Transcript
[00:00:00]
[music]: Knock, knock, hi!
Will: Knock, knock, hi!
Hello everybody! Welcome to Knock, Knock, Hi! with the Glaucomfleckens. Over here we have Kristen Flannery, also known as Lady Glaucomflecken. Ooh,
Kristin: switching it up! And you are Will Flannery, also known as Dr. Glaucomflecken. That’s right, that’s
Will: right. No, uh, uh, no first name on the Dr. Glaucomflecken, it’s just Dr.,
Glaucomflecken is the last name. Dr. is
Kristin: the first name.
Will: Dr. is the first name. Yes. No middle name.
Kristin: Right.
Will: Okay.
Kristin: That’s correct.
Will: People don’t usually abbreviate their first name with a period.
Kristin: Well, you like to be different.
Will: Okay. Yep. I guess that’s the way it is now then. Um, and, uh, how are you doing?
Kristin: I’m doing okay.
I have, I have some pain in my neck. It’s making it hard to look over at you. I have to turn my whole torso.
Will: Is that what it’s like when you’re 40? [00:01:00]
Kristin: No, I think this is what it’s like when you’re hyper mobile and your trainer. Who really was helping moves to another state.
Will: Well, you know, we’re talking to somebody that has some experience in pain.
Kristin: That is true. Maybe I should have asked him if he could help me out.
Will: In addiction.
Kristin: Oh, well, I’m not addicted.
Will: You’re not addicted. But, uh, we’re talking to Max, Jordan, and Gumini.
Kristin: That’s right.
Will: Somebody I know from, uh, Twitter. We talk about, we lament our, the death of our, uh, favorite, once upon a time, our favorite social media platforms.
Kristin: Yeah. It’s true.
Will: Um, but he’s, he’s a, a fascinating individual, assistant professor of general internal medicine and health services research. at UCLA. Uh, he has an, uh, interest in primary care for people with sickle cell disease, and he’s also passionate about managing pain and addiction. So we’ll talk a little bit about that.
He’s also was a very central in the unionization efforts.
Kristin: Yes.
Will: Up in Boston.
Kristin: That’s right.
Will: Mass Brigham, no, Mass General. [00:02:00]
Kristin: Oh, you always get these mixed up. Well, it’s like too many letters, like
Will: the same thing. MGB, I think is what he calls it. Yeah. Mass General and Brigham is the two So, I don’t know, it’s very, it’s just a thing.
It’s
Kristin: hard for you. It’s okay. It’s alright.
Will: Yes.
Kristin: He also does health policy and health equity research.
Will: But first, we. Very
Kristin: smart.
Will: First we talk about the way, the compare and contrast X and blue sky.
Kristin: Yeah.
Will: Much more important part of the conversation.
Kristin: Yeah. So, just, you know. What’s your. If that’s not your thing, feel free to skip ahead about five minutes.
Will: What’s your, uh, um, what’s your like top, if you could only choose like, let’s say two Social media platforms to just have on your phone.
Kristin: Hmm, Instagram.
Will: Is it like you just have like a bunch of, I still don’t understand, I don’t, I don’t use Instagram. I mean, I’m on it, but yeah, um, what do you, you just like looking at pictures?
Kristin: So embarrassing. I’m embarrassed for you. You’re supposed to be a social media personality.
Will: I just, I, I have a [00:03:00] big blind spot when it comes to, it’s right in my, right over where my optic nerve is or my physiologic blind spot. That’s where, that’s where. That’s where Instagram lives for you. That’s where Instagram lives for me.
Kristin: Well, Instagram has many things. As you know, because you post there, there are photos and largely videos on Instagram.
Will: That’s what I post.
Kristin: These days.
Will: Okay, so Instagram, what’s your second?
Kristin: Um,
Will: LinkedIn.
Kristin: Gosh, LinkedIn. I am on LinkedIn, I do spend time there, but other ones not as much like for funsies, it’s just more professional I guess, but I don’t know.
It would have been Twitter. I would have said Twitter. Yeah. But now Twitter’s no fun. So I’m really, really hoping that somewhere we all settle in and can get back to the good old days of med Twitter.
Will: Blue sky’s pretty promising.
Kristin: Yeah, we’ll see. I don’t know, it’ll
Will: never get to be, I think, like the community aspect of it that there was once upon a time [00:04:00] in medicine, um, but that’s okay.
I mean, it’s, you know, as long as it’s better. Well, I hope we can at
Kristin: least get something approximating that, because that was, those were good times.
Will: I would probably also choose TikTok.
Kristin: Yeah, you would, mm hmm. I know, I’m almost never on TikTok. Really? You
Will: don’t never just scroll through mindlessly?
Kristin: No?
Will: Well, you’re missing out.
Kristin: Am I?
Will: There’s a ton of brain rot on that, on that app. So, you know, if it’s just a part of your brain, just wanting to rot away, TikTok’s the app for you. No, I’m
Kristin: good.
Will: All right, great. Well, let’s get to our guest, shall we? All right, let’s do it. All right, here is Max Jordan.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Dax Copilot from Microsoft. To learn about how Dax Copilot can help you reduce burnout and restore the joy of practicing medicine, visit aka. ms slash knock, knock high. Again, that’s aka. ms like Microsoft slash knock, knock high.
Margaret: I feel like pressing your [00:05:00] voice is more recognizable.
So you should start.
Preston: Okay. So we have 90 seconds. Our producer said we have to run the clock out and tell everyone what the trailer is.
Margaret: We also talk too much and get off basis, but I don’t think we’ll do that in 90 seconds. But what is, what is this podcast about?
Preston: Margot and I are starting a podcast.
Margaret: We’re psych residents.
Preston: And also I run a TikTok channel.
Margaret: And I do too, Westwell.
Preston: I do, I do POV skits of stuff in the hospital, but that’s not important right now. Because what’s important is we’re going to be talking about What it means to be a psychiatrist, and we’re going to guide you along through our training as we learn about therapy, as we learn about neuroscience, pharmacology, and get to air the stories of patients who talk about what it means to have these illnesses.
Margaret: And both of us know how scary mental health can be. And we want to help shed light on that, make this a place where we can learn, but also you can learn and feel more open.
Preston: Join us to learn about the nuances that make us therapists.
Margaret: We’re going to be talking about all sorts of things that go into the soup of mental health from our perspectives of people learning.
Preston: After I told you that I took a test and found out my attachment style, how did that inform your new hinge dating [00:06:00] experience?
Margaret: I did in fact go on hinge. and practiced my own attachment style.
Preston: And did you attach to anyone?
Margaret: No, I certainly didn’t.
Preston: You can catch new episodes every Wednesday here on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
And this is a whole new show, so what do you want to talk about? Who should we have on? What questions do you have for us?
Margaret: What questions do you have for Preston to ask me that I won’t answer?
Preston: Come visit us on our website, how to be patient pod.com.
Margaret: www.howtobepatientpod.com. Nice.
Preston: How to be patient.
Margaret: How to be patient,
How to be patient, how to be patient. pod.com. On over to the.
Will: All right, we are here with Dr. Max Jordan. Thank you so much for coming on. Uh, we’ve been trying to do this for a while, ever since, uh, we started talking to each other on, on X, the, the forum. Rest in peace, Twitter.
Kristin: [00:07:00] Yeah. It’s too, ugh. I love how everyone, when they say X, it’s like with this, like, hesitation and like Just taste in the back of your throat as it comes out.
Will: Well, we know how good it could be, right? Cause we, cause I don’t know when you started on that platform, but mine was, I was back in like 2016 and it, it, it really did feel like a place where like the medical community could, could talk to each other. And, and exchange ideas and have discussions and for me it was just telling jokes, but you know, you know what I’m saying?
So it’s kind of, yeah, there was
Kristin: a real sense of community. Have you?
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Yes, I joined Twitter at the tender age of 16. Uh, so a long time ago. Well, that was, so you were like one of the
Will: early adopters then, you’re like right there at the beginning. It’s
Max Jordan Nguemeni: like 2009. I’ve been on there. So it’s even very weird to call it X.
I mean, like, you’ve probably heard this, this saying, I’m gonna call you what your mama named you. So that’s Twitter for me still.
Kristin: Yeah.
Will: [00:08:00] I mean, so, so I would, this is one thing I wanted to talk to you about was this whole blue sky versus Twitter thing, because there, there’ve been like, over the past, um, year, I guess there were two big instances where there was a big shift of people, right?
It was when Elon took over, Then a lot of people were like trying to find a different platform to use. And then now since the election, another big, you know, that that’s been a bigger exodus, I would say. Um, I don’t know. What are your thoughts?
Max Jordan Nguemeni: You know, it’s funny, I, I didn’t really understand the exodus, it was like, what are you, like, all of a sudden now y’all are leaving, did you not know Elon Musk was evil, like, what was the shift?
Um, so, I mean, it sounds like a lot of people, myself included, like, the platform is less and less enjoyable because you got all these porn bots responding to your tweets. Oh, it’s awful. And, um, And, you know, all the new, like the right wing verified accounts that are sort of like spilling over onto your [00:09:00] timeline.
Well, are you, are you sure,
Will: are you sure the porn bots aren’t just interested in health disparities and health policy research? I just, I don’t know.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Well, you know, so here’s the thing I always tell people, you have. So Twitter still has these safety mechanisms that I continue to use where like, I, I don’t allow most people to respond to my tweets.
If, if I don’t follow you for most of my tweets, you cannot respond to me. And people are like, well, that’s not fair. It’s supposed to be a democratic platform. I’m like, I, I, it’s, it’s my democracy. It’s
Will: sure. It’s what you, it’s, it’s your experience, your personal experience. You want to make it how you want.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: So even with, even as bad as it has become. I still don’t, I mean, like with all the safety checks that I’ve like ratcheted everything up, it’s not the worst, you know, it certainly, I don’t like all the, you know, the fake, the verified people that are just like engagement farming. I hate that.
[music]: Yeah.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Um, I was, I think people would rather just not do all that, right?
They could just go to a new platform. That’s better.
Will: [00:10:00] Well, you know, and I was, I was skeptical about the whole blue sky Exodus at first too. And so it was like when Elon took over, I was like, I knew it was going to change. And a lot of people knew that, you know, it was going to be a much different experience, but I didn’t like totally move over to another platform.
I mean, as far as like my daily use, uh, of social media. But. I, I will say, it’s just, for me, it’s not, you have this, this, this sense from people on Twitter who are saying, Oh, all these blue sky people, they’re just trying to, like, surround themselves in their own bubble of influence, right? I think that’s, that’s dumb.
Uh, I just, for me, it’s just Am I having a good time? Like that’s, that’s like the bottom line, right? Like I don’t
Max Jordan Nguemeni: want to Social media is for fun. Literally in my bio on Blue Sky, it’s like social media is for fun. Don’t try to ruin
Will: this for me. Like that’s, that’s what it comes down to. Why, why like force yourself [00:11:00] into this platform for be, uh, because of some.
Like inflated sense of, of, you know, good for the discourse when it’s just, when it’s just not fun, like I, I don’t know. So that, that it’s very simple for me personally. And so I actually did a little experiment for myself. Uh, I, over the past week and a half, I just, no Twitter, no X whatsoever. I
Max Jordan Nguemeni: have so heartbroken.
And
Will: then. And I’ve just been on Blue Sky, alright, and, and it’s been, it really feels like the early days of Twitter in a lot of ways, like there’s not as many features, it’s not, there’s not as many people over there, but the posting, it, it just, the, the, the noticeable lack of like bots and like porn bots and stuff, definitely a plus, and then, just yesterday, I like re downloaded Twitter, and I just opened it up for the first time in like a week and a half.
Immediately I was, I was introduced to pornography on, I was like, I was like, this is okay, [00:12:00] like, and then 20 seconds later I, I deleted the app again. It was like, this, this is exactly, you know, what I thought that experience would be coming back to this platform after being, having a breath of fresh air for a week and a half.
Well,
Kristin: it’s interesting hearing you two both say you get porn bots because I have never gotten that.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: So I, I really don’t, uh, it’s really rare because I secure my, who can respond to my posts. But if, if they are, if they’re not secure, it’s all, it’s in the like hidden replies or whatever.
[music]: I’m like a kid that’s trying to touch the
Max Jordan Nguemeni: hot iron and I’m like, I wonder what’s in the hidden replies.
And then I’ll click and then I’m like, Oh God. So I’m not as, I don’t think
Will: I’m as good as you are at like, like locking down the account. Um, yeah,
Kristin: you don’t do that kind of thing. I don’t have
Will: as many. Safety, but maybe that’s where it could be better, but still, it’s, it’s also,
Kristin: but I wonder if it’s a gender thing on the algorithms part, right?
Of like, probably showing it by default. I mean, the biggest
Max Jordan Nguemeni: consumers of porn are men.
Will: Right. And, [00:13:00] and, and we definitely, and that, that was a clear, um, difference that I, I was also able to notice with blue sky. There’s definitely no algorithm that’s like feeding you content that, that does not exist on blue sky.
It was kind of cool because it’s like, it’s like, I just, once I saw the tweets or the posts that have been on blue sky for the day, I was like, that’s it. No more content. Like you better go do something else. I got
Kristin: to the end.
Will: It’s like, that just does not exist on X. So anyway, I I’m really. This time around, as more people have moved off of X onto Blue Sky, I feel like I’m enjoying the platform a little bit more.
How about threads?
Kristin: How does that fit into all this anymore?
Will: I don’t know. I don’t spend any time on it. I refuse to join another Mark Zuckerberg platform. Yeah, I hear that
Kristin: sometimes. Nobody likes Zuckerberg either, so.
Will: Instagram’s enough. What do you, what do you get out of social media personally? Like, what is, what is your, what is your goal when you’re getting on there and either posting content or?
I don’t know.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Um, it’s a mix of [00:14:00] things. There’s, I learn, right? Like, I learn a lot on Twitter, man. I like, uh, people post their papers. I’ve made friends. I’ve made collaborators. I have two papers that I, not just two, I have several papers that I’ve written with people that I, First became friends with on Twitter.
Um, like one of my favorite collaborator outside of medicines, a sociologist, Victoria Ray. Uh, we met on Twitter on my, on my, on my like old Twitter account. That is basically like, it’s like only my college friends on there and like random black people on the internet. Um, I like, that’s like my non professional account.
So the, the learning, meeting people randomly that you would have like not met otherwise. Um, there’s a lot of good entertainment on there, man. Like black Twitter. I mean, like, you know, when I was on Twitter as a college student, like, Black Twitter became a thing when we were like watching Scandal live, like as a community, live tweeting it, right?
Like, um, that’s why I haven’t left because if it was just the academic part, I, I [00:15:00] I think there’s the academics have like left a lot of them, right? There’s a lot of
Will: academics on blue sky, but I get
Max Jordan Nguemeni: way more academic engagement on blue sky, but, but the jokes are still on Twitter, man. Like there’s
Will: just some things you cannot replicate.
So, so black Twitter has not migrated over for the most part.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: There’s been some, there’s a black sky is a thing.
Will: Yeah.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Uh, and someone said, yeah, actually I was thinking the other day when Drake’s sued UMG and Kendrick Lamar. Uh, and I was seeing jokes on blacks, uh, you know, on, on blue sky. I was like, you know what?
I think this place has potential.
Will: Yeah.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: If, if, if this is taking off here, it’s
Will: going to keep, keep growing. I mean, it’s, there are like 24 million users now. I think there were 20 million last week. So it’s, it’s like, I think it’s real this time. Right. There is hope. There’s, you got the other ones that are like, like, what was it, Mastodon or something?
I don’t know.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Mastodon’s over.
Will: Yeah. That’s, that’s done. That was too complicated.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Yeah. Honestly, my biggest annoying, like the reason why I was really [00:16:00] resistant to migrate, I was like, man, I do not want to go and build another audience. Like I, like these 20, 000 people that have been following me, like I’m not about to go over there and try to like go viral.
Like, you know what I mean? Like, cause I, I, I became popular quote unquote. Accidentally, I like, I like, I’m not a content creator per se, like, you know what I mean? Like,
Will: sure,
Max Jordan Nguemeni: it was accidental. So I was like, I, how am I gonna have another accident on another platform? Like, right.
Will: Well, that’s how we all got semi, yeah,
Kristin: none of this was on purpose.
That’s for sure. It’s
Max Jordan Nguemeni: like just being funny.
Will: Just kind of right. Especially well, you know, it’s just You’re in the right place, right time for a lot of it as, you know, you’re, you know, especially with the pandemic, that’s what it was for me. But, um, also on, I just, I don’t know. I’ve, I’ve, the, the academic discourse just, it’s never something that I’ve been really that engaged in [00:17:00] because the argument, the arguments and the argumentative natures of people just, it just was exhausting to like, see, seeing my replies.
And so, I don’t know. It’s just like, So you mean to tell me you didn’t
Max Jordan Nguemeni: enjoy Eugene Goo in your replies? No. Like,
Will: Oh, no, no, definitely not. I, you know, I think that one of my central tenets of social media use is like, never get mad online.
Kristin: Yeah.
Will: And, and I catch myself getting mad on X on Twitter. And it’s like, why, why am I doing this?
Like, what’s the point? It’s just, it’s just a waste of time. So anyway,
[music]: yeah,
Will: but there’s so many more interesting things to talk about. So you don’t have to just talk about X. All right. So you are a, uh, uh, assistant professor of general internal medicine, which is, that’s sounds very fancy by the way. So congratulations on your role at UCLA.
So, but I, and health services research. Oh, sorry. Yes. Health services do a lot of. You have, you wear a [00:18:00] lot of hats, um, and these are real hats, not like the fake hats that I wear as, uh, like literally as different. Yeah, exactly. Um, and so I guess my first question about general internal medicine, like how accurate is my portrayal of, of like hospitalists?
Like, do you, do you actually sit there and pontificate to an extraordinary degree about the smallest decisions in, in patient care?
Max Jordan Nguemeni: You know, I think I, to an extent it happened, but as a, I used to call myself a surgical internist, um, because I don’t like a lot of that. I mean, look, I do not want to talk about hyponatremia on rounds at all.
No. Like, unless it’s severe, unless it is the primary problem, I will tell my interns, you, we can fix the sodium later. Like, um, Yeah, I, in the ICU, there was a lot of, yes, like, a lot of that is, I think it’s even more so in the ICU. I mean, you know, we’re rounding [00:19:00] till noon. Yeah, you feel like you need a Foley.
Yeah. Just, just
Kristin: thinking and talking about it is hurting him physically. Well, trust
Will: me, we don’t need to talk about internal medicine topics. I was gonna ask you to give us a lecture on hyponatremia, but I think we’ll skip that. So when did your, I guess, I guess the, the, the time when I, I became aware of, of your social media presence and kind of what you do is with regard to resident unions.
So I, I, so I’d really like to talk with you about that. Can you give us just a, a summary of where we are right now with unionization efforts among residents just generally?
Max Jordan Nguemeni: We are experiencing a blue, uh, purple wave. Uh, and I say Purple Wave because CIR, uh, well I say ARC, like I’m still a resident. I mean, I, I think, I, I get to say ARC for another, like for, for the rest of this year.
Like I, I, I still [00:20:00] feel like a resident. Um, yeah, I mean, all of Philadelphia area residencies that were not already unionized just filed at the same time, which is really cool. So like CHOP, Jefferson, uh, Temple. because Penn won their election, uh, the same time as we did, we did last year. So that’s 3000 residents in the Philadelphia area, plus Delaware.
Um, in Rhode Island, we have Brown residents just filed their, their, their election. Uh, or rather filed their, like, You know, like we are planning to unionize. You could either recognize us or give us a an election date. So I think probably by next, by the next couple of years, the majority of residents will probably be represented by CIR or unionized in general.
But that’s only half of the battle, right? Like winning your election, Um, and by the way, all these victories have been just about landslide victories, [00:21:00] right? It’s like, it’s, it’s like pulling teeth together, but then once you do, like, our election at MGB, which was like the largest, right, it was like 2, 500 residents, uh, and fellows.
Um, and we won, uh, I think 75 percent of people who voted, voted in favor of, of unionizing. And the vote, the turnout was like 65%.
Will: What’s the, what’s the pulling, you mentioned pulling teeth. It’s like pulling, so what are the big barriers that you’re referring to?
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Um, it, so it takes a lot of work, right? Like, Uh, just the organizing part and you know how it is in medicine, like people don’t want to make noise.
People are just trying to get through residency and get
Will: out. So
Max Jordan Nguemeni: you know, imagine we’re all working these busy jobs and then we have to organize like so like when I was an intern. The worst of times, right? Like, work is over, I gotta now go door knocking. The equivalent of door knocking, right? [00:22:00] We used to call these walkthroughs, where we’re like going workroom to workroom across the hospital to try to talk to people.
Hey, may I interest you in a little project? And getting more people involved in the day to day work of making the union happen What’s just so hard, right? I mean, I had a colleague in emergency medicine who told me, you know, man, this really feels like it’s just a small number of people or a small army trying to whip up or a small number of people trying to whip up an entire army into unionizing.
And I was like, yes, it damn sure feels that way. Why don’t more of you get engaged? Right? Like, cause But people are afraid, there was a lot of fear mongering, like certain program directors, you know, would tell, like in surgery, the surgery program directors might tell their residents, Do you really want internal medicine residents to be in charge of representing you?
Um, they’re going to want to take away your benefits. Right, so like, there’s all this opposition coming from administration. Uh, you know, they will put the residents in these, uh, uh, captive [00:23:00] audience meetings, right? They’re like, it’s noon conference, but then you show up and it’s the, like, like we had a department chair and like some, like the vice president of education canceled an educational conference, um, so that they can come talk to us about not unionizing.
Oh, well, I mean, they couldn’t say that per se, but so they could come talk to us by union about the union project. And of course, like nobody wanted, wanted to hear that. Right. So it’s a lot of work. I spent a lot of time on this.
Will: They’re so yeah. Cause there are rules about like, they can’t come out and say, you should guys, you shouldn’t form a union.
Like that’s, are those like, they
Max Jordan Nguemeni: have to be a little more ambiguous about it. That’s why I
Will: like the, like the surgeon saying, Oh, well, you know, do you really want to intern it? Like even that’s. That’s like pushing the boundary of like what you’re allowed to say. Oh yeah, there’s a lot of
Max Jordan Nguemeni: boundary pushing, yeah.
I mean, I, I’m sure some program directors probably, I mean, I had a friend who’s a surgical resident who was grilled in the operating room by an attending. This [00:24:00] is ENT, you know, those seven hour cases. Uh, there was a Boston Globe article that came out and one resident was talking about how like they were struggling to make ends meet and find time to go to the dentist and all that kind of stuff.
And so then this attending grilled him in the oar and was like, are your teeth dirty? You know, like, just, I mean, that is the most captive audience of captive audience meetings, right? You’re stuck in the f ing surgical gown. Yeah. Yeah. You can’t go anywhere. Someone is grilling you about unionizing. Yeah.
Will: And these are, these are, um, at this point, like when we’re talking about unionizing, unionizing, unionizing in, in Philadelphia, we’re talking about like all the residents and all the programs in Philadelphia coming together under one union, right? These aren’t just like hospital, you know. Individual unions, or how is that?
Max Jordan Nguemeni: So it would be, so the, the union is CIR and it’s like a, you know, it’s national, but it would be like each chapter because you’re, you can only file, the filing is based on who your employer [00:25:00] is, but. They, I think they did a really smart thing of organizing at the same time because now all the hospital leaders are like under pressure, right?
They can’t use the person across the street and say, well, they’re not doing that over there.
Will: Yeah,
Max Jordan Nguemeni: like, do you know what I mean? Yeah,
Will: that makes sense.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Like, when we filed in Boston, uh, with MGB, the residents at BMC were already unionized, uh, and so really, all were left at the time were BI and Tufts and like, maybe some other smaller hospitals whose names I don’t, like, Mount Auburn maybe, yeah, Mount Auburn is one, but BI just filed, and like, They’re galvanized by the fact that MGB is already unionized and like when we, so, you know, and MGB had this like sort of like carrot and stick approach where, um, they announced out of, out of nowhere, a new 10, 000 stipend and an additional 7.
5 percent inflation related raise in like March or so. When they had already [00:26:00] told us in late January that our inflation adjustment was going to be just 2. 5%, right? Um, so it was clear that like, okay, this big bump is about, Uh, trying to get us to shut up about the CNN thing. And they made it even clearer when they sent us a letter, maybe a week or two later, with every department chair signing at the bottom.
The letter essentially said, uh, now that we’ve given you all this nice stuff, right? The new 10, 000, the additional 7. 5%. Um, and your health insurance is not at no cost. Um, can we ask you to stop with the union, uh, so we can address this as a
Will: family? So this was a union, a union busting tactic is just to give you a little bit more just to say, okay, we, you know, we’re treating you well now, at least for one year.
Right. Right.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Yeah. And so they did that and [00:27:00] of course we’re not going to stop. Yeah, right. But it had an effect. Around town, right? So like now all of a sudden we’re like, my new, my raise from PGY two to PGY three was like 15 grand. Uh, and the bi resident next doors are like, oh, that’s, what are y’all gonna do for us here?
Like, and so BI got bi residents got a. There was like a market effect, you know, sort of like market shock. BI residents got erased. The children’s, uh, children, Boston children’s next door, they got erased. Uh, and I think it probably also helped the BMC residents cause they were in the middle of negotiating their contract.
Uh, I’m pretty sure that also helped, uh, them seal a better deal, right? Because you can’t be trying to pay people 10, 000 less than what their peers across town are making. So I think that what they’re doing in Philly is really smart. And like, we’re just going to apply pressure on all these people all at once.
And, and yeah, they can’t, they can’t [00:28:00] pitch
Will: you against each other that way. Exactly. That’s smart. And so now it’s been since, uh, cause I remember when the Boston, the, um, the, what was it? The first union, the big, the big, BMG, you said, what was it? MGB. MGB. Our, uh, yeah, MGB. Why I couldn’t come up with the, the three letters.
Um, it’s been about a year, I think, since, since that. Yeah, we
Max Jordan Nguemeni: won our election in June of, yeah, in June of 2020. So two, I think, or three. I don’t remember. So has it,
Will: now that you’re like over a year later, has it gone as expected? Have there been, uh, is it, is everybody playing ball? Is it, you know, where are we at?
Has it
Max Jordan Nguemeni: gone as expected? Uh, so, you know, the, I mean, I, I left MGB four months ago, but like I was attending, I was part of the bargaining team. Um, Up until like my last day, I was going to bargaining meetings and I’m keeping up with what’s going on because I’m super invested in this. [00:29:00] Um, the, they’re playing hard ball.
They’re, they’re not meeting the residents where we think that they should meet the residents. So they’re, like, by the time I finished residency, we had agreed on a lot of Items on the tentative contract, right? But we’re still not there with the big ticket items. Like the, you know, they, they first came to the table offering us like a 4% raise over three years.
And we were like, are you kidding? Right? Um, and only months later they offered the m and a, uh, the Massachusetts Nurses Association, which is a union at the Brigham, they got a 25% raise over three years. So like, we know you can do more for the residents, uh, and. So, that’s one of the big ticket items that are still being sort of like negotiated over.
Gotcha. Um. Another one is like fertility preservation because they like to say, Oh, we offer fertility preservation. But the reality is you do, you can only get fertility preservation under that insurance plan. If you have a diagnosis of infertility, which is not [00:30:00] one, it’s not fair. If you’re like, And how do we diagnose infertility in women?
You need to have been trying to get pregnant for a year. Uh, how does one get pregnant? So if you’re a lesbian, and you want to engage in fertility preservation, or like, and you, or, or want to get pregnant, like, there, you know what I mean? Like, it, so it’s sort of like structurally anti LGBT. Or if you’re a resident
Kristin: who has Presumably quite smart because you’ve gotten where you are.
And so you know how to prevent a pregnancy. You do not necessarily want to get pregnant, but you’d like to have babies later when your work life balance is a little bit better.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Right. Right. It’s like before your ovarian reserve has dropped.
Kristin: Then there’s nothing there for you.
Will: But you made a good point about it being anti LGBT, you know, type of.
of policy. And I’m sure that’s
Kristin: right. That’s just not helping anybody. Basically, like, it’s the whole point. It doesn’t do anything.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: So those are some of the big ticket items. I mean, the so the last [00:31:00] few CIR chapters that have unionized or that have had contract renewals, uh, have been able to get those kinds of benefits.
Um, like at UCSF, UCLA, Stanford, you name it, like, 15, 000 to 30, 000, um, towards fertility preservation or family formation. If you’re trying to adopt instead that like, that is something that, that, uh, those, some of these contracts offer, um, cause you know, not everybody necessarily want to bear a child, but they want to be able to form a family.
Um, yeah.
Will: Well, let’s, let’s take a quick break. Cause I want to, I want to talk more about this as it, as it relates to physicians as a whole.
Hey Kristen, you just got disability insurance recently.
Kristin: Well, I got it renewed, yeah.
Will: How does it feel?
Kristin: It feels pretty great!
Will: Yeah, it’s such an important thing.
Kristin: It really is.
Will: Especially for physicians, because
Kristin: Yeah. I need your hands.
Will: I need my feet.
Kristin: You need your feet. You need your eyeballs.
Will: Eyeballs too. [00:32:00] Yeah.
It’s like literally everything. Like there’s so many things that could happen and having that peace of mind of having disability insurance is really important. And, uh, so let me tell you about Pearson Ravitz. This is a physician founded company by Dr. Stephanie Pearson, a disabled OBGYN and Scott Ravitz, a disability insurance expert.
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You. All right, [00:33:00] we’re back with Dr. Max Jordan. Um, so Max, uh, Let’s talk about this unionization effort as as it relates to kind of the larger physician community Because we can certainly learn a lot about in fact I think it’s it’s it seems kind of backwards that this would start with You would think that that physicians as a whole would be interested in this as the corporatization of medicine becomes more prominent And leave it up to the the youth The next generation, right?
Uh, people to think a little bit differently and to, to kind of be the, to spearhead this charge of unionization whenever it’s, I would say probably much harder for, for trainees to do this because residency is the finite period of time, right? Three, sometimes three, four or five years. And then you’re onto something else, right?
There’s so much turnover. So it’s gotta be so much harder to, to, to, to To generate a lot of interest in unionization [00:34:00] as a resident, than it would be as a physician has been working for some, you know, private equity owned hospital system for 20 years. That seems like a no brainer that people in that situation should be unionizing.
And so are you, are you feeling like there’s, this is generating any kind of momentum in the greater physician space?
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Um, I mean, I think there are a couple of things here, um, I wholeheartedly agree. I mean, like one of the biggest reasons why we filed my second year and didn’t wait, we’re just like, I’m so, we’re not doing this because most of the people who were engaged were like either like PGY2s or like graduating fellows.
And we’re like, I was like, look, man, I’m going to be on the job market next year. I am not organizing. More. So, yeah, like, it’s so hard when, yeah, you only have three years. And I think also the administration, like, tries to stall, right? Part of the stalling tactic is like, okay, well, the Max’s are going to graduate and, like, you’re going to lose some of the engaged people.[00:35:00]
One of the big reasons why I think it’s probably easier to get momentum among residents is that it’s easy to tell, to explain to residents, look, we’re You have no power. You have no ability to negotiate your contract. Uh, you are working 80 hours a week, so you can’t work anywhere else, right? Uh, realistically, or maybe you can moonlight in this hospital here and there, but for the most part, like, residents, we’re locked in in a terrible situation, right?
So, like, the union is, like, one way to really help, uh, kind of get you out of what can feel like you have no Um, no, you know, no alternative sort of option to help defend your interest, uh, your material interest. But I think with attending physicians, there’s so much, um, individualism, right? So many physicians, like you probably saw that Washington Post article that was like talking about physician earnings and how like the median earning median total [00:36:00] 350, 000.
Yeah. Which obviously like, you know, If you actually look at salaries, that’s, that wouldn’t be a mean salary, right? But that’s because a lot of physicians do other things, right? Like there’s that doctor on Twitter who talks about doctoring differently. How do you do a VA disability exam? And like, there’s just like all this other stuff that
Will: physicians.
Expert witnesses and, and doing all this stuff. Yeah, exactly. And
Max Jordan Nguemeni: so like, People aren’t done. People don’t necessarily or yeah, like legal consulting, blah, blah, blah. There’s like so much of it, so much opportunity out there for a lot of physicians to find ways to like, um, maximize their profit, you know, sort of like think of themselves as big, like mini corporations that the idea of solidarity with other physicians doesn’t necessarily come, like, you know, Naturally for a lot of people, I think, right?
Because people, people are like, why do I got to do that? I could consult for pharma. I can do Botox in my living room. I can, and so forth, but, and if you notice among attending physicians, [00:37:00] the people who are unionizing are the people who work the longest for the least primary care, right? Like, so at the, at the, at Brigham at MGH, the primary care attendings who are like the people who taught me primary care, uh, are now unionizing.
Uh, and I’m super proud of them. Uh, before, before this filing, I think Alina Health in Minnesota, um, that was the largest filing of, uh, of attending physician unions in history. Uh, so I think PCPs, right, make a lot less money than, I don’t know, neurosurgery or whatever, and a lot more pajama time than like anybody else.
So like being able to engage in the sort of like Me as a physician, as a mini corporation is a lot more difficult for primary care doctors. So like, it’s probably the activation energy to think of like solidarity with one another, um, to address working conditions is probably lower in, in this, in that specialty.
The other thing, um, I mean, I, I think it’s going to [00:38:00] happen as many of us who have been part of unions are now becoming attendings, right? That makes sense. Yeah. And hopefully, I mean political education is like non existent in medical school and if you think about who gets into medical school, it’s people who are coming from well off backgrounds, people who have been taught either implicitly or explicitly that like unions are bad because look at nurses, they want to take breaks, uh, or like, you know, you hear, I mean literally you hear surgeons You hear surgeons complain about OR turnover time, right?
Like, and they’re like, why can’t I get an OR turned over in 15 seconds? Uh, it’s because of the union, right? Like, because they want to take breaks. And so, like, I think, I mean, even when I was organizing and trying to talk to my colleagues, um, about getting this project off the ground, like, people would use the nursing union as like a reason why we should not unionize because people would say, well, you know, nursing unions, the nurses are all about like, [00:39:00] me, me, me, and it’s not about the patient.
And I’m like, what, what the hell, right? But that is what a lot of people have been brought up with as like members of like, you Can be really anti worker, right? But we have to realize we are workers. We work for big corporations.
Will: And it’s only, it’s only getting worse, you know, as you know, physicians are unable to, you know, own hospitals going forward at this, at least for now.
You know, the, there’s more Optum, you know, United Healthcare owned hospitals that are employing, now Optum is the biggest, you know, employer of physicians in the U. S. and so I, I agree with you. I think, especially as this new generation starts, you know, getting into leadership positions in medicine, uh, that unionization efforts will increase.
So I agree. I don’t know. What do you think?
Kristin: Yeah. Well, I’m just, like he said, now you guys are [00:40:00] workers. That didn’t used to be the case as much, right? You had more autonomy and more, and, uh, I don’t, I think maybe that is some of the reason for the generational divide on the issue as well, right, is because it’s really sinking in for the younger generation who didn’t ever get to be in a world where doctors had more autonomy, right?
It’s always just been this.
Will: I think the income disparity that you mentioned, though, is going to be a big barrier, you know, because right now, like all residents are all making about the same amount of money. And so. So, you know, it’s, it’s probably easier to get people on board from a salary standpoint. Um, but then you’re talking about attendings with, you know, you got the surgical subspecialists that make, you know, two to three, four X times what, you know, pediatricians in some primary care positions are making and, and really to get, I think, a strong unionization effort you need buy in from, from people across the board and that’s, I think that’s going to be a big challenge, unfortunately.[00:41:00]
Max Jordan Nguemeni: That’s why the filings among attendings have been either like PCPs or hospitalists, right? The, your generalist specialties, um, and I mean, even at the residency level, I gotta tell you, the people who were the most opposed, uh, to file to, to supporting the effort or who, or were the most afraid, either it was like their program directors are scaring them out of this.
Or, like, I remember one resident in a specialty that’s, that makes a lot of money was like, well, whatever, those 10, 000 mean nothing for me, I’m gonna make X amount of money, right?
Will: Like,
Max Jordan Nguemeni: even at the residency level, people already know that they’re gonna be our bosses, right? They’re gonna be the ruling class of the, of the medical profession.
So, like, even among residents that this idea of having solidarity among each other because we make the same salary like it breaks apart very quickly when they’re reminded that even as residents they are the ruling class right like i mean like [00:42:00] within mgb like surgery residents An orthopedic surgery resident, um, just to name a few specialties, had like additional, like, material benefits that the rest of us didn’t have, like, meal, meal cards, all this kind of stuff, and like, so when the effort got off the ground, like, I remember a surgery program director saying, oh, they’re going to take away your meal cards, those medicine residents, right?
Like, and, and sure enough, when we, we got all these raises, right? The institution took away all the program specific, uh, perks, but even when you took away those perks, everybody still made it out with more money in their pocket. But now, they’re no longer the ruling class among all the residents, right?
Like, you don’t have, you’re not special anymore with your meal card.
Will: Uh,
Max Jordan Nguemeni: and like, there was some resentment
Will: over that. Wow. Um, I mean, I, you know, that’s like feeding yourself is one of the, like, the biggest challenges as an intern. So I kind of get it. [00:43:00] Yeah, I would have loved, loved having a meal card.
[music]: Yeah,
Will: but, but to your point, you know, trying to see the The forest for the trees, you know, not, not being obscured by these little tiny details and see the bigger picture, I think is really important, but I want to, I want to, uh, switch gears just a little bit because you, as a, as an attending, by the way, you love being an attending.
Is it, it’s, it’s great. No,
Max Jordan Nguemeni: I don’t know yet. Cause I haven’t started supervising residents, but you know what, I got to tell you, I did an urgent care shift one time. Yeah. And I signed an EKG, right? Like, that’s the first time I was like, the power that that has. I was like, wow.
Will: I wouldn’t know. I’ve never done that.
So I’ve never signed, I’ve never signed any EKG. No one would want my signature anywhere near an EKG. But I know one of your passions is, uh, is pain management and addiction. How did, how did you get into, into that? area as far as being like a focus of, of [00:44:00] things you’re interested in.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Yeah. I mean, like I vaguely interested in health disparities coming into medical school.
Right. And like, I feel like the essence of what we do as doctors is like alleviating people’s suffering. Right. Like At least that’s how I feel, and like, pain is, suffering in various realms, but pain is, is a big one of them, right? And I, like, I think I was like a first year med student, and I saw this young black dude who was my age, and he had had like juvenile idiopathic arthritis, um, so, At my age, I think I was 23 at the time, he had already had like two hip replacements, two knee replacements, and the, the attending, who was precepting the resident, who I was sort of like hanging around with, was being really accusatory towards him in a way that was just like not just, and it turned out that yes, he had a new ankle fracture, and that really left me, I was disheartened, right, like, um, and Like it’s seared in my brain and I went on to just see these instances [00:45:00] over and over as a as a med student Uh, and you know, I was born and raised in Cameroon sickle cell the sickle cell trait prevalence or prevalence there is like 25 percent right?
So so Multiple things have sort of like got me to the point where like I I care deeply about Doing people’s pain care, right? And I think we can do a lot better and Also, Hala Hansen, who studies buprenorphine and methadone and the, you know, the opioid, opioid epidemic and the anthropology of it all. Like, she gave a lecture when I was a med student that really had me hooked on bupe.
Like, I, as in, like, metaphorically, like, I’m not, I don’t know what bupe tastes like. Not physiologically. Well, tell people, tell people about
Will: buprenorphine.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: But yeah, BUP is a partial, uh, mu opioid receptor agonist, uh, and a delta and kappa opioid receptor antagonist, and it has these really interesting properties unlike all the other opioids in that, uh, there’s a ceiling [00:46:00] effect, right, on restituted depression, so you cannot die from buprenorphine.
You might be zonked, but you’re not
Will: going
[music]: to, uh,
Max Jordan Nguemeni: you’re not going to die. stop breathing, unlike all the other opioids, no matter how much poop you take. Uh, unless you also take benzos and alcohol, like, you know, all the other stuff that can also depress your respiration. Um, and what, and, and there has actually been no documented ceiling effect around pain.
Um, so you can keep giving more of it, right? Uh, it’s also the most potent, um, of, of all opioids besides fentanyl. So, you know, when I dose bupe for someone who is opioid naive, it’s in the microgram range, right? Micrograms,
Will: uh, when you’re dosing
Max Jordan Nguemeni: bupe for someone who has opioid use disorder, now we’re talking about milligrams, right?
Because, um, and it, So, second most potent opioid, so you only really need tiny amounts of it, um, to alleviate people’s pain, uh, or to get the effect that you want. And then it has the strongest affinity of the myopioid receptor, which [00:47:00] means that, uh, that’s part of why it can, you know, uh, precipitate withdrawal if you were on opioids before.
But it means that any small amount of buprenorphine in your system protects you from an overdose from other opioids because it’s so tightly bound to the mucopred receptor. So what does that mean? You can give people bupe and give them other things and that only makes it safer. Um, so I, one of my, Like, my pet problem in, in clinical medicine is like, how do I get more people to, to integrate buprenorphine as part of their pain management?
Um, and the VA has started to suggest that it’s part of their, uh, uh, chronic pain guidelines as of, uh, March. 2022. Now they’re suggesting that people consider buprenorphine as a first line compared to all the other opioids. Um, they don’t recommend it, they suggest.
Will: Is it just a, it’s just like a bias against any kind of opioid?
Is that the, [00:48:00] the, the wall that you’re trying to tear down in terms of acceptance of buprenorphine? Is it pretty much accepted at this point?
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Uh, I think it’s a mix of things. I mean, people are super comfortable prescribing tramadol and oxycodone and morphine and all that kind of stuff, right? But I think there’s an element of knowledge.
People don’t know a lot about buprenorphine and part of it is, I think, I call this like buprenorphine, like, sequestration. Basically, the fact that You know, with the Data 2000 Act, when it was FDA approved for opioid use disorder, uh, you know, that being like 18 years after it was FDA approved for pain, um, it became really popular, and then there was, you know, there was also the X waiver, which restricted people’s ability to prescribe buprenorphine for opioid use disorder.
Um, I think There was like, it’s like a thing that got memory hold in the medical community where like, it’s stopped being taught as an analgesic, right? Because it was the popular, the new popular agent for OUD and so Many people think [00:49:00] or thought that you needed an ex weaver to prescribe it for pain and an ex weaver required, what, eight hours of additional training that people didn’t have time for.
So, I’m sure you didn’t learn about buprenorphine in medical school as an analgesic.
Will: Very, very little, if at all. Yeah, it wasn’t
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Right. You learned about morphine?
Will: Oh yeah, for sure. .
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Uh, absolutely. So I think the fact that it became the mainstay for OUD and that there were all these barriers around prescribing it for OUD in the first place made it even more difficult for people to either learn or be able to, or, or become comfortable prescribing it for pain.
And so as a resident. I would tell, I mean, I, I, so I don’t do well with authority, um, so I, I’ve, I’ve run against walls in this realm where I would be like, this medication is safer than morphine and dilaudid and, and, and why are we not comfortable prescribing this? You know what I mean? Uh, [00:50:00] but of course there’s other stuff around whether insurance is going to cover it.
It costs more. There’s like all this other stuff, but I think even at the acceptance level, um, people don’t know enough.
Will: Yeah. Cause both of us at various times in our lives have, have received, uh, strong pain medicine for surgeries and everything. I would like
Max Jordan Nguemeni: to know what that feels like.
Will: And, uh, uh, neither of us have ever received buprenorphine as far as I can tell. And I guess my, my, like my thought, I like kind of lump it in with like methadone is like, this is something you give to people who already have an opioid use disorder. And,
Max Jordan Nguemeni: and that, yeah. I mean that’s, that’s the most common, right?
Is that that’s the way it’s usually
Will: given. Right. But Right. You’re saying it’s, but that much
Max Jordan Nguemeni: lower doses, it’s an, it’s analgesic, right? Yeah. I mean, the first FDA indication 1982, it was the IV or imbu that [00:51:00] was for pain. It was discovered to be an analgesic. It was just incidentally found to be also really good, right.
To treat opioid dependence. Yeah.
Will: And so I feel like a lot of people probably have my level of knowledge about it and thinking that oh I’d never thought that this could be just something that we give for pain just like anything else and it’s In some ways safer. So I don’t know
Kristin: kind of cool. I mean if people will get on board It sounds like it’s got a lot of
Will: Yeah, it
Kristin: seems like the benefits outweigh the risks.
Will: How, since we’re talking about pain, um, how, uh, annoyed are you, uh, with social media and how people talk about fentanyl? Is it, I mean, it’s, I can’t, I, I, I figured that alone, that alone might drive you off of X as a platform because I, I see you guys, some of you like, Pain specialists, people that are really interested in pain, talking about some of the fentanyl and it just like, I feel bad for you because you’re like, it’s like beating your head against a wall trying to like, explain.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Yeah, the demonization [00:52:00] of fentanyl, um, like, or like, you know, the, you, you listen to the, what was it, the vice president debate with the, what’s that guy, J. D. Vance, you call it? I can’t remember what he called it, but he did not call it fentanyl, he called it something else. Uh, but yeah, I mean, like, it’s super frustrating, right?
Because opioids, like, if I I don’t know if you’ve ever considered this, right? If you’re on a desert island, and you needed three medications to survive, do you, have you thought about what you will need? Oh,
Kristin: caffeine,
Max Jordan Nguemeni: three medications
Kristin: to
Will: survive. I would say, um, aspirin, maybe a blood thinner. In case you have a, like, start having a heart attack, um, I mean, yeah, I mean, if you consider water a drug, it’s a chemical, but, I don’t know,
Kristin: it’s not a [00:53:00] drug, no, medication, is what
Will: he said. Medication. Um. Yeah. Oh god, this is a good question.
Yeah,
Kristin: I’ve never thought about this one. Oh, you’re asking the wrong
Will: guy. I haven’t thought about That’s right, he would
Kristin: tell you, you need some eye drops. You
Will: need some refresh artificial tears.
[music]: Oh, he
Will: hates Visine. Oh, we don’t use Visine. We don’t use Visine. Uh, some, some contact lens solution. Uh, I don’t know.
What, what do you say? What are the three?
Max Jordan Nguemeni: I would want opioids, some kind of opioid, either Dilaudid or Fentanyl. Um, not just for survivable, but just like pain. You’re on a desert island, right? I would want, I would want steroids. Um, you can do a lot with steroids and antibiotics. Those are the three medications that I would want on that.
Because we’re not internists,
Will: see? Like he prescribes these things all the time. I would want antibiotic eyedrops. But see that’s, I’m just, I don’t think very broadly, I’m just very much in my own little world in ophthalmology. But those are good
Max Jordan Nguemeni: answers. Infectious keratitis or whatever.
Will: You don’t want that.[00:54:00]
And then, and then one more, one more thing before you go, um, is, uh, you, you gave us some stories from your past, uh, and one I just, I have to have you tell, uh, about the accidental screenshot.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Oh God, please. Okay. I’m not going to go into like very, you know, in super details about this, but I, I took a screenshot of a conversation, uh, with this woman that I was, you know, interested in or dating or whatever, uh, and meant to share it with my friends from college.
And the screenshot, it was like me, like you ever, you’re in a group chat and you’re getting advice, like, like how should I respond to this, that, and the third. Uh, and so like, I. I, I responded to this thing that she was asking me about or whatever. And then I took the screenshot and meant to share it with these, with my, you know, close friends from college or, uh, and I was like, look guys, I, uh, this is what I say it in a kind of funny way, but I send [00:55:00] it to the PGY two and three chat.
And here’s the thing. I don’t have notifications on for WhatsApp. So I didn’t realize. And so, like, one of my close friends starts texting me, he’s like, Max, what are you doing? Delete, delete, delete that message. And I go to WhatsApp and there’s, like, a ton of responses from my co residents, uh, that are like, I was so embarrassed.
It was so funny. I was like, well, I guess now everybody knows what it’s like to be, uh, to be single and trying to date in Boston. Would
Will: this have been worse if it was like at the very beginning of residency? Cause it sounds like you were like a year in whenever this happened.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Right. This was, uh, third year.
Uh, it maybe, I think it would have been worse. It’s like, people don’t know you, you know what I mean? By then, yeah. By then people knew like, you know, like, like. Also this was
Will: internal medicine resident, like
Max Jordan Nguemeni: there are a lot. PGY2 and 3, all the medicine. There are a lot of [00:56:00] residents. Can you imagine? And so, I mean, I deleted it soon enough that.
Not everybody ended up seeing it, like, but a lot of people saw it and so then, like, other people joined it. And all
Kristin: the rest heard about it later. Yeah, probably. They were like,
Max Jordan Nguemeni: uh, what happened? What happened? Can someone fill me in? Was there a lot
Kristin: of back and forth about, about the appropriate course of action since this is
Max Jordan Nguemeni: a A little bit, a little bit, a little bit.
And in fact, at one time, uh, a co resident who I, like, who I helped What’s like I covered on, on, on a moonlighting shift or something, I don’t remember. And then he like sent me a treat and I was like, you can use that for your dating life. Yeah, like the joke continued.
Will: Let’s tell people where to find you. I know you got a sub stack, right?
That you yeah,
Max Jordan Nguemeni: it’s called adverse reaction.
Will: I love it. That’s great. Adverse Reaction. It’s a free sub stack. Uh, so people can check that out. Um, also you’re, are you restarting up your [00:57:00] podcast? I’m
Max Jordan Nguemeni: planning to at some point in the new year, I’ve, I’ve recorded one episode so far. Okay. Uh, I’m just trying to get these grants off of my desk first, you know, research is kind of an important thing.
Yeah.
Will: Yeah, well, now that you said, like, now you have to do it because we’re talking about it on the, on this podcast, so it’s, yeah,
Max Jordan Nguemeni: people, please go listen to it, uh, there’s like 50 episodes up, it’s called Flip the Script.
Will: There you go. Yeah. All right. Well, good luck with that. And, uh, let’s see what, oh, you’re, are you, you’re still going to be on X, I guess for now.
Um,
Max Jordan Nguemeni: yeah. And blue sky
Will: and blue sky. Uh, any other, is that, is that your main social media presence right there?
Max Jordan Nguemeni: I use Instagram, um, where I, my name there is game. set. max. It’s like a, you know, a tennis button. I like it. Yeah. Cause I play tennis. And TikTok. Fuck. Uh, I think my TikTok name is also game. set. max.
Yeah, I’m kind of all over. All right. All right. Um, I don’t post much on TikTok though, but I, um, I think when I [00:58:00] restart more content creation or whatever we call this, I will be pushing stuff. I’m a bit
Will: partial to TikTok. I think it’s great. So, uh, yeah, Jonathan has told me.
Kristin: Yes, that’s right. And all your social media, do you talk mostly about health disparities?
Yes. There or what can people find it? I talk about
Max Jordan Nguemeni: everything, honestly. I talk about pop culture. I, I talk about Beyonce, I talk about Drake. I’ve seen you talk, whatever. It’s very much, sorry, go ahead. You’ve talk about, I’ve seen,
Will: I’ve seen you talk about tennis as well a little bit. Yeah, yeah,
Max Jordan Nguemeni: exactly. It’s honestly, it is my fleeting thoughts.
It’s just like whatever crosses my mind. That I wouldn’t mind being printed on the billboard. I’ll post it. It’s the way it’s supposed to be.
[music]: Yeah.
Will: All right, Max, thank you so much for joining us. It was a pleasure to talk to you.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Thank you for having me. Um, and you know, and thank you for all that you do, your, like your comedy and raising awareness around CPR.
Um, can’t even. Can’t even begin to say how much all of what you guys do means. Um, well, I
Kristin: [00:59:00] appreciate that. That is so nice.
Will: Especially this one over here. Kristen. Right.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: She’s 10 minutes of CPR.
Kristin: Yeah, well, as I always say, we had just gotten a mortgage, so, you know.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: I should say, you’re not leaving me right now.
Kristin: Exactly. Get back here.
Will: Well, thanks again for joining us and keep up the great work.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Thank you. See you on Blue Sky or X. Yes,
Will: probably Blue Sky. Probably Blue Sky. Yeah, we’ll see you there.
Max Jordan Nguemeni: Alrighty. Bye bye.
Will: Hey, Kristen. Yeah, I know you’re a big fan of Dex Mites.
Kristin: Uhhuh. . You
Will: know the eyelid mites? Yeah. That’re on your eyelid.
Kristin: Uhhuh. . They’re just
Will: right there in your eyelid. Yeah.
Kristin: Thank you.
Will: Uh, well, what if they flew at you?
Kristin: Oh, God. .
Will: What? What if they jumped? What if they jumped? Would that bother you even more? Oh, it’d be even worse.
That be better, worse.
Kristin: Jumping bugs are always worse. Well, I
Will: have good news for you. They, they’re not jumping. Ugh. They don’t jump at you. That is good. But they are there and [01:00:00] they can cause like crusty, flaky, itchy, red,
Kristin: irritated
Will: eyelids. So I can tell you’re a little bit grossed out.
Kristin: It’s a
Will: disease. It’s called Demodex
Kristin: blepharitis.
It sounds like no fun,
Will: but it’s pretty common. And a lot of people don’t really know about it, but I mean, these, like, they’re, they’re, they are kind of cute. I gotta admit, just a little, just
Kristin: a little cute, maybe a little cute.
Will: Regardless, you shouldn’t get grossed out by this. You should get checked out.
Kristin: Okay.
I
Will: go to eyelidcheck. com for more information. Again, that’s E Y E L I D check. com to get more information about these little guys and demodex blepharitis.
Are you ready to start a union?
Kristin: Am I ready to start a union? I think you need to start a union.
Will: A union of comedian doctors.
Kristin: Ophthalmologists. It’ll be a very small group, but mighty. [01:01:00]
Will: No, it’s, I, I, you know, I always have, I may sound like an old guy, but you know, we’ve talked to the young’uns. I’m always so impressed by just their.
Ability to do things like organize and fight for what’s right, what they know is right. A strong
Kristin: sense of justice.
Will: Yes, to make positive change, which is why, you know. Because we need a lot of that in health care. So I’m very encouraged. I’m
Kristin: glad they’re doing it because they still have the youth and the energy.
Will: It’s going to take a
Kristin: lot of that.
Will: Give us your youth. Give us your energy. We need it. So let us know what you thought of the episode. That was great. There’s a lot of fun talking with, trying to talk with him for a while on here.
Kristin: He does a lot of really cool stuff. So you should go check out his channel.
His social media,
Will: lots of ways you can hit us up, email us, knock, knock, hi, at human dash content. com. Visit us on our social media platforms and [01:02:00] visit our human content podcast family on TOK at human content pods. Got some great pods coming up. Uh, and so, uh, thank you to all the great listeners leaving feedback and reviews.
If you subscribe and comment on your favorite podcasting app or on YouTube, we can give you a shout out like at tomorrow river on YouTube said, Dr. Oz, it’s going to hurt. Thanks for speaking out.
Kristin: Yes, that’s in response to one of your
Will: knock knock highs
Kristin: where you talked about the
Will: nomination. I recorded it right after the news of Dr.
Oz being the HHS director, no sorry, not HHS, he’s uh, that’s RFK Jr.
Kristin: Yeah, also great!
Will: Dr. Oz is the CMS, so Center for Medicare Services, yeah, uh, which is
Kristin: a
Will: scary thought. So you can hear all my thoughts about it on the, uh, look back at the Knock Knock Eye episodes and you’ll, you’ll hear what I had to say about it.
Um, needless to say, I was not thrilled. Anyway, thank [01:03:00] you for that comment at Tomorrow River. Uh, and full video episodes drop every week of this podcast on our YouTube channel at Glaucomfleckens. We also have a Patreon, lots of cool perks, bonus episodes, react to medical shows and movies. You can hang out with other members of the Knock Knock High community.
Uh, Dr. Oz is not invited. Don’t worry, he’s, he does not control the, the health insurance. Is he,
Kristin: uh, preemptively banned?
Will: She, uh, you know, if, if, uh, Uh, you know, if he wants to let me influence his decision making as the CMS director, I’ll consider it. But anyway, until then, no, no, go find another internet comedian ophthalmologist to be a patron to.
Anyway, um, so join us! What else did I have to say about that? Oh, early ad free episode access, interactive Q& A, live stream events, and much more, patreon. com Speaking of Patreon community perks, I sound like I’m, like, coughing up something. You sound like an old
Kristin: man waking up in the morning.
Will: Patreon community perks.
Meme of a shout out, Jamie [01:04:00] R. Thank you, Jamie, for being a patron. Welcome. Also, shout out to the Jonathans, as usual. Patrick, Lucia C, Sharon S, Edward K, Stephen G, Marion W, Mr. Grandaddy, Caitlin C, Brianna L, Mary H, K L, Keith G, Jeremiah H, Parker, Muhammad L, David H, times two. Kaylee A, Gabe, Gary M, Eric, B, Marlene S, Scott M, Kelsey M, Dr.
Hoover, and Bubbliss Salt.
Kristin: I feel the need to point out that Eric and B are different people.
Will: Eric. It is not Eric B. Oh, Eric. There’s Eric and Bea, yes. Yes,
Kristin: cause I feel like Bea is maybe getting, like, the short end of the stick here, right? Like, I’m gonna call out Bea specifically, cause it’s probably not been clear all this time that Bea is it’s own person.
Will: I’m sure Bea is very excited about this. Uh, so, uh, Patreon LUT time, random shoutout to someone on the emergency medicine tier, Catherine R. Thank you Catherine R. for being a patron, and thank you all for [01:05:00] listening. We’re your hosts Will and Krista Plante, also known as the Glaucomfleckens, a special thanks to our guests Max, Jordan, and Gumini.
Our executive producers are Will Flannery, Kristin Flannery, Aron Korney, Rob Goldman, and Shahnti Brooke. Editor engineer Jason Portizo. Our music is by Omer Ben Zvi. To learn about our Knock Knock Highs, Program Disclaimer, Ethics, Policy, Submission, Verification, and Licensing Terms at HIPAA Release Terms, go to Glaucomflecken.
com or reach out to us at knockknockhigh at human content. com with questions, concerns, or fun medical puns. No one’s ever given us any concerns. That’s good, right? They haven’t read through those documents and realized, oh, there’s a concern here. I have a concern about your submission verification in lexington terms.
Knock, knock, hi is a human content production.
[music]: Goodbye.
Will: Hey, Kristen.
Kristin: Yeah.
Will: You know, we love Dax Copilot here.
Kristin: We sure do. [01:06:00]
Will: It’s great.
Kristin: Love it.
Will: Little Jonathan in your pocket. I know, right? I
Kristin: know.
Will: Yeah, helping out with the admin burden documentation. One of the things I really like is, is it can like organize your notes for you.
Kristin: Yeah.
Will: Like, I, I don’t know if this might come as a surprise to you.
My notes sometimes, like not the most organized.
Kristin: Yeah.
Will: I mean, you know, I could use a little help and Dax is there to help me with that.
Kristin: That’s right.
Will: While also, by the way, like looking at my patients when I’m talking to them.
Kristin: I love it when my physicians are using DAX in my appointments because they just have a better conversation and report.
It’s just a better overall appointment.
Will: And one thing that people might get a little bit concerned about with AI products is safety, but DAX Copilot is backed by Microsoft’s. Robust like security. I feel great about their security, uh, and, um, uh, HIPAA compliant. HIPAA compliant. And, uh, so it’s, my patients are safe.
I know the documentation is safe [01:07:00] and it’s just a great thing.
Kristin: Yeah. Very helpful.
Will: To learn about how DAX Copilot can help you reduce burnout and restore the joy of practicing medicine, visit aka. ms slash knock, knock high. Again, that’s aka. ms slash knock, knock high.
