The Challenges of Medicine Field Today with Dr. Nina Ahuja

The challenges of medicine today are endless, and it seems impossible when you look at it. Fortunately, many men and women in the healthcare and medical field are risking their lives and doing everything to overcome them, so we can have better care.

In this episode, we introduce you to our guest Dr. Nina Ahuja. She is an ophthalmic surgeon who has earned numerous awards for excellence in surgical teaching and contributions to medical education & is also the author of Stress in Medicine. Dr. Ahuja is the Founder of Docs in Leadership, an organization she created to deliver leadership education to medical students, residents, physicians, nurses, nursing students, and fellow healthcare professionals.

Questions for our Guest

Questions below are some we’d like to tackle. We go off-topic all the time so we don’t expect to hit them all. If you have any ideas, please let us know. Looking forward to our conversation!

• What made you decide to enter the Medical field? Why did you choose the ophthalmology route’?
• You are certified in the emotional intelligence assessment. What is the influence of EI on job burnout and job performance? 
  • “Since emotional processing starts this sequence, learning to understand and manage our emotions is fundamental to managing stress, regardless of the trigger.”
• What are the most common issues you see at your clinic and in the OR?
• What have you seen as the most damaging comorbidity that affects the eye? Diabetes?
• How important is eye health? Most of us take our eye health for granted and see our eye doctor once or twice a year. 
• What is the most challenging aspect of medical school? Is it the stress, competition, or the amount of knowledge you need to know…? 
• Your book Stress in Medicine was a best seller on amazon, and I love how it starts with one of Hippocrates’ quotes “Where the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love for humanity. What made you write a book about stress in the medical field?
• One common issue that adds to the stress is time management. You’re a very busy person. How do you manage your time now and when you were in school?
• Have you dealt with burnout? How can you prevent it?
• What is ADMIT, and what made you create it? Can you go into each step?

• • Adapting
  • Doing
  • Measuring
  • Introspection
  • Transformation

One of the challenges in the medical field is we are responsible for breaking bad news to families; what advice can you give nurses and future MDs on talking with families?

Your current obsession is to make “Stress in Medicine” required reading for students of all healthcare professional programs upon entry – nursing, MD, EMS, etc. How are you working on this goal?

See what the challenges of the medical field today are by watching this full episode 👇👇👇

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 – Intro
00:35 – Guest introduction
01:05 – How Dr. Ahuja got into the medical field
02:12 – How emotional stress correlates
03:35 – How emotional intelligence develops
05:28 – Burned-out nurses
10:22 – Explaining the Acronym
16:23 – Eye Health
20:16 – Blue Light
21:51 – Eye Trauma
22:41 – Virtual Eye Care
24:56 – Virtual Reality
25:57 – Dachshund Leadership
29:47 – Common factors in poor leadership
33:47 – Nursing Culture
36:27 – Physician stress
41:57 – De-stressing
43:16 – Wrapping up the show