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.
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 am your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and I'm excited to be here with you today.
I am even more excited to have a very, very, very special guest on the show today, Dr.
Rashida Hull, whom I have known for a few years, and I want her to introduce herself.
And so I'm going to just first of all say, Rashida, welcome to the show.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you, Teosi, for inviting me.
I'm really excited that you have started this podcast because I think it's going to be really
helpful for people out there who actually are even just considering research in their
careers and there's a real need for something like this.
Thank you, Rashida.
You're so kind.
Well I want the audience to get to know you.
So if you would please introduce yourself.
You are many things, but really from the perspective of you as a clinician researcher.
All right, fantastic.
Yes.
So as the clinician researcher, or as we might have to put in our bio sketches, I consider
myself a physician scientist.
I do health services research with a particular focus in geriatric nephrology.
And if I were to say that in more specific terms, or layman terms, I would say, you know,
I'm working to develop new ways that we can deliver geriatric care to patients who have
kidney disease, particularly older adults who don't have the opportunity to get access
to that care.
And so the research activities are all around what is the information we need to develop
interventions and then let pilot them and test the interventions and see how they could
actually be further implemented in clinical practice and hopefully change policy.
Wow.
You know, Rashida, I've heard about your research over the years, the way you put it like that.
I mean, it just seems so powerful.
And the first question I have in my mind, which is not the question that I said I would
ask you, is just how did you get here?
How did you get to this place where you're doing research that really honestly is like
paradigm shifting?
Like you're changing people's lives through your research.
How'd you get here?
You know, it's interesting because I do think that our clinical experiences really can uncover
to things that are great research questions.
And I think personally, it's easier to see now than back then when you're in it.
But I do recognize that this day, a lot of the things that seem to make me worry about
patients wonder why they keep coming back into the hospital.
What happens when they leave kind of fell in this category.
There are certain patients who lived in nursing homes and receiving dialysis and we tended
to see come in and out of hospital.
And I also, I think more broadly, when I learned about chronic kidney disease as a resident,
it still wasn't clear who was taken care of, who was the main doctor, what's the nephrologist,
what's the internal medicine.
And so putting those two together really seemed to me that there's something about this group
of patients who need a lot of care and they're overlooked in a lot of ways.
They need access to care.
They may not even realize it.
And so I think that tying together was like the perfect population for me to really try
to make a difference in because it also intersects with not just health equity and despairing
from care and literacy.
It's all these things that I think in general, the culture points towards having patients
make their own decisions.
But many of our patients, especially older adults receiving dialysis, aren't equipped
to do that.
And so trying to kind of put things in place to provide the care they need, they may actually
don't even know they need.
But so yeah, I think that's the picture I think.
And I'll start a residency and fellowship.
Wow.
And it sounds like it's been quite a journey to get to where you are right now.
And I just wonder at what point in your journey did you say, you know what, I'm a physician
scientist.
Where was that defining moment for you?
That is an interesting question because we, it's like there's something you're aiming
for, right?
And so yeah, when do you start to feel like you're owning it?
And I would say like the very first research project as a medical student, absolutely not.
Neither was the first project I did in residency or when I first got my K award.
I feel like I was still in the sort of like, I'm trying to do research.
I'm trying and so I do think that probably the most defining moment for me probably was
when I submitted an R01 for the first time, when I can see that it was a lot of my own
thought processes and efforts and my own decision making that got it through the finish line,
not even knowing the outcome of it.
But I think that truly was one of the most defining moments.
Thank you for sharing that, Rasheeda.
So it sounds like, you know, all along you've been a physician scientist.
You've been growing into the role.
It is really putting together this big grant where you were able to pull together so many
things in this, the many decisions that made up this big grant.
And you looked at your finished work and you're like, I'm a physician scientist.
And that's interesting because it's not the first grant you submitted, clearly.
It's not the first grant you were awarded, clearly.
So I wonder what was it about this grant?
Why did this grant really, really, why was this grant specific and particularly meaningful
to you?
I think it goes to the decision making, right?
So even just from the beginning when you're like, okay, I want to do this.
So you're choosing, I'm choosing to submit a grant, not someone else telling me I have
to or I'm being forced to run out of time.
It definitely was the choice.
I think that that leads with it, right?
And then what is the topic going to be about?
And I feel like I really own both of those decisions.
No one was making me submit the grant when I did.
And also the focus of the grant and what I say is the end goal.
I think those are the two driving points because I think with prior grants, while I definitely
like what I was proposing, it still felt like it was a lot of guidance from mentors and
the goal was just the grant.
It felt like you didn't even get a grant.
So I definitely think this was a shift to where I can see what I was creating and the
reason why I wanted to do it.
That's so beautiful.
And Rashid, I've known you for a long time.
You've been creating amazing things for a long time.
Thank you.
But I love what you're talking about.
I think what I see you saying is that this is really, you owned it from the beginning,
from creation, from like the inception all the way to the finish line and just having
completed that project where you could look back and say, you know what, this is my work,
my idea, my creation and really taking ownership of it.
It sounds like this was the first grant in which you felt like you just brought all of
yourself to just lead all the way to the end.
Yeah.
And not that I didn't ask for help or get feedback, but I definitely, I feel like it
was more clear that I was the one making the final decision on everything.
In fact, I think that's what made it actually some way fun and kind of freeing because,
you know, like, all right, let's go.
Got to get done.
I love it.
Now tell me what has been your greatest advantage on this journey?
Because you've come so far in, I think, a short period of time.
What has kept you, what has allowed you to be so successful?
Oh, so when I thought about this, on one hand, I paused about the word advantage.
So I think I'll answer success first.
And that, I think externally, it would be mentors who actually cared and thought I had
potential, but maybe it's also the early success with grants when I came onto faculty.
And I don't know if that's like, oh, I applied to so many, I finally got them, or just that
these committees were willing to bet on me.
Because I think one of the biggest challenges for us, especially those who are underrepresented
in medicine, is that sometimes you just need someone to bet on to do both emotional support
and the financial support of the grant.
And so I definitely think just having the opportunity was enough to give me the advantage,
right?
So I took it and I tried to make the most out of the early funding I received.
And then I think, personally, like what I do is, I think a lot of them think that we
are particularly organized.
And I think one of the things that works for me is just trying to create a strategy for
how everything gets done, and kind of starting to make use of the calendar and time management
and those types of things, I think have always been something innate for me, even in college,
my nickname was Agenda, because I would sit down, write a schedule on a napkin and decide
what I was studying every hour.
So that type of, I guess, attention to time and using it, I think, has been very useful
for me, considering how much work does go into writing grants and papers and so on.
All right.
So I hear you saying two things.
So the first thing you talked about, at least that resonated with me, was you were putting
in all this work, you're making all these efforts, applying for all these grants.
And finally, when you got one of these awards, it was a validation of all the work you've
been doing so far.
And it really kind of gave you a boost to keep going.
Because I think otherwise, it would have just kind of felt futile.
But it's funny, you talk about people giving you an opportunity.
And I think of it as both.
They're giving you an opportunity, but you're taking it too.
And a lot of that too is your preparedness.
So and the second thing I heard you say, you are very organized.
And being able to have structure to put these big applications where there's so many moving
pieces or so many parts, you are the kind of person who essentially are practicing the
preparation meets opportunity.
Yes.
I love that.
Oh, it's good.
It's good.
And these are learnable skills.
And I think I want to highlight them for our audience, because sometimes there's a sense
like, wow, she's so amazing.
She's so wonderful.
And she is.
The thing is that people can learn to be organized.
People can learn to put structures in place that help them to move a lot of things forward.
And I think, Rashida, you're a great example of that.
Just you are very organized and that allows you to take big things and make them small
and move them forward.
Yeah.
And I think that to your point, and things that I've learned skills and people have different
gifts.
And I think for myself, sometimes I may not be...
I would say one of the things I still need to work on as far as like a quote unquote
weakness, might be just really be willing to think outside of box and be extremely creative
in what is possible in science.
And so a listener might feel like they have that down, but they may be a little less organized.
And so those things all can come together and you can build on your weaknesses in a
variety of ways to get where you want to go.
Thank you for pointing that out, Rashida.
You talk about weaknesses, which I think in science we're always thinking about how are
we unique?
We're always going back to the place where we're not as strong.
But I do think it just highlights the fact that there are so many opportunities for collaboration.
I am really great in structure.
I bring the structure to this project.
And then there's someone who's like, I think outside the box, I don't care about structure.
And so both people are able to complement each other.
And that can be the power of collaboration.
Now talk to me about your greatest disadvantage.
You know, you've done all these great things, but what have been challenges along the way?
What's been the greatest challenge?
So, yeah, this is an interesting one.
I think it's almost the reverse of what I mentioned before as far as support, mentor,
excuse me, who is willing to bet on me and says, you know, I believe you can do this.
You got potential, willing to help me.
That has been a great advantage to me.
But prior to that experience was mentoring, that was almost the opposite of that.
And so in that very early period when I was trying to find my way, trying to understand
like the fundamentals of research and possibly also when you're in it, you're learning the
culture.
It's like I was getting commentary that my ideas weren't good enough, that I wasn't moving
fast enough, that I would never make it in research.
So that effect.
And I think that when you're receiving information like that, then it's almost there's so much
of an internal fight to not believe that too.
And so there's still probably a little element that still lingers there despite achieving
grants to this point.
But yeah, these are formative years even as a grown up, but you're trying to achieve something
new.
And so that has been the biggest hurdle.
Yeah, definitely.
Thank you for highlighting that hurdle, Rashida.
I think it is the hurdle of many of our listeners.
So I mean, we're great people, right?
We've done so many things and every step of the way people, there's always the, you haven't
done more.
Here's the next thing.
And one of the things I love that you talked about is that you were learning the fundamentals
of research or learning the basics, the culture of research, which is really different from
the culture of clinical care, which is our training or maybe a 10 year period.
And when we think about PhDs who are professional researchers, they're steeped in the culture
and the fundamentals of research from the very beginning.
They're literally all of their training is about the research.
But for us, we finish our training, we graduate, we're clinicians, and then know we're starting
with the research piece.
And that is hard.
It's a very formative part of our experience as researchers.
And so then we're vulnerable to people who come and tell us that we're not good enough.
And it's not that we're not good enough.
It's just that we're just starting.
We're babies.
Babies are not expected to be masters.
We look like masters because we finished these great things, but we're just starting.
And so we are vulnerable at the very beginning to people who don't believe in us, don't give
us opportunities, who disparage our ideas.
And I have to say that that's really hard.
And I think that it's a challenge for many, many people, which now then brings me to the
last question, which I think it feels like it's a natural outflow of the place in the
conversation that we're at.
What do you say to someone who's there?
Who's like, well, I'm trying to make this work, but all around me, I see people who
say I can't make it.
What do you tell them?
How do they come through that phase like you've been able to overcome that?
Yeah, so I could talk to my former self, which is interesting because it would have been
nice to have someone like myself to come along back then.
You know, I think it's like, so what is it about what this person's saying is actually
true?
Because what we run into is internalizing a statement, which surely can often just be
an opinion.
So what is true about that and how we can kind of disentangle fact from fiction and
hold on to facts and decide what we can kind of move forward with respect to that.
So I think that's one of the first things I would say to former self.
And I think the other thing is that sometimes learning new things is hard, right?
And so it is often the natural instinct to kind of delay doing something hard, something
that's difficult.
I remember like the very first manuscript I wrote as a fellow that took forever to get
to a first draft.
And I bet a huge part of that was because I had never done it before and it just seemed
insurmountable, so hard to wrap my head around what I was doing.
And so I think, you know, hard doesn't mean impossible.
And that will be the second piece of advice that we don't have to be afraid to try something
that's hard.
And also just to remind yourself of what we've already done.
If you already have completed medical school and residency, this is a different kind of
hard, but it definitely is a reflection of what you can still accomplish at this stage
too.
Thank you for those words of encouragement, Rachida, which are so awesome.
I mean, it's funny, as you're talking about your first manuscript, I'm remembering my
height.
I struggled.
I think I had to bring someone in to help me finish.
It was so hard.
I had to practice and pray.
It wasn't because I was a loser.
It was just that, you know, I had never really done something like that before.
And it's helpful to know that.
And it's interesting.
So your older self can now say that to your younger self, but at that time you couldn't
do that.
You didn't know.
So I just wonder, where did you find the community or the voices that told you that you could?
Where did those messages come from to help you keep going?
Yeah, that's a good one.
What helped me keep going?
I mean, I think back then it really was kind of a church community and Bible study, things
to that effect that really were helpful and definitely still are.
I think though in recent years, especially after transitioning to faculty, having children
and now there's so much more to juggle in life.
When I first, and that was when I first encountered having an executive coach.
And I think it was that initial exposure really has been extremely helpful for me to recognize
something we can reflect back to me, essentially what I'm thinking and kind of see, oh, you
know what?
That doesn't make sense.
Yeah, of course I could still do that.
And so I think that in addition to the faith community and friends has been extremely helpful.
Thank you for saying that, Rashida.
So you bring up two things that are so important.
Number one is community.
We can't do this alone.
And we didn't come through medical school residency fellowship by ourselves.
We really didn't have communities that helped us come through.
And as we're starting a new venture in research or research training, we need community to
help us get through too.
And sometimes when we look around and maybe we have mentors who don't necessarily believe
that we can make it, or we have communities at work or in our research spaces that may
not think we can make it, there are communities elsewhere.
And so we can tap into all communities that we are already part of that encourage and
support us to help lead us through.
And then the second piece is coaching.
And I totally, totally subscribe to coaching.
And that those are some of the experiences, my work with my executive coach that really
helps me make those mind shifts and mind transfer and maintenance.
And so I really, really appreciate the perspective of somebody else who's totally outside of
the picture helping me think through comments that I may have received that bother me that
don't let me move forward.
And it's like, yes, is that true?
What about it is true?
What about it triggers you?
And so those are great things to have someone help you think through.
And when something's hard, well, why is it hard?
Is it truly that you don't know how to do it?
Or is there something else going on internally?
And now those types of questions that you can, that anyone can ask themselves, right?
But definitely really highlights the value of coaching and how that can really kind of
help someone accelerate their careers.
Absolutely.
And now Rosita, you are a coach.
Not only were you coached, you're also coaching.
Could you speak a little bit about that?
How do you help people as they're coming along this journey as a coach who's also a successful
researcher?
Yeah, thank you for asking.
I think this is really interesting because I think that coaching is such an opportunity
to help other people, to serve other people in a different way than the way we do research.
And the way that I'm choosing to pursue it, as you described, really trying to help people
with mindset shifts, especially when it comes to helping women academics who are trying
to submit grants, to write papers, and in particular doing it without losing themselves,
without having an experience of burnout.
And I think part of why this is so interesting to me is because I've had the experience of
being coached and I see the benefits of it.
It's not limited to getting the work done for your research, but it definitely is something
that informs how you live your life outside of work, including family, life, children,
marriage.
It can sprinkle over into other things.
And so I think any thing that can serve you and serve others can be so valuable.
And that's really why I want to be a coach, more of a coaching.
That's awesome.
Thank you for sharing that, Rashida.
I hear you talking about you're really taking care of the whole person.
It's like you're a researcher, but you're a whole person.
You've got all these facets to your life.
How do you bring them all together so that you're whole and you're actually enjoying
the journey rather than just slugging through?
Yes, because it is that word journey that I've really been thinking about a lot lately.
That life's a journey.
Everything that we're aiming for, it's all about that process of getting there and trying
to live in the moment, living in the journey and not waiting to live once you've achieved
some outcome.
And I think that's another one of the main things I like to emphasize with clients because
that really helps get someone in place to do the work that they're interested in now
without a lot of concern about what could happen in the future.
That's awesome.
And I'm glad that you are helping others in this journey.
You have been my peer coach for several years now, and I know how much I've benefited from
that.
And I'm so excited for your clients and the benefit that they'll get from coaching with
you.
So if we have someone in our audience who's like, I want to work with Dr. Rashida.
Where can they find you?
So you can find me on Twitter at Rashida underscore hall MD or if you even weren't interested
in emailing me directly, it's Rashida at makeinternalshifts.com.
Awesome.
All right.
You all heard it.
I will also post that in the show notes, everybody, so that if you want to connect with Dr. Hall
really in your experience as a clinician researcher, the physician scientist, and also the coach,
I will give you the information and you can reach out to her.
She's definitely I know she's accepting clients, so please make use of that.
Rashida, it has been such a pleasure talking with you.
Thank you for being on the show.
I know that our audience has learned so much from your story.
And there's so much I know that you haven't shared that so much to you.
I do appreciate the pieces that you shared.
Thank you, Rashida.
Everyone, thank you so much for listening today.
It has been such a pleasure listening to Dr. Rashida Hall, and she's just shared some amazing
insights.
I want to ask you if you have been blessed, if you have loved what she's shared, if you
gotten insights from it, think about someone else who needs to hear this.
Think about someone who is younger at the beginning stages of their process, and they're
like, I don't think I can do this.
Think about someone who needs to hear her words of wisdom and share this episode with
them.
Also, sign up for our weekly newsletter.
We'll continue to share insights to help encourage you and support you along the journey.
Thank you all for listening today.
Thank you again to Dr. Rashida Hall for being a guest with us today.
And I look forward to talking with you again next time.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic
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have a mentor.
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