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'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and what an absolute pleasure.
What an absolute pleasure to be talking with you today.
Thank you so much for joining.
Today, I'm talking about setting the thermostat for your academic environment, and I'm talking
about different strategies that may work and strategies that leave you a little bit more
challenged in your ability to set the thermostat.
I will tell you that this particular episode and the inspiration for it comes from a conversation
I had with one of my mentors recently, and she talked about the importance of setting
the thermostat for your own home.
Specifically, actually, she was talking about the fact that you can worry about the temperature
or you can air-condition your home.
She's like, your job is not what the temperature is on the outside.
Your job is the air conditioning in your home, is setting the temperature in your home.
I just remember from that conversation, I literally had a...
It was one of those epiphanies, or actually it was more like a mind-blowing moment, like,
this is so profound.
And for that reason, I thought to record a podcast episode on the importance of setting
the thermostat for your academic environment.
And in fact, a couple of weeks ago, I was caught up in this place, which to be honest,
I'm caught up in often, and I try not to be caught up in it.
And part of how I do that is to stay busy and stay out of these conversations, but I
got caught up.
And what did I get caught up in?
I got caught up in one of those conversations where we talk about how everything is falling
apart and going to hell in a handbasket and everything is just not working.
And to be honest, in healthcare, there are a lot of those moments where we can sit and
just lament the challenges that are happening around us.
And I work very hard to try to stay out of those conversations because they weigh me
down and then I really can't move forward because I'm so overwhelmed by the badness.
And this was one of those where you can't get away from the conversation because it
just feels so bright and there's just so much energy and you really want to have the conversation
and you want resolution to what you're talking about, but there's no resolution no matter
what that conversation always ends in you feeling badly.
So that's why I try to avoid it, but I wasn't able to successfully.
But anyway, this particular analogy of the house and the condition outside and setting
the thermostat in your own environment made me start thinking about our academic environments.
And in reality, goodness, there's so much that's wrong.
And if we could just list all of it, we would be completely overwhelmed.
And actually, if we only just shared a little bit of what's going on in that academic environment,
we would be, I mean, it's kind of demoralizing actually sometimes.
And so I thought about what are some of the conditions that can challenge your ability
to set the thermostat of your academic environment and some situations or some scenarios that
enhance your ability to do that?
And what am I talking about when I'm talking about setting the thermostat of your academic
environment?
It's saying what is conducive for you?
So we live in this big ecosystem and there's a sense, especially when we first get started
that we've got to just go with the flow.
It's like status quo.
We're just doing what everybody else is doing or we just do what we're told to do.
And then in some areas, we're finding that, you know, there's a rub.
It's like, I know this is what they told me to do, but it's not working for me.
So you want to be team players and we want to just, you know, we want to do what everybody
else is doing or we want to do what we're told to do.
And so we're just going with it, but boy, it's not really working for us.
And we're like, oh, I don't like the way it's working.
And we're afraid.
We're afraid to try to change things, even though changing things means that it works
better for us.
And we're afraid because we're like, well, you know, they want us to do this.
And if we change anything, it will be, it will be frowned upon.
And one of the things we don't realize is that our thriving is more important than our
conformity.
And to be honest, people make the rules and they make the rules for different reasons,
but they don't make the rules to stifle you, or they don't make the rules to take away
your, your, your ability to think or your ability to be innovative or your ability to
create because the better you do, the better they do in any environment.
When people thrive, they bring their best selves to the table.
They are more creative.
They're more amazing.
And so in reality, even though it would seem that the environment is asking you to conform
in reality, the environment wants you to create your own thing in the midst of the rules.
And so part of our strategy is to think about how do we understand the rules so well that
we know when they can be broken or how they can be successfully broken, right?
And sometimes we do it successfully and sometimes we don't, but in reality, continuing to shape
our environment so that we can thrive is important because the alternative, the part where we're
in conformity and we just hate life, oh my gosh, it doesn't help anybody.
It doesn't serve anybody.
You're miserable.
And they also like, are not happy to work with you because when you're miserable, you
look bad.
You have this attitude about you.
You don't even do your work very well.
And so being miserable is important.
Resources, you're applying for bigger funding.
You're looking for more resources.
It's a beautiful thing because you get to create the environment you want.
You get to be, you know, you get to, you know, put in all these green energy saving technology
that allows you not to feel the, you know, not to have so much of a gap between like
the external temperature and the internal temperature.
But what it does take is investment.
It takes, it takes, it takes time.
It takes time.
It takes investment and it takes time to be able to build your own home in the academic
environment.
It takes you having a body of work, something you're known for, something people ask you
to come and give talks about, something that you're consistently moving forward in the
place of funding or in the place of scholarship.
You're building.
You're building, it takes time and you're doing it.
And at the end of it, it is your home.
At the end of it, it's your place.
At the end of it, it's yours.
And it's so, so important.
It's so important, but recognize that it really, really takes time.
But the beautiful thing is at the moment it's built, that other people are able to come
under your umbrella and you're able to set the temperature to a temperature that's conducive
for them.
You're able to treat your mentees with respect and with honor and you're able to help them
in the way that maybe you weren't helped.
You're able to create an environment that encompasses at least a couple of other people,
right?
It's a home.
It's not a city.
And that's why number five is building a city.
And this is where you are saying, okay, I'm going to encompass a couple of homes within
my enterprise.
And that takes more energy.
It takes more investment, but it's an opportunity to grow your footprint in terms of the people
that you bring in to an environment that's conducive to an environment where people are
treated with respect to an environment where people's careers are advanced, where you're
not fighting with people over the future and yours.
It's an opportunity for you to do more, but it always starts small.
It always starts with coming back to where you are.
Now whether you're homeless or whether you have your own couch in your mentor's home,
you do have a space that belongs to you.
And it may not be an ideal space, but it's an opportunity for you to set the tone of
that space.
What is it going to look like around you?
How are people going to be treated around you?
Are people going to be treated with respect?
How are people going to feel when they come into your program?
How do you help mentees advance?
How do you make sure you're not taking things from them that they have expectation that
they're supposed to have?
For example, they want to be first author and you're like, oh no, no, no, I'm going
to be first author on this one, even though you've done all this work.
You know what I mean?
It's how are you building an environment that helps and heals in a way that you didn't have
in a way that you didn't have that when you were coming up?
And maybe you're still there where you're still waiting for your mentors to kind of
give you the best of what they have.
Maybe they're falling short.
Just because you may not have gotten the perfect situation doesn't mean you have to dish it
out to other people as well.
What kind of environment are you building?
And so I say all that to encourage you that you would think about the space you have and
rather than be overwhelmed with all that's going on around you, ask yourself, what is
the space I control and how do I make it conducive for me to thrive?
And if I don't have the resources to do that, where can I go to get the resources?
Where else can I go that's going to support me?
But I feel like it is our moral imperative to thrive because when we thrive, other people
around us thrive, our environment thrives, we create thriving environments, our patients
thrive as well.
The work we do matters and we do it joyfully.
So I want to invite you to not accept sadness, anxiety, fear in your environment.
I don't want you to accept it as a status quo.
And you may say, oh, I look around and everybody is this way.
Yeah, everybody is outside.
They're feeling the same temperature.
But there are people you can't see and they're indoors and they pay a big bill, but they
are much cooler than the external environment.
And I want to invite you to think about how do you make the environment you're in right
now work for you?
What will it take?
And you may be like, oh, I'm leaving in three months.
You're leaving in three months, but there are three more months left.
How can you make the environment conducive for you while you're still here?
So you're not miserable for another three months.
You're not miserable for another day.
And I want to encourage you that it is possible, that it doesn't happen until you decide that
you're going to make it happen.
And it does take investment.
It will cost you.
But it's absolutely worth it to live in the environment you absolutely want to live in,
the environment that helps you thrive, the environment that helps you be the amazing
person that you came to the academy to be.
So five things I talked about.
You want to be homeless where you have no mentoring, no community, nothing.
You have no plan.
And then you're just like the outside temperature, toxicity, all the problems, they just follow
you because you're just going with the flow.
You want to be in a situation where you actually have a community, where maybe you're crashing
on other people's couches or crashing on your mentor's couch or maybe even have a room in
the mentor's home or maybe even have a cottage built for you out back.
And that's great.
Find mentors, find a community and enhance your academic experience.
Number three is getting your own rental where you're like, okay, I'm going to start fitting
the bill for my own place.
Number four is getting your own home where you're building it and you're like building
a space that encompasses other people and creates an atmosphere where they thrive as
well.
And finally, you can build your own city where you're like, you know what, I'm going all
in on this work, the scholarship, I'm getting funding to move it forward and I'm creating
space for other people too, to come in and be part of this amazing environment that I'm
building.
So I invite you to think differently about the status quo and think about how can you
do it differently where it works for you and because it works for you, it works for so
many other people as well.
All right.
It's been a pleasure talking with you today.
Please share this episode with someone else who needs to hear it and tell me about what
buildings you're building, what you're doing, whether you're renting, hope you're not homeless,
but if you are, I would love to talk to you, get you a place to sleep, a community to be
part of and whatever it takes for you to thrive.
I want to be here for you.
I want to support you.
Let me do that.
All right.
Have a great, great rest of your week and I look forward to talking with you again the
next time on the Clinician Researcher Podcast.
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.