Have you ever wondered what it takes to lead others to the top of the world’s highest peaks?
Dr. Jennie Draper, an OBGYN and adventurer, has summited Mount Everest base camp, climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and embarked on adventure around the globe.
She shares invaluable leadership lessons learned from her Sherpa guides in Nepal, and how facing the challenges of high-altitude mountaineering prepared her to tackle obstacles in her fast-paced medical career.
Don’t miss this fascinating conversation on deriving strength and wisdom from nature’s most formidable environments and applying it to your own leadership journey.
Show Outline
- 0:00 – Leadership, Sherpas, and Nepal’s culture.
- 3:58 – Balancing work and personal life as a healthcare professional.
- 10:52 – Healthcare challenges, including staff shortages, burnout, and technology overload.
- 17:39 – Burnout and self-care in healthcare professionals.
- 23:52 – Work-life balance, productivity, and travel with a medical professional.
Connect with Dr. Draper
Full Transcript – Episode 63
Jay Smack 00:01
Welcome to the new generation leader podcast, we’re giving you the tools you need to lead in the digital world ready to reach your true potential. This is the new generation leader podcast.
Aaron Lee 00:20
One of the analogies we use a lot with leaders is for them to become Sherpas. You have been to Everest, what was that experience? Like?
Dr. Jennie Draper 00:31
I climbed to the base camp after the World opened back up from COVID. And I would say it was probably the most pivotal life changing event I’ve ever gone on. I went into it not knowing a lot about what to expect. And the thing that blew me away was just the vastness of that land and the Himalayas. And just how much space and how large the mountains were, and how peaceful The trip was. We hiked round trip around 80 miles, and we fly into a really small town called Luke law. And then the trail starts from there and climb up to 17,600 feet, which is where base camp is located at. And I think to the biggest thing, around 15,000 feet, you go through a space called memory Park, and there are monuments to mark all of the people that have lost their lives on Everest itself. It’s just a very powerful place that fascinates a lot of people, and they’re willing to risk their life particularly if someone’s trying to summit that mountain to meet a goal. They want it that badly. The people of Nepal in the Sherpas themselves are just a really special spiritual group of people who I just learned a lot about finding internal peace from
Aaron Lee 01:57
what was your interaction like with the Sherpas. While you were there, they
Dr. Jennie Draper 02:02
treated us like family they welcomed us in. So we were partnered with Dorjee Sherpa, who owns a mountaineering company, as well as a foundation that’s focused on maternal health in Nepal. So he and his wife, Dolly were leaders on that trip. And then it was a lot of their family that were also leaving us most of whom spoke English, and we really had a great opportunity to connect with them. And you’re spending all day hiking, and then staying in these very small tea lodges. So the evenings revolved around conversation, because the tea lodges are heated. So you’re all sitting in one great room to eat or meals together. And you’ve really learned a lot about what their life is like, and their business and their passion to help people and show them what Nepal is like. Dorji himself was a Buddhist. And so we learned a lot about that religion, also from him at 14,000 feet, you go to a monastery, and I got to witness some ceremonies there. And it just was a really powerful place to be, and they are all about focused on helping people. And that helps you, you get that karma back. And so they’re very much all about kindness, and also about being present. And finding this great sense of peace.
Aaron Lee 03:23
It really is such a good example of leadership and humanity and what we should be like, and it’s so interesting hearing you, you know, I’ve heard other people talk to Sherpas have conversations with them, but to hear your firsthand account of Sherpas, who we talked about all the time, that generous, give persona that drives them that it’s not about themselves, and it’s about everyone they’re serving and leading. That’s pretty cool experience to have. So do you have a dream, a goal to return to Everest,
Dr. Jennie Draper 04:06
I will definitely return to Nepal into the Himalayas, and hopefully actually partner in some way with Dorjee and his foundation and learn a lot more about maternal health in their country and what they’re doing to try to prevent mortality and have better health care access. I don’t have any aspiration to actually summit Everest itself, but there are a whole lot of other tricks to do that I would like to go back for.
Aaron Lee 04:32
Okay, so you are in maternal health professionally, you get matched with them. Was that just a chance that was all
Dr. Jennie Draper 04:41
coincidental so I travel on these mountaineering trips with men’s local mountaineer, who’s also a lawyer and he met Dorji years ago and they summited Everest together and now partner all these trips in Nepal with Dorji who also makes trips and how his family back in the US. So we’ve continued our relationship. And I just saw him recently, actually here in Richmond at a happy hour to connect with him and continue this conversation about how I can help him. He wants to build a hospital, I don’t know that I have that time available to set up a hospital in Nepal. But I do think that there may be some really cool opportunities to combine mountaineering and dress plus health care in some way in the travel.
Aaron Lee 05:32
Alright, so let’s, let’s bring it back home. Obviously, you’ve you’ve brought that conversation back home to Richmond. How does a mountaineering trick influence your work, and who you are on a day to day basis,
Dr. Jennie Draper 05:48
mountaineering has been a newer passion or hobby of mine really just since COVID happened before that I’ve always been an endurance athlete in the running and triathlon world. And I think it’s just a natural inclination for a lot of us physicians that we want to have big goals, we’re used to setting something and breaching it and running off a lot of adrenaline. So it’s just our personal way, I think to test our bodies and what it’s capable of, and going into COVID. And turning 40, I really had always just wanted to witness Everest, it just sounded like a fascinating place. And this trip came up and was delayed a little bit. But since then, I’ve had the opportunity to go to pretty amazing places and trek on glaciers. And there’s just something really powerful about being above the clouds. And you’re without any cell phone access. And you’re back to really just pure basics, just your pack that you brought, and at the mercy of the people or helping you on your own team or the Sherpas or the locals that are cooking for you and providing for you and for medicine and that relationship one, it just allows a really extended period of time a week or two completely to reset, you can’t log into your patient charts. And you have to focus on just recovery and being really present and what that day is going to look like for you. And so then anything that brings you back to your job, just really fulfilled, really grateful for the opportunities in your life. And just so thankful for all that we have here and all of the opportunities because these corners of the world, they’re living off the most basic things and living this just really fulfilled, grateful, happy life. And it’s just a nice example to see that then you can internalize to get you through more challenging things that we have that I think are harder by the modern Western world.
Aaron Lee 07:52
Well, let’s hang out on challenges for a minute. We’ve talked about this, we’ve had some previous guests, Corey Feist, Becky wolf talking about healthcare the challenges healthcare providers are facing. And so we started this conversation on the rejuvenation side of things. But talk a little bit about your journey, your personal journey of finding balance, and and what it took to overcome some of those stresses and challenges that you face. As a healthcare professional, a doctor, a leader in your practice,
Dr. Jennie Draper 08:33
I have been in private practice. I’m an OBGYN is started here in the group I joined which is really large with six offices in 2011. And it during the time I’ve been in our practice, it’s just continued to grow exponentially, which is really exciting. But it is a lot to manage. We don’t get a lot of training coming through medical school and the business side of things. We have a great admin team that that helped us with all of that, but it’s been a big learning curve to incorporate understanding business nuances when our whole goal going into healthcare is all about the patient side and those relationships and we truly as physicians want to help people, but you are limited sometimes by the nature of how medicine in the US is set up and that oftentimes means very short visit times to accomplish a whole lot with patients and that challenge really got exacerbated by COVID because women were scared to come in for appointments unless they had to for pregnancy and we’re seeing a lot of patients who put off health care for for three years, some of them five years and they’re finally coming back in which is great but then they’re coming back in and we may have a 10 minute spot or 20 minutes but or 30 minutes those are kind of standard and in healthcare across the board. In that’s that’s all the time we have to cover an awful lot of subjects and people are really strapped for time right they all So I have their jobs, and they’re coordinating their kids health care, and we’re trying to help them as much as we can. But I think a lot of us personally feel like we just cannot ever do enough. There’s so much room for preventative medicine and education and teaching. And there just is not time during the work day to get that all done, and you’re trying to save patients co pays him from, you know, extra follow up visits, but you know, really to build a rapport and to achieve what you’re looking to do. You may need multiple visits. And to figure that out, yeah, I
Aaron Lee 10:35
sit here thinking about certain doctors, specialists, I’ve been to over the years, and, and I look back and think, Oh, I just went to see them hasn’t been that long. And this entirety of the last three plus years in our COVID. And post COVID. World, time has flown you, you don’t think about it. You just kind of set it aside for a while. And now all of a sudden, you can see oh, there’s a backlog. And there’s, there’s a challenge. And it seems like there’s a challenge with the space, the time and space with providers. And so now you talk about more people needing care to catch up. I know, we’ve talked on the nursing side about nursing shortages. But on the physician side, what are the numbers like? It does
Dr. Jennie Draper 11:25
seem like there are plenty of people still going into medicine and filling the residency spots, at least for OB GYN, I think primary care is always an area where there’s not enough people. And there’s still not enough focus on the preventative side. So we’re still a lot of times in health care just catching up on managing illnesses. When if there was more availability of dieticians, and people to offer like fitness training to patients and sleep hygiene and all of those preventative things that are kind of common sense, but not really at all, I think then we could really take the burden off primary care, but it’s just going to take years, I think for this system to finally get to that point, primary care still seems very short. And the burnout, especially coming out of COVID. And the demands on primary care providers and emergency room physicians was just really high. And then we’re still working through shortages, particularly at the hospital level in the operating rooms. And everyone’s just pretty strapped very focused on their job and doing the best they can. But it definitely you see it across the board, not just with physicians, but with nursing staff. And that too, that the people are tired, and they’re still just kind of recovering from the stress of COVID all of those unknowns and really managing a lot of anxiety and really sick patients. And now trying to get back to some semblance of normalcy with with appropriate staffing to get through your day. So people aren’t doing extra jobs like cleaning rooms when their job should be just patient care.
Aaron Lee 13:12
Alright, so let’s go into the land of magic wands. This may not be reality, but I have to imagine you’ve spent at least a little time thinking, Well, what if and, Becky when she was on a few episodes ago, on her own podcast, she’s talked to a number of healthcare, innovators. So if you could wave that magic wand for healthcare in general, not just your particular practice and the hospitals where you serve what would benefit healthcare as a profession, and an industry
Dr. Jennie Draper 13:53
more time with patients and just less pressures in general, where you didn’t have to see to maintain the business side of things, where you actually had the luxury to have more time with people. And I think a lot of us also take passion and trying to call patients ourselves about test results. And there’s just not time built in the day those aren’t billable hours for us. And so that creeps into your evenings and leaving work on time and the longer you stay at work, the more there is to do to keep that up in that service that you’ve promised your patients but then that cuts in your family time or your exercise time or are getting away so I think a lot of us work really hard during the weeks and then you know really have to carve out for me I have to take these long vacations just to get a break because otherwise I don’t I don’t turn my brain off. I I always am thinking about my patients and did I provide for them in the greatest capacity and There’s just a lot of extra things that I think we all want to do, we want to get them connected to the right specialist and get in for appointments. And that takes a lot to navigate our healthcare system. It’s everyone’s electronic medical records are different platforms, so they don’t talk to each other. And you’re trying to close the gaps of communication. And I think you and I talked about this recently to another layer that happened during COVID, that add it to the burden of everyone taking care of patients is a new law that allows access immediately to your records. Well, it’s good and bad, right. So patients are more informed, and they can see all of their own results. But because of that, there’s also this new layer of urgency for me to get to people’s results before they get them. Because it might be a cancer diagnosis, or it might be something they don’t understand. And now they’ve waited 24 hours because they actually got the result. And I don’t have it yet. And we’re trying to manage, you know, lots of anxieties out there, the world just became this really unknown entity, and what the next thing could happen. And so you’re also trying to manage people’s concerns appropriately. And with all of that we went to school for a really long time to try to help you. But there’s just a lot of doubt, I think, where the medical care is coming from and way too much false information on the internet. They’re really valuable places. And sometimes it’s helpful to have a patient come in, they look kind of sheepish, and they’re like, so I looked some things on Google. And I said, That’s okay, what did Google tell you? It might be right, it might help us where we’re going. But it also means people have way too much information. And, you know, just extra conversations layered on top of trying to help you in real time that this test didn’t look normal. I know it doesn’t. I know it has some flag next to it. But for you and you happen to be pregnant, I promise it’s normal. And so I think maybe the technology piece hasn’t hasn’t helped so much some of the patient worries and anxiety because there’s just too much information to kind of filter through what’s true and what’s not true.
Aaron Lee 17:12
When you layer on all of that data and information, personal data from test results. public data from Google and the always favorite Web MD, actually
17:23
now. Tick tock. Oh,
Aaron Lee 17:28
yes, because everything on tick tock is true. I’ve
Dr. Jennie Draper 17:31
been DS actually somewhat helpful, but tick tock nettle way, as you look
Aaron Lee 17:35
at all of these time challenges. For you personally, for providers in general, across healthcare. Are you seeing any glimmers of hope, innovation, or new ideas, or new focus areas that are elevating these challenges across healthcare?
Dr. Jennie Draper 17:56
I think what has come out of this is more acknowledgment of burnout in healthcare workers and how to help it so that our profession will thrive. I think I definitely had a period of burnout two years into private practice, but didn’t have a name for it. And so now, 12 years later, there’s finally a name for it. So I know personally, I’m merging back to kind of the real world. And we didn’t have these outside focuses, a lot of us couldn’t do all of the hobbies that were important to us and my partner’s that have kids, I don’t, but they’re trying to manage homeschooling, and on top of this same job, and all of those nuances, it was just a lot. And now everyone’s kind of trying to get their, you know, back into some semblance of normalcy, and how to fit your hobbies back in. And for me, personally, I found a physician specific burnout coach, and I think she’s helped tremendously. And now Now people, my peers are starting to have more and more conversations about this. And so I think collectively we are, we do have a lot of hope, because we’re like, okay, we can fix this. And it’s an opportunity to set differently or boundaries or operate in a different way. For me, I tweaked some things about my day to day life, and how many locations I’m going to per week, and it’s just made a world of difference. And then making sure I look ahead of time to really carve out what is the right balance of taking time off for me and really holding true to the boundaries not coming in if I’m not the one on call, and not looking at my EMR apps in my off time. And so I do think there’s a lot of resources that have now emerged since COVID. To help physician burnout, how do you manage your electronic medical record so you’re not taking it home so frequently, and just a lot more conversations, which I think is really exciting. Having people like you talk about this on podcast and figure out innovative ways for people to communicate more effectively, and work as a team together to make day to day life more efficient, and how the healthcare system overall can continue to function in the way that it needs to to support our patients.
Aaron Lee 20:11
You mentioned a few minutes ago that medical school didn’t teach you the business side. And that’s one of those challenges that’s not unique to healthcare or medical school. But it’s the business side, the self care side, nobody has talked about that in, in any industry in any educational setting. And, and that’s number one, first and foremost, we all have to take care of ourselves. So we even have something to give to other people. And so it’s been so fascinating, interesting, and encouraging to watch you on this journey. And to see and compare, you know, today even to pre COVID, 568 years ago, to see your different level of peace, a sense of peace, and how much it seems you’re enjoying every area of life, including what you’re doing at work.
Dr. Jennie Draper 21:14
Yes, I think the last year in particular, I just finally hit the right rhythm and found the tools particularly through talking to you and through the coach that I’ve been using now for two and a half years, to really every other week, we find a new layer of what I need to work on and learning how to set boundaries. And you know how to distance a lot of us in medicine are very type a very perfectionist very people pleasing, we did not learn how to set boundaries, you did not get them, particularly as a resident. I mean, we’ve known each other a long time, you would see where I worked a whole night shift took a train down to squeeze him friend time off, no sleep, and then take the train back to work a day shift. I mean, it was crazy. No one said anything different and you didn’t have autonomy over your schedule or your life you barely got to eat some days. It’s still a struggle now, but try to make it more of a focus. But there’s just I really can’t say that I’m thriving and super happy. And I think knowing being able to put names to things be like I’m frustrated in this scenario, because I don’t have enough information. So let me learn more about it. Friday, I’d opportunity to fly down to Texas and learn some advanced surgical skills with another surgeon who has a practice kind of similar to mine with a similar EMR that’s been functioning somewhat slowly. And we really could bounce ideas off each other and learn about each other. And that was a great opportunity. Because I think when you’re in your day to day, high pressured life, and there’s just not much wiggle room, and then you need to go to bed. And no, you need to get up and do this all over again, to try to carve out some pauses and all of that to be able to reflect or for me, I’ve found ways to be more efficient. I’m like, my nurse and I are writing this same same information down the same webpage, I want to give my lady who’s going through menopause over and over again, I’m like, This is crazy. Let’s type this up. And now it’s done. And so I think once we finally could find some rest, and I could separate myself from my own internal pressures, then I could really see how much room I had to keep helping people in a newer, bigger way. But without expending more energy. And that has letting me have time left over for to really show up well for my family to show up well for my friends, to be able to show up and do these hobbies that I love traveling across the world.
Aaron Lee 23:51
I hear that challenge in so many different industries that Well, I have this thing, this one thing and I keep doing it over and over again. Or I just do it over and over again, instead of having somebody else do it. And so even hearing you figure out those smart hacks, those simplification, whatever you want to call it, putting that instead of writing it down every time hey, we have a resource, we can point you to it, we can hand it over to you. Those things end up saving so much time and they they snowball for us into a positive benefit that gives us more time helps us work more efficiently. We’ll link in the show notes at New Generation leader.fm/five Nine to our guide on the five gears. And that’s that’s a simple tool, I think for all of us to help think about our everyday life and rhythm that we can’t always be In work and productivity mode, but it’s also not balance. People, people have always talked about a work life balance. And I always go back to a change that word from balance to rhythm. Because depending on our day, depending on our focus, we’re going to shift in and out of work and productivity, we’re going to need to take those five or 10 minute breaks during the day. Sometimes that involves lunch, or it sounds like you’re a lot like me, and sometimes that the day just goes right through lunch. But finding that rhythm and having a way to talk about it, like you’ve said, that there’s language, there’s a word or phrase that we can use to put that into action. It’s really important for for all of us to make sure we’re making the most because no matter what industry you’re in, whether you’ve got medical records to keep up with, or documentation, or just social media coming out to, in any industry, we have all of this information flying at us. And we’ve got to figure out how to navigate it, compartmentalize it, turn it off, and make sure we’re getting healthy, so that we can be healthy. And leading others, I
Dr. Jennie Draper 26:21
think that really summarizes nicely what is so important. And I think when you operate off the mindset of productivity, you really don’t ever have to turn it off. And that goes for all professions. I mean, I see it too. And a lot of what my day to day job is is honestly counseling people and listening to them. And everyone now that there’s just so much access via your phone and email you all jobs, you’re just working all of the time. And I think with this life coach and prioritizing how I wanted to show up as a leader and as a physician, and really focused on that. For me, that means I have to turn it off at night. And I have to be able to rest and I have to do things and spend time with people that fill me back up. And so to carve out that time and permission that some of that time is literally just hanging out. And it doesn’t have to have a goal to it. It didn’t realize how much I labeled this time, even just spending time with my family. I’m like, What is the goal for today? How are we just sitting here I’m like, the whole point of this is just to spend time with people I really love. And so it was a complete mind shift also for me to be able to just, you know, enjoy life again. And that just makes me show up so much better to my day job,
Aaron Lee 27:40
a lot of people will reach that level of peak energy output, they’ll just reach the end of their rope. And they’ll they’ll just go to the extreme and say something like, I’m just going to run away to Mongolia. Now you literally just went to my goal, not to run away, but to recharge what’s coming up for you. In
Dr. Jennie Draper 28:03
six weeks. I’m going to Kilimanjaro. So I’ve been adding in a lot of you know, Richmond for the listeners is very flat and Kilimanjaro will get up to 19,000 feet. So I have had lots of quality time on my treadmill carrying a pack and an incline and binge watching suits. So I am looking forward to this next trip and then just sort of seeing where it leads. I typically have things planned out for a year or two years sometimes and for once. I actually am just going to pause a little this afternoon actually, my life coach and I are having a very long session to talk about goals. But I recently have just sort of been more in tune to what kind of lights me up. Not that I didn’t know that before. I love talking to people about their travel stories. I love hearing people from other cultures and getting to know them and learning about their where they’re from and what is their life look like and really have wanted to tap back into some more creative outlets. So recently, I’ve been involved in providing some consultation for articles about kind of merging my mountain interest with with medicine and we’re supporting women in this fitness world and in giving more of a name to women in the mountaineering world it still really lacks. So I recently took a wilderness medicine course in Zion. And so right now I’m just trying to give a name to this, this area that I really like and see what I can do with that. So right now it’s a little bit more of a blank slate than I’m used to, but I’m really excited about it.
Aaron Lee 29:37
Well it is exciting and and it’s always exciting to live vicariously through you whether you’re going to Mongolia Kilimanjaro, Everest, Zion, so for for listeners who want to connect and follow along with your travel journeys, vicariously for those of us who may not ever trek Kilimanjaro or Everest, what’s what’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you and follow along your travel journeys,
Dr. Jennie Draper 30:09
I am on Instagram as a very new beginner. But to come more on, it is planned on arrival
Aaron Lee 30:18
and how much of that name speaks to your style of travel highly,
Dr. Jennie Draper 30:23
although the mountain trips have had to have more structure to them, but Aaron, Aaron knows well that I have gone to places like Ecuador with zero hotel arrangements and no plan and just two weeks of very exciting vacation, spontaneous adventure.
Aaron Lee 30:39
That is probably a little more spontaneity that than I would ever be comfortable with. But good on your journey. Good on you. It’s
30:47
worked out well so far. Well, thanks
Aaron Lee 30:49
for great conversation. It’s always good to hear the stories of your work, your life, and that balance and rhythm The two are finding and like I said to live vicariously through your adventures. So thanks for joining us today. Thanks for giving us a peek inside your world and can’t wait to hear what’s coming next in this next chapter.
31:16
Thank you so much for your help and for having me on here.
Jay Smack 31:22
Thanks for listening to the new generation leader podcast. Subscribe today on your podcasting platform. Download the show notes and unlock your true leadership potential at New Generation leader.fm. Thanks for listening today. And we look forward to seeing you next time on the new generation leader podcast.