mentor from a distance. And I listened to his talks. He's given so many talks. And so I literally binge this person. And one of the things that he does that's so awesome is that he will just say, you should read this book. And he reads a lot of books, but he doesn't recommend all the books. And so when he says, you should read this book, I've been just going out and getting the books and reading them.

2:00 And what I realized is that his advice is so high quality. Oh my goodness. And here's the thing. In general, right now, I'm in a busy phase in my life where I mostly listen to audiobooks. And so some of these older books are not available as audiobooks. And so it takes a lot of time, or at least investment, to sit down and read them. But these have been such high quality reads that I definitely have been taking the time to read. And anyway, I share all that to say that when somebody is someone you know, you like, and you trust them, when they make a recommendation and you take it seriously, you win. And so this person probably read like maybe 50 books.

2:43 And then out of the 50, he's like, you should read these 10. That saves me from reading 50 books that may not necessarily give me benefit and just focusing on the 10 high yield books. And I remember thinking, I was like, oh, this is such a great life hack. I need to come and share with my audience about life hacks that we can use as physician scientists. Now one example that may hit a little bit closer to home is have you ever watched a terrible movie and you just after three hours of watching, you know, because you kept investing because you know, you didn't want to lose out on the time you already invested because you're like, surely this movie is going to get better. Surely it's going to get better. And then three hours in, you're like, okay, I've got to wait till the end because I bet the end is going to make this all worth it. Then you get to the end and no, it's not worth it.

3:25 Absolutely. It was a waste of your time, including the commute to get to movie theater. Yeah. So you wish that somebody had told you beforehand that it was going to suck so that you wouldn't have invested any time. And that's what life hacks do for you. They help you. They keep you from wasting any time and they help you to make the most out of your investment. So I'm sharing seven life hacks to enhance your career as a physician scientist. And these are not the only life hacks that exist. These are not an exclusive list. And I will say that I had an idea of what I wanted to share with you and chat GPT helped me out a little bit. So these are not a hundred percent original. So any full disclosure. Okay.

4:05 So the very first one I want to share, and this is one that's very, very, very well known is you've got to leverage your mentorship networks. Okay. Now, one thing I didn't say, I need you to hear, but I didn't say leverage your mentor. Okay. Because if you are a savvy physician scientist growing in many areas of your life and growing in all aspects of your career, you should have more than one mentor. And in fact, the reality is you do have more than one mentor. The question is, have you opened your eyes to see who those mentors are? You not only have mentors, but you also have networks of mentors.

4:46 Yes. Because you don't only have one mentor in one area. You have a couple of them. And some mentors actually span across different areas. For example, you have a great research mentor. That person is great at mentoring in research. But when it comes to life decisions, you're like, dude, your family doesn't see you. And I hear you're about to go into your fourth divorce. Something is not right in that area. I don't want mentoring from you in relationships because I think you're having challenges, but you are a super awesome research mentor. And let's keep your research mentoring. And I also hear that you've done well as far as growing your career and achieving the goal of full professor. Great. I want mentoring on how to advance my career.

5:27 So each mentor has something to offer you and no mentor is great in all areas. But you also have not just one mentor who can speak to your need in one area. You have multiple. So you may have one research mentor that's excellent in biostatistics, but who's the research mentor that's helpful in health services? And who's the research mentor that may be helping you do your translational work? So you have mentors. I would like if you would please say after me, I have mentors. No, I'm not stuck. No, I don't have. No, I am not someone who has no mentors. I have mentors. And that's true.

6:08 You don't just have net mentors. You have networks of mentors. You succeed because you leverage the mentoring that you need. Again, definitely keep a primary research mentor, but recognize that you've got a whole network of people who are able to bring to bear their expertise to support you as you have need. Leverage your network because they have already gone the distance and they can help you take the shortcuts so that you can get further than they got. Okay. Leverage your mentoring networks. Number two, again, this is not novel. Focus on a niche. Can I say that again? Yes. Focus on a niche.

6:48 And actually, maybe I'm saying that out loud for myself because it took me a long time to realize that this was necessary. And it took me a long time to narrow the niche down specifically. And to be honest, I am still in the process of narrowing the niche down further because, wow, there is so much to know. If you literally just take a drill and just drill downwards into the earth, let's just say you could drill downwards without extra work, without having to excavate, you would go very far. And then you would discover all sorts of things, all sorts of organisms that live deep under the earth that we don't see routinely. You would dig far enough to maybe uncover some fault lines that may suggest that volcanic activity is in the offing.

7:32 Or you might find out that, wow, you get all the way to drill down to molten magma in the core of the earth. So my point, not to expose how much geological information I don't have, but my point is that the further you dig, the more you find. And if you're just going in a narrow direction, if you spread your area, gosh, there's so much more. And it's the same in research. There is so much in your little narrow field to become the master of, the expert of. And there's so much to discover. And so the more that you can focus, the more expert you become.

8:12 And it's not just about becoming an expert. It's also about the fact that you are able to leverage every effort to the next effort. What I'm saying is, for example, I write a grant. My area is TTP. I write a grant about TTP in looking at patient reported outcomes. The next grant I write about TTP, maybe I will look at patient reported outcome measures as it relates to fatigue. Okay. So I've already done a ton of work thinking about TTP. I've done a lot of writing related to patient reported outcome measures. This next grant is different because now I'm focused on a different area of TTP patient reported outcome measures, but I can use all the information that I gathered from the last grant I was writing and apply it to this grant.

9:02 So guess what? It takes me a shorter period of time to write this grant and I am the expert so I can really write well, right? So you're able to bring all that information to bear to move you forward in a way that you weren't able to move forward before. It is so helpful. Now contrast that to where I maybe wrote a grant on TTP and then someone else was like, hey, I really am interested in this lung cancer question. Would you come answer it with me? And I'm like, oh, sure. Okay. So now I've left everything, every gain I've made in TTP and I go answer the question of lung cancer. Wow. So I can start all over from scratch. And then if after that project doesn't pan out, I'm like, well, somebody else says over here that they're doing DVT prophylaxis.

9:46 Oh yeah. In cancer. I could totally do that because I was a lung cancer before. Now I go over here. Well, none of the stuff I did over here translates. Now I have two sets of projects. A lot of work was invested, but now they don't translate forward to the next project. And so that's the diffuse energy that we have when we're spread too thin across different areas of expertise. But when we niche down, when we focus, we can really become masters and our time counts for more. The investment of time always leans forward to the next application or the next project or the next manuscript. So if you take nothing home from all the things we say today, you want to develop your niche.

10:31 Okay. Number three is prioritizing grant writing early, prioritize grant writing early. Why does this matter? Because you know, no business runs without money. It just doesn't happen. And if you're a clinician moving forward in research, you recognize that you need money so that you can fund the part of your work that's not clinical. Because as long as you live, you will always be able to do the clinical work and it will always take up a lot of time because that's what clinical work does. If you're really going to have the time that's carved out so that you can be protected to do research, you do need funding to help you do that. And congratulations if you're in the place where someone's supporting you and they're like for the next period of a couple of years, we're just going to fund you.

11:16 We're trusting that at the end of the season, you're going to be able to do well. Well, you want to have grants lined up to be able to manage your time or to be able to allow you to continue to support your time. Now I want to say this is not to where you get nervous and you're like, oh my gosh, if I don't write grants and get funded, I'm not going to be able to succeed. I just want to say you're a physician. You are somebody who knows how to succeed and you succeeded in the most unlikely circumstances. And so grant writing is a skill and like any skill, you can grow in it. Now it may take you time to build this skill, but put in your 10,000 hours if you believe in the 10,000 hours lore, but put in the time, put in the strategic investment, get feedback and grow your skill.

12:08 Start with a small grant, go to the next small grant, build over time to have bigger grants, build over time to involve collaborators. You can grow the skill of grant writing. The sooner you start, the more you build skill over time. You can do it. It is hard. I was going to say it's not hard. It can be hard, but you know, when you started walking, that was hard too. And you fell a few times and you eventually mastered walking. And so you did it. You've been doing it and you can continue to do it. So prioritize grant writing early. Number four, collaborate across disciplines. Okay. I've learned that, oh, it took me so long to figure out and now I wish I had learned it so long ago.

12:51 When we as clinicians are trying to do research, do you know what we do? We talk to other clinicians. We're like, hey, I'm doing this research project. Will you help me? And guess what we have? We have overlap of expertise. You may be like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, because I'm a hematologist and they're an endocrinologist. Great. You're moving a little bit, but that's still very, I mean, you went to med school, you did residency. You can answer some questions about endocrinology if that's the kind of expertise that you need. And if you're a hematologist needing to work with an endocrinologist, then the question is are you sufficiently moving in the area of your niche? Are you spread too thin? But anyway, whatever. If you make it work, you can make it work. However, that does not give you the same kind of mileage as it does if, let's say, you collaborate with a qualitative expert.

13:39 For example, the example I gave earlier about doing a project in TTP patient reported outcome measures, I collaborate with a qualitative expert. I don't have any qualitative expertise, but this person has qualitative expertise. So now I can be my dynamic clinical expertise in TTP and they bring their dynamic expertise and qualitative research and bam, dynamite. What synergy occurs? And okay, let's take it. Now let's triple that. Let's now say, okay, well, you have expertise in qualitative methods. Now let's go find someone who has an expertise in measurement. Wow. All of a sudden we have a dynamite combination. We can write some amazing grants with those three viewpoints all focused on one niche area.

14:25 It is so, so awesome. And the best part is that there's no fighting. There's no, wait a minute, I'm a clinician here and this is the way I practice and the qualitative expert can't be like, well, you know, this is the way I do qualitative things. You all own your expertise and there doesn't have to be any fighting or hierarchical need, right? There doesn't need to be any of that because all of you can be masters of your own individual domains. If you are not leveraging collaborations in your research career, you are working too hard. Naturally, you'll always be working hard, but you're working and letting some of your energy go to waste.

15:09 When you leverage collaborations, you can focus in the area of your expertise. You can really, really get a lot of mileage out of that. So do not neglect building collaborations into your work. And you might be like, but nobody wants to collaborate with me. All the collaborators are working with the senior mentors. They are. So go find someone who's on your levels. Find someone who's just starting out if you're just starting out. Or maybe who's mid-career if you're mid-career and say, hey, this is what I want to do. And I see that your interests may overlap in this area. Can we work together? And at the end of the day, people love working with people who have similar interests where they're sure gain.

15:49 It's like, okay, we're going to write this paper. I'm going to be the senior author on the clinical focus paper. You be the senior author on the qualitative focus paper. Boom. Excellent. Excellent benefits to the collaboration. So really leverage collaborations. They will change your experience. All right. Number five, you got to use technology. You got to streamline your research with technology. Now that goes without saying because we're a very technologically focused group in general. Like I'm talking to people who are early career, mid-career. And I would say that technology is not a challenge for us in general. However, it keeps advancing. For example, if you're someone who's not utilizing or leveraging the power of large language models like chat GPT, you should think again.

16:38 I had a conversation with a colleague not too long ago who was trying to write, they were trying to write a blurb for something really important. And they were like, I want your input. I'm like, great, but have you asked chat GPT? And they're like, what? I said, well, just put the information that you've written into chat GPT and ask chat GPT to develop in the certain way that you want and then see what you think. Now we've got to be ethical about our use of AI and we've got to be explicit about when we use it. But it's important for us not to bury our heads in the sand and say, well, there's no way I'm using this technology. We got to find out and we got to apply it so we can get more mileage out of the work that we're already doing.

17:19 So leverage technology. Don't get left behind. Number six is to make sure that you optimize your research time. Okay. Optimize your research time. We are clinicians and we are good at clinical work. We're excellent. Like, you know, we're building skill and research. That's very hard. When it comes to clinical work, we did all the skill building over 10 years or more of training and it's not hard anymore. It's so easy to fall into the rut of just doing the clinical things because they're so familiar. And to be honest, you don't have to invest too much energy to soar, to do really well. But if you are not careful, clinical work will overwhelm you and then you won't be able to get your research done.

18:04 And your research does matter. It is important. It's a skill that you haven't built as well as your clinical skill. So you do need time. You do need to invest. You need to optimize your clinical time, shrink that so that you can increase your research time. How do you do that? You're like, well, I'm a clinician and no one's supporting me to do research. Well, let's look at the time you do have. Let's focus not on what you don't have, but what you do have and then ask ourselves, how do we maximize the time we have? Okay, I know I'm in clinic every day of the week, but you're not in clinic every morning. How can you take 30 minutes and use that time to move research forward and to build productivity until you can get the blocks of time that you're looking for?

18:52 Don't wait until you have large blocks of time. How do you maximize the little time that you have right now? And the more you focus on and optimize the little time you have right now, you are able to really maximize that time. So don't say you don't have time to build your research and optimize your research career. You want to make sure that you optimize your time and look for ways to shrink the clinical time or at least delegate things that are delegatable so that you can really build your research career and grow in these skills. Eventually, once you become a master in your research skills, you can go back and do anything you want. But while you're building, you really do need to focus on doing that work so that you get really good at it and so that you can mentor the next generation of scientists as well.

19:38 Okay. Number seven, you got to be strategic about your self-promotion. Okay. It's really nice to have sponsors and mentors who, you know, they don't want to go to the talk and so they're like, hey, this is the person who can help you do it. And that's great. And at some point in your life, you're going to have a lot of that. But even if you don't, even if there's no mentor standing to give you the things that they don't want but that are really instrumental to you, how can you put yourself in positions where you get to be able to be given the talk with or without your mentor's intervention? If you've developed a research niche, you've published even one or two things.

20:19 Let's just say you've published only one thing or maybe you haven't even published. You're like, I'm just getting started. Well, where can you go to give a talk that allows you to establish yourself as the expert? Yes, you're maybe not the expert by just giving one talk, but you're more of an expert than many other people who didn't do the work to be able to give that talk. So once you've done it once and if you're like, well, how can I even give the first talk? No one's inviting me. Well, if no one's inviting you, how about you invite yourself? How about you call your long lost colleague or maybe your best friend from med school and say, hey, you're over at this institution. I'm over here. Can you invite me to come give a talk to your med students? And they're like, well, I don't really have money for you to come over, but sure, come talk to the med students.

21:05 They will gather your research team and allow me to give a talk, give a talk virtually and give them a great talk. And then you get to put in your CV that you got an invitation from another institution and you gave a talk. It's not where you want to be long term, but it's a great place to start. And then all of a sudden, you are showing up as a person who gives a talk in X area. And then you can ask for more invitations and then other people can start to invite you more. And then that's how you really start to build your networks. So engage in strategic self-promotion. Don't say no one's promoting me, promote yourself.

21:47 And it's not easy. I'm not saying it's easy again. These are skills that we're building that we didn't have before. In our clinical training, we just put our heads down, we just work hard. And then people are like, wow, she's such a hard worker or he's such an amazing worker. But that's not how it happens in terms of getting known for your research. And it's so important for promotion. It's so important for advancement in the academy. You can't wait for someone to discover you. It's time to discover yourself. Okay. Those are seven points that I talked about, seven life hacks to grow your career as a physician scientist. Number one, leverage your mentorship networks. Number two, focus on your niche. Number three, prioritize grant writing early. Number four, collaborate across disciplines.

22:30 Number five, streamline your research with technology. Number six, make sure you optimize your research time. And number seven, be strategic about your self-promotion. All right. It's been such a pleasure to talk with you today. As always, if you're looking for a coach, if you're a clinician who wants to make that transition to research, but you're struggling, I would love to be your coach. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. I would love to talk to you and definitely share this episode with someone else. All right. Enjoy the rest of your day. I look forward to talking with you again. See you next time on the Clinician Researcher Podcast. Thank you for listening.

23:10 Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher Podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. If you found the information in this episode to be helpful, don't keep it all to yourself. Someone else needs to hear it. So take a minute right now and share it. As you share this episode, you become part of our mission to help launch a new generation of clinician researchers who make transformative discoveries that change the way we do healthcare.