Mastering the basics of research and writing

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Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills

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to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.

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As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients.

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When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find

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that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research

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program.

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Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit.

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However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.

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For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians

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the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.

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Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene.

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Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast.

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I'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is an absolute pleasure to be talking with you

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today.

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I want to talk today about mastering the basics, mastering the basics.

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And the reason I want to talk about mastering the basics is that you never ever get to a

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point where you feel like you can just forego the foundation.

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You're like, oh, let's just give the simple, easy, basic steps.

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Let's go to the advanced steps.

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You're always building on a foundation of what's basic.

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And the reason that this topic comes to my mind today is that I had a recent meeting.

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I was introduced to someone who is a colleague who I didn't know yet, and this mutual friend

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thought, hey, you should meet this person because she's really cool.

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And so we had a meeting recently.

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And one of the first things she said in opening our conversation is, wow, you've published

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a lot of manuscripts.

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And I remember thinking, I have?

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And I thought, I don't think I've published that many.

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And of course, if I'm comparing myself to people who've published at least 100 manuscripts,

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I am far behind that.

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Or if I'm looking at someone who's published 367, definitely far behind that.

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And for many of us, no matter what our number of publications or whatever it is we've accomplished,

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we usually don't have a sense of accomplishment, of greatness, right?

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We're like, yeah, I'm still on my journey.

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I'm still on my way.

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There's still so much I haven't accomplished.

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Because as people, and especially as academic physicians, we always have our eyes set on

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what we haven't done yet, the thing we haven't accomplished.

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And so sometimes we look down on the things we have accomplished and we don't really recognize

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our success.

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But part of that too is that success is a journey.

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It's not a destination.

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And if it is a destination, the destination is always moving, right?

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Because if you think about your career in medicine, you started out in med school and

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you finished med school, that was successful.

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Congratulations.

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And there was the next step after that.

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And then you finished your story of residency and finishing residency was the destination.

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And then you got to a point where clearly you achieved that goal and then the destination

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moved.

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And so success is a journey.

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And sometimes it's a journey from success destination or from success goalpost to success

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goalpost.

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But part of the journey is acknowledging, first of all, how far we've come, what got

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us there.

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What are the things that got us here that no longer will get us there?

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But also what are the basics that we always take with us, right?

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There's some things we leave behind and there's some things that are basics that we always

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take with us.

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So that's what I want to talk about, especially as you think about succeeding your career

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as a clinician scientist.

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What are the things that you always want to think about?

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And now I'm talking about scholarship in general.

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So you might not call yourself a clinician scientist.

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You might say, well, I'm not really a clinician scientist.

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I'm just a doctor trying to do research.

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Whatever you call yourself, if you are somebody who is in medicine and you are advancing scholarship,

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you're advancing knowledge in any way, then you count as my audience, as someone I'm talking

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to right now.

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So yes, this is for you.

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The first thing I want to share is that it always starts with recognizing your expertise.

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It always starts with recognizing your expertise.

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Who are you?

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What do you excel at?

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What is your strength?

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And this is not the time that you get modest and you say, well, I really have no strengths

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because that is not true.

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You've been hyper-focused in a certain field of medicine for the last decade, probably,

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perhaps even more.

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What is your specialty?

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And you may think, oh, it's obstetrics and gynecology.

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What do you mean?

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I'm not an expert in that area.

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Well, actually you are.

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And there's probably even a subset of obstetrics or a subset of gynecology that you are the

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expert in, but you've got to own your expertise first.

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Why do you need to own your expertise?

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Well, number one, your expertise is your foundation for all the work that you do.

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Now, you do want training in other areas, but you're already very well trained in a

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way that other people around you are not.

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And so hopefully if you're doing your collaborations right, you're not necessarily collaborating

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with other gynecologists who have your exact same expertise.

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You're looking for people beyond your field.

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So they may still be gynecologists, but they have different skillsets that they're bringing

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to your collaboration.

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So in your space, in the work you do, you are the master of the thing you're doing.

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Yes, there may be somebody else across the country who is also kind of sort of master.

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This is not a game of comparison.

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It is just an understanding of the thing that you are really good at.

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The thing that you don't have to study too hard to know exactly what's needed in that

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space.

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That is your area of expertise.

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Now, you own your area of expertise because others who are going to collaborate with you

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don't have that expertise.

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And if you're going to have a good synergistic collaboration, you've really got to show up

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and be responsible for helping direct them.

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For example, I have a colleague I work with and we collaborate in an area that I'm very

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interested in called thrombotic thermocytopenic perfora.

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That's TTP.

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Now, we sometimes like to distinguish immune TTP from congenital or hereditary TTP.

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And so we'll say ITTP.

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So confusing because there's another disorder of platelets that's called immune thrombocytopinia

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and that's ITP.

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Okay, that seems like a really basic thing to talk about, but my colleague doesn't know

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that ITTP is not ITP.

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How would she know?

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She's not done this work before.

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This is not something she studies.

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So when she's looking through the literature, trying to identify articles that are relevant

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to the work we're doing, sometimes she's pulling in articles that are ITP because, hey, it's

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a thermocytopenia problem.

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Why wouldn't it be the same?

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And I have that expertise to say, oh, no, this is not the right disease we're looking

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at.

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Here's the difference between the two.

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I can own my expertise so that I can help my collaborators not waste time.

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That's what expertise does for you.

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Now, you're brilliant enough that you could go and study somebody else's area of expertise

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and be able to do or write something coherent, but in reality, you flow most easily in the

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area that you're most expert in.

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But it's important to start from what you already have a strength in.

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Start from the place of your leadership.

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And so don't start from the place of your deficit.

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I don't have XYZ.

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No, start from what you have because what you have is what you build on.

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What you have is what you can expand.

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What you have is what you bring to the table.

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It's what you can gift to others as they collaborate with you.

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But it always starts with recognizing your power, your expertise, what you are a master

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at and building from there because then you will always be building from a position of

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strength and not a position of weakness.

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Many people start and they're like, well, I'm not really good at writing grants.

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Well, stop telling me what you're not good at.

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Tell me first, what are you good at?

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It's important because the area in which you're an expert in, like you're an expert in this

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area, you start writing grants in this area, you write more easily than someone who's not

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an expert because you know the language, you know the lingo, you know what to say.

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You know when someone's saying something that doesn't quite sit right.

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So even though you may not have master grantsmanship for so to speak, you still have skill that

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someone else who's a master grant writer without knowledge in that area has.

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So you have strengths and it's important to focus on your area of strength.

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So that's number one, recognize your expertise.

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It always starts with your expertise.

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Number two, decide how you want to contribute.

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You are so masterful.

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You have so many areas to which you could contribute.

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Going back to our era of gynecology, there are so many areas of gynecology that you could

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contribute to.

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So you do benign urogynecology or you do gynecology oncology and even in gynecology oncology, maybe

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you specialize just in ovarian cancer.

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There's an area that there's so many areas that you could contribute to.

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What do you want to actually contribute to?

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How do you want to contribute?

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In what way?

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Do you want to lead or do you want to be part of somebody else's leadership team?

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How do you want to contribute?

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You could always contribute in scholarship, but how do you want to do it?

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You get to decide, nobody else can decide that for you.

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And I think it's one of the challenges, especially on our early career.

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We're looking to other people to tell us how to contribute and they can and they do, but

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there's no better place for the decision for how to contribute to come from than you because

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you know what makes you tick.

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Yeah, you know, someone might come and say, well, this area of urogynecology is the most

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important to me.

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And you might be like, I'm not really interested in that.

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For example, I'm a hematologist.

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I did hematology and oncology fellowship training.

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I couldn't care less about doing scholarship and oncology.

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It just does not float my boat.

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And you know, we could go into many reasons why that is, but I prefer the diagnostic aspect

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of hematology.

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I love that.

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I'd love to figure out what's going on.

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And in fact, in all of hematology, I'm most interested in thrombosis.

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So what are these rare thrombotic disorders?

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How do they result?

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That's what makes me so excited.

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Right.

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And you could ask, well, why aren't you interested in bleeding?

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I do bleeding.

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I can, I can, I can, you know, I have expertise in that area too, but yeah, it's just not

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the thing that's most interesting to me.

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Right.

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Or people.

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And we don't have to explain why we're interested in anything.

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We just are.

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And so I get to say, well, this is how I want to contribute.

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Maybe I don't want to be the person who's always collaborating with everybody.

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Maybe I want to lead something too.

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I get to decide that.

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But until you decide you can't be a good collaborator because sometimes you'll be leading when you

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should be following.

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And sometimes you'll be following when you should be leaning because you haven't really

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decided how you want to contribute.

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So you're just kind of filling gaps.

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But how you want to contribute helps you decide how to show up.

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But until you decide that you kind of look wishy washy to yourself mostly.

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So this is not even about how do you look to other people?

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It's to yourself.

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You haven't committed.

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Your mind hasn't committed with you.

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Right.

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But the moment you decide this is how I want to contribute, then you can hold fast to that.

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Now I think this becomes more challenging for us when we are just trying to win.

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Right.

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Which trying to publish a paper.

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So then it doesn't matter how we contribute.

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It just matters that at the end we just want a paper.

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But I'm not talking about just publishing papers.

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I'm talking about really contributing to an area.

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And you decide how do I want to contribute?

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And sometimes we just want to do what's easy.

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Right.

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What gets me fastest to the published paper?

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And we do that, but it's not always the best strategy because that's short term thinking.

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If we're really going to contribute in a way that's meaningful and impactful, we're going

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to need to do it in the long term.

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And that comes from you deciding how do you want to contribute.

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Okay.

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So you recognize your expertise.

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You decide how you want to contribute.

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And then the third thing you do is create a plan.

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Create a strategic plan.

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You can go to different things.

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Some people will say it's an individualized career development plan.

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But I think I'm speaking a little bit more narrowly.

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It's like, so in the next few months, how do you want to contribute?

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What do you want to contribute in the next few months?

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And you map that out.

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And the reason you want to do that is because it gives you a roadmap for where you're going.

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Okay.

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In the next three months, I will have contributed in this way.

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I will have written three manuscripts and submitted two.

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I will have given seven presentations.

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That sounds like a lot, but you know, whatever, whatever floats your boat.

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But this is what I choose to do.

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These are my goals.

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And it's helpful because what it does is it creates accountability for you.

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You're saying this is what I want to do.

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And now you can work towards it and you have something to tell you if you miss the mark.

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And so creating a strategic plan is so important because wow, life is full of stuff.

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It just comes up.

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It takes your time.

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It leads you to places you don't want to go.

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You know, you could just go from week to week to week and say, wow, I've been so busy, but

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what did I do?

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So creating a strategic plan gives you accountability.

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It gives you direction, gives you a roadmap.

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You know exactly where you want to go and you can execute on that roadmap.

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So a strategic plan is important.

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Now how do you create a strategic plan?

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I have a prior episode where I've talked about creating a strategic plan, but it's essentially

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looking at the next 12 weeks or more or less of your life, choose a defined period.

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There is no magic number, but choosing an extended period of time where you say, within

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this timeframe, it is reasonable for me to expect that I would have finished up this

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manuscript and submitted it for publication or I would have done this or I would have

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done that.

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Like you get to decide that.

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And then looking at the timeframe and saying, okay, well, how, what will I do in the next

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week?

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In the next three weeks?

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What needs to be done in the next four weeks?

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And just really having a plan.

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At the end of the day, it's not the kind of plan you have.

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It's that you have a plan.

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Speaking of planning, number four is to have a weekly planning meeting.

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Yes.

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Every week you look at that big master plan that you've developed and you say, well, what

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can I accomplish this week?

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What can I move forward this week?

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One of the reasons planning is so important, especially for us in academic medicine, is

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that our schedules are so busy that the things that are so pressing and urgent just take

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priority.

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They take precedence.

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And then we forget to do the things that are not so urgent, that are not so important,

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right?

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Oh, that are important, but they are not so pressing, right?

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They're not urgent.

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So important, but not urgent.

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And you forget to do them.

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And you feel accomplished because you're doing a lot of stuff.

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You may be answering a lot of important emails.

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But you're not moving the thing forward that you want to move forward.

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And so the key is that you plan so that you can move forward things that are very important,

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but not so urgent.

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And so planning is so important.

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But a plan that lacks execution is just a piece of writing.

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It's like ancient art.

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Oh, look at that beautiful plan, but no executions.

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And then it is lifeless.

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And so a plan comes to life through execution.

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And what's the execution?

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It's committing to daily writing.

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That's number five, committing to daily writing.

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And now when I say writing, I say writing based on what I learned from Carrie Ann Rockmore

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in the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity.

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She talks about writing is anything that gets you to a finished published outcome, right?

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So it's not just that I am physically writing the manuscript, typing words onto a page.

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It's that I'm doing the research that leads me to the manuscript.

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It's that I'm doing part of the reading that leads me to the manuscript.

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I'm doing all the activities that get you to the final finished product.

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Because sometimes we're like, well, I didn't officially write more than three sentences

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than I wasn't writing.

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We tried to get, we start to get caught up in definitions.

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And it's not really about those distractions.

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It's just, are you moving forward?

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That's it.

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Are you making progress?

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Are you making progress in a meaningful way?

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Now you could read a lot of web pages in a 30 minute period and not really advance.

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You could be procrastinating, right?

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And you are the one who knows what a meaningful forward motion is.

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For example, I wrote the introduction to the manuscript today for 30 minutes, or I spent

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45 minutes and I revised the discussion paragraph.

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That's concrete.

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Or I did the analysis.

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That's concrete.

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Those are the kinds of things you want to commit to doing every day, every day.

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Now every day in your work week, right?

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So I'm going to come to breast shortly, but you're not going to do this every single day.

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There are going to be days that you're going to take breaks.

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And so for me, it's a four day writing week actually.

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Sometimes it'll go to five.

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But usually for me, I'm writing at least four, I'm writing four days a week.

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It's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

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I'm writing four days a week.

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Fridays are my days for my personal development and my growth.

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And so I will do some creative work on Friday, but usually not writing.

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Sometimes because I really love writing manuscripts, I'll finish up some writing on Friday mornings.

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But really I'm writing four to five days a week, not six to seven.

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But define your period of time and commit to daily writing, commit to daily moving work

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forward.

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Now, daily writing is better than binge writing, right?

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The binge I'm talking about where you are waiting for that block of eight hour time

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that you're going to take and start the manuscript from start to finish.

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Because you don't make as much progress in that way.

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You make a lot of progress in that moment.

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Again, that's short term, but over the long haul, it takes longer because you get there

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and it's been maybe a few weeks since you touched this manuscript and you're like, wait

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a minute, where were we again?

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What manuscripts did I find that I would cite?

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What, you know, you're just having to remind yourself of where you are, you were for the

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first couple of minutes or even sometimes an hour or two of your writing time.

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And instead of moving things forward, the benefit of writing consistently over time

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is that you keep that project front and center, you know, exactly where you were because,

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hey, you were just in it yesterday and you really make progress.

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It's like the difference between the tortoise and the hare, right?

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You know, the story, the tortoise was just plodding along slowly, but steadily, but surely

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the hare is moving so fast, getting tired and sleeping in between and missing the opportunity

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where the tortoise was able to just, because they were slow and steady, they won the race.

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So you want to commit to daily writing, daily moving your research forward.

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Now I might hear you saying, I'm so busy, I have clinic daily.

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Well, yes, you have clinic, but you don't have clinic from morning till night.

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Well, maybe you do, but how can you set aside time for yourself?

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Whether it's just 20 minutes a day, whether it's just 30 minutes a day to say my clinic

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starts at 10 a.m. at 8 a.m.

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I'm going to complete 30 minutes of writing and I'm going to know that I've done that

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and I can put that aside and focus on my clinic.

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And early is better for me because I'm a morning writer, but maybe it's maybe, maybe the evening

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time is good for you.

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I'm usually pretty tired by the end of the day, but creating space to do it matters.

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You may not have much time.

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You want eight hour blocks every day, but you don't have that yet.

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What do you have?

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Start with what you have.

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And you may be like, well, I only have 15 minutes.

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Okay, start with 15 minutes a day.

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What you'll find is that as you measure your 15 minutes a day, you're going to start to

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expand it.

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You're going to start to find more time.

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You may not find eight hour blocks, but you certainly can find those little pieces of

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time.

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And if you are struggling to find that in your schedule, we'd love to coach with you

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and coach you through how to how to best find writing time and to expand that.

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Okay.

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Number six is to celebrate your wins.

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Now, this is kind of, this has two components to it.

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If you're going to celebrate your wins, you first of all have to reflect on what you did

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and identify what was a win.

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And so celebrating your win is a discipline.

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It's something you do to help you recognize what has come, what has come before.

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What effort did I put in?

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What did it yield?

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It's a place of reflection.

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It's also a place of appreciation so that you recognize how far you've come and how

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far you're moving forward.

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So celebrating your wins is one of the basics.

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That's important to do regularly.

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You know, what's even better than celebrating your wins alone is celebrating your wins with

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others.

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Because one of the things that other people can do for you is that they can help reflect

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your, they can reflect back to you what you had said you would do before and what you

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have done.

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So in a way they can give you a nuanced view or a nuanced picture of your win that you

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might not have.

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Celebrating your wins with others is always more fun because parties are fun.

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Even if it's just a win celebration party, to definitely celebrate your wins.

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The last thing I want to share is that you do need to rest.

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Rest is so important.

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And this is not the kind of rest where you wait a few months and it's like, oh my gosh,

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it's time to rest.

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It's rest built into your daily schedule.

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What does a daily schedule look like that's not so packed full that you have no breathing

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space?

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What does a daily schedule look like that allows you to take downtime during the daytime?

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What does a schedule look like that allows you to take off weekends?

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Now I know as academic physicians, you can get really busy, but you control your time.

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You control how you use your time.

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You control what you schedule.

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You control what you do.

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So at the end of the day, if you feel as if life is so rushed, you are not able to get

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any rest, the only person who gets to fix that is you.

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You may say, oh no, my mentor says I have to do X, Y, Z. I have no choice.

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You always have a choice.

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You get to decide whether you exercise that choice or you give it to other people to exercise

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for you.

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At the end of the day, rest is your responsibility.

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It is your privilege and it is your right.

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And I hope that you take it because rest is a thing that allows you to recharge and allows

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you to come back stronger, come back with brighter ideas, come back with energy to really

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move the work forward.

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All right.

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So I talked about seven basics that you need to master and you take along with you no matter

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what.

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And that's first, recognizing your expertise.

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Second deciding how you want to contribute.

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Third creating a strategic plan.

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Fourth having a weekly planning meeting.

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Fourth committing to daily writing.

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Six, celebrating your win, especially with others.

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And seven, resting.

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I invite you to look and see which ones of these do you need to brush up your skills

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on and do a little bit more often so that you can advance in the way that you need to.

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Thank you so much for listening.

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I look forward to talking with you again next time on the Clinician Researcher podcast.

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00:24:24,480 --> 00:24:37,520
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher podcast where academic

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00:24:37,520 --> 00:24:42,680
clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they

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have a mentor.

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If you found the information in this episode to be helpful, don't keep it all to yourself.

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Someone else needs to hear it.

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So take a minute right now and share it.

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As you share this episode, you become part of our mission to help launch a new generation

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of clinician researchers who make transformative discoveries that change the way we do healthcare.