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The Clinical Excellent Podcast, sponsored by the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence is a biweekly podcast hosted by Drs. Adam Cifu and Matthew Sorrentino. The podcast has three formats: discussions between doctors and patients, discussions with authors of research pertinent to improving clinical care and the doctor-patient relationship and discussions with physicians about challenges in the doctor-patient relationship or in the life of a physician.
[00:00:00] Dr. Cifu: On today's episode of The Clinical Excellence Podcast, we have Dr. Maylyn Martinez talking about non-traditional paths into medicine.
[00:00:12] Dr. Martinez: Just the culture of going from that sort of upbringing in the neighborhood and this very low SES and the friends that I had, then going to this like, rock and roll, sort of gritty blue-collar life, and then going from that to Northwestern for medical school, I cannot describe in words what that culture shift did to my confidence.
[00:00:36] Dr. Cifu: We are back with another episode of The Clinical Excellence Podcast, sponsored by the Bucksbaum Institute. During this podcast, we discuss, dissect, and promote clinical excellence. We review research pertinent to clinical excellence, we invite experts to discuss topics that often challenge the physician-patient relationship, and we host conversations between patients and doctors.
I'm Adam Cifu, and today I'm joined by Dr. Maylyn Martinez. Dr. Martinez is a practicing hospitalist and a clinical researcher at the University of Chicago. She studies hospital-associated disability, its diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. Dr. Martinez, thank you for joining me.
[00:01:13] Dr. Martinez: Thanks for having me.
[00:01:15] Dr. Cifu: So this is a very different sort of interview for the podcast today. I've invited you here not to discuss your clinical work or your research focus, which I find interesting and important, but to talk more about your own bio. So I'm going to be like Terry Gross, okay?
[00:01:31] Dr. Martinez: Perfect.
[00:01:32] Dr. Cifu: So for the last few decades, medical schools have talked about wanting students who have taken non-traditional roots into medicine. The idea that these students, I don't know, will provide medicine with more diverse ways of thinking. I know that you had an interesting path to medical school, and I certainly don't need your whole autobiography, but briefly, what was kind of your route to get to where you are now?
[00:01:54] Dr. Martinez: Hmm.
You prefaced that with, you don't want my whole autobiography, but it's kind of hard to describe because it was non-traditional from the very beginning.
[00:02:03] Dr. Cifu: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:02:04] Dr. Martinez: So I'll try to just do the whole thing...
[00:02:07] Dr. Cifu: Okay.
[00:02:07] Dr. Martinez: ...but quickly. So I'll start from after high school.
[00:02:12] Dr. Cifu: Okay.
[00:02:12] Dr. Martinez: After high school, I did not go to college, thankfully I graduated high school, just barely. I was very into music, musical theater and sort of, you know, played the guitar, singer, songwriter at that time, so I very much wanted to be a musician, so I more just focused on that and worked at a Six Flags, as an entertainer at a Six Flags, and then moved to Denver, Colorado, started a rock band, and eventually realized at the age of 28 that I should go to college. And...
[00:02:43] Dr. Cifu: And let me ask you, it sounds like, I mean, so many of our students, and I know this from, you know, talking to the undergrads here...
[00:02:51] Dr. Martinez: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:52] Dr. Cifu: ...that a lot of students sort of know, like, "Oh, I knew I was going to be a doctor when I was in sixth grade." It sounds like it wasn't even on your radar at the end of high school.
[00:02:59] Dr. Martinez: Oh my gosh. I can't even describe how much it was not on my radar. I was, I mean, I was mostly raised by my dad. My dad was kind of in control of like parks and rec for the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and really didn't talk to us about school. Honestly, rarely took us to the doctor. So it was, I mean, nobody in my family... It was just completely not on my radar, though I was always very interested in science and very good at science and always sort of voluntarily read about science. So that was always something that was kind of in the back of my mind.
[00:03:33] Dr. Cifu: Got it. So the role models that so many people talk about, whether it be family members or whether it be doctors who they've seen either personally or by going to the doctor with family members, sort of none of that on your radar.
[00:03:47] Dr. Martinez: Yeah, just did not exist.
[00:03:48] Dr. Cifu: Got it. So we are in Denver playing in a rock band at this point.
[00:03:53] Dr. Martinez: Yes, so now we're in Denver, we're in a rock band. We're working as a maid, we're working as a waitress, whatever we can do to pay the bills and not even necessarily that that was going poorly, I just started to want to educate myself and go to school. And so at the age of 28, I took about a year thinking about that and during the year, knowing it was going to be something to do with science, during that time, I ran into a friend from high school who was at that time a second-year medical student.
[00:04:22] Dr. Cifu: Hmm.
[00:04:22] Dr. Martinez: And that was what first kind of, that was when the light bulb kind of went off, and I started to consider that. And I just sort of read about that, you know, path for a long time, and then eventually about a year later, enrolled in college as a pre-med. So I enrolled as a pre-med at 28, but then went straight through at that point.
[00:04:42] Dr. Cifu: Got it, got it. So I have a question later about, sort of if this has made the practice of medicine easier or harder for you, but to put that off for a minute, I always imagine that once you're out of schooling and sort of get out of practice with just sitting there and studying, that getting back into that would be difficult. Was it hard for you going back to school or were you sort of at a place that like, "I know this is what I want to do. I actually sort of have thought about this more," that maybe you had a leg up on your, you know, fellow students at the time?
[00:05:17] Dr. Martinez: Hmm. That's an interesting question because I mean, in the years in my, basically like through high school and middle school, I was a horrible student.
[00:05:26] Dr. Cifu: Yeah, yeah.
[00:05:26] Dr. Martinez: I didn't have study skills, I didn't have any discipline, I didn't have anyone around me telling me I had to do those things, I wasn't practicing those skills, and so I don't know exactly where it came from, except that I was just excited about what I was doing, but the... I just somehow knew how to sit down and learn this stuff and do well in these courses.
[00:05:48] Dr. Cifu: Maybe that supports some of the idea that if we get people with different tracks, we get people who think differently because if everybody is someone who is already at their academic peak, you know, as a junior in high school, maybe that excludes a whole lot of people who, I don't want to say, you know, I don't want to say like, are late bloomers, but like, are blooming in different ways at different times.
[00:06:11] Dr. Martinez: Right, and what's really interesting that, about what you say, academic peak, I mean, through elementary school and through the beginning of med school, before I started moving cities around the country with my parents as they got separated, I was... That's when I was at my academic peak. I was in the gifted and talented program, I was getting all straight A's, or straight pluses or whatever the grading system was in elementary school.
[00:06:31] Dr. Cifu: Straight smiley faces.
[00:06:32] Dr. Martinez: Straight smiley faces, and straight five gold stars, but yeah, elementary school was my academic peak, so I knew that was something that I could work with at some point.
[00:06:40] Dr. Cifu: Cool. So this next question, which I prepared and as I was preparing it, I was like, well, I'm not sure this is a great question because I think I'm asking you to compare yourself to, you know, somebody different, but I guess when you think about yourself and you think about yourself really since you've been out of training and you know, as a practicing physician, as a practicing hospitalist, do you think you actually bring something different to, I don't know, patient care, research, the doctor-patient relationship than you know, some guy who went to a frou-frou liberal arts college, majored in chemistry and went directly into medical school as kind of straight arrows you can get? Not to say who I'm talking about.
[00:07:21] Dr. Martinez: So me compared to you?
[00:07:22] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.
[00:07:23] Dr. Martinez: Okay. Um, uh, this is so hard to answer and I feel like I have specific moments where I'm like, "Oh, I'm good at this and this is the reason," but at the same time, like for an example, I feel like I'm, and even since I started med school, I feel like I have a particular gift for sort of just communicating with the patients, making them feel heard, and making them sort of be trustful of the system that we're operating in, but I don't know that you're not like that or that someone at my stage of their career who came through like you did. Some people just are born with that, so I don't know if that's just how I am or if that's just some... If that's something that developed in the ten years that I had to develop as a young adult without schooling, or if that's something, because even my sort of upbringing, I mean, I'm from a very low SES, you know, neighborhood, and, um, from a family that didn't sort of emphasize education. So I'm so non-traditional in every way, and I don't know if it was one of those things that contributed to that, or if I was just sort of made that way. And if people who go through your path, some of those people are also just made that way. It's so hard to say.
[00:08:39] Dr. Cifu: Right, and as I hear you talk about it, you know, you as a researcher and me as someone who thinks a lot about, you know, where our knowledge in medicine comes from, it's sort of an unstudyable question, right?
[00:08:54] Dr. Martinez: Right.
[00:08:54] Dr. Cifu: You can't do this experimentally, and it probably is to some extent that, you know, people self-select, sort of filter themselves to go into the field.
[00:09:05] Dr. Martinez: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:05] Dr. Cifu: Right? Um, and no matter what the background is, there is probably something that makes the field attractive to them and then makes them attractive to the field eventually.
[00:09:16] Dr. Martinez: Right, right.
[00:09:17] Dr. Cifu: Um, so often I think, you know, medicine makes people sacrifice themselves for the good of the profession, right? Or sacrifice some part of themselves, right? You have to give up something to get to, you know, where we are, to sort of put your bottom in a seat and do a lot of studying and at least, you know, delay some gratification and put some hobbies aside for a while, right, while you get here and you sort of had longer to, I don't know, like develop a self, right...
[00:09:53] Dr. Martinez: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:53] Dr. Cifu: ...before you got into medicine, and so, a question of, do you think that's made the training easier for you because you sort of, like, you knew who you were or did it make it harder because there was kind of more to you to, I don't know, put to the side before you got into training?
[00:10:12] Dr. Martinez: I think that part made it easier for me and I mean, it would be interesting to do like an actual, like quasi-experimental design and see, you know, study this and see, because the one... So I feel like the other person I have to compare myself sort of directly to, someone who's very much like me but had a path very much like you is my husband and he's also a musician.
[00:10:36] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.
[00:10:36] Dr. Martinez: And so sometimes he'll have those like, "Oh, I wish I would've developed this... My guitar playing skills, I wonder if I could have been in a band." And so some... And he hates how much he doesn't have time to devote to guitar lessons or developing, you know, that hobby. I will do, you know, I'll sing or I'll play my guitar sometimes for fun, but I never will have to worry about... I never question like, oh, what if? What if I would've developed that hobby? What if I could've been, you know, some... And made something of it? What if I could've gone to College of Music and learned how to write jingles or like, I just don't... I got to play around with that other really big part of myself and see that it wasn't how I actually wanted to spend my life. So that's the one thing I noticed between like, for example, my husband and myself.
[00:11:25] Dr. Cifu: It's interesting because part of it is, you know, the time shift, right?
[00:11:29] Dr. Martinez: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:31] Dr. Cifu: And so it would be interesting, you know, as you talk about sort of studies, it would be interesting to do kind of qualitative research almost at different points in people's career because I bet that's something that shifts too, of like, you know, God, you know, what I missed early, what I missed late, those sorts of things. And this maybe gets away from... It gets a way like life planning.
[00:11:52] Dr. Martinez: And the other thing is on the flip side, sometimes I do... Sometimes I regret not starting earlier.
[00:11:58] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.
[00:11:58] Dr. Martinez: Especially with the path I'm taking because, you know, I'm doing like a more research kind of path.
[00:12:04] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.
[00:12:04] Dr. Martinez: And that's a sort of long drawn-out path that has these big chunks of time to sort of progress and advance through it and so I'll always have that like, well, what if? What if I would've started sooner? And how far will I, especially as my career goes on, I'll wonder how far I could have taken it if I had more time.
[00:12:24] Dr. Cifu: And as you compare your retirement account to your husband's retirement account.
[00:12:28] Dr. Martinez: Right, especially since he's doing electrophysiology.
[00:12:32] Dr. Cifu: Yeah. And then I guess maybe one last question, because you also had a, you know, not only kind of a non-traditional path, I think, in education, right? Starting later, having, you know, basically what we call a career beforehand...
[00:12:48] Dr. Martinez: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:50] Dr. Cifu: ...but I also think, you know, from a geographically different experience, right? And so as you sort of meet people now, you know, Midwestern city and you've trained, you know, here, in California, do you think, you know, your experience kind of growing up in the Southwest and then bringing that to other places, has that affected your, I don't know, your practice, your communication, your behavior?
[00:13:18] Dr. Martinez: I would say because in addition to, so the first sort of important geographic shift, so being born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but like I said before, also in this very low SES, never knowing any sort of professionals, the only thing that was sort of consistent from that to say where I am today is that my dad is actually, he's very much an intellectual.
[00:13:42] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.
[00:13:42] Dr. Martinez: Always kept a dictionary in the living room and was like, anytime I asked him what a word meant, look it up. So that's the one thing that's been consistent, but just the culture of going from that sort of upbringing in the neighborhood and the friends that I had, then going to this like rock and roll, sort of gritty, you know, blue-collar life and then going from that to Northwestern for medical school, I cannot describe in words what that culture shift did to my confidence.
[00:14:09] Dr. Cifu: Hmm.
[00:14:10] Dr. Martinez: That was the biggest sort of thing, and it wasn't, I don't know that it was just... I think there was probably a component of a geographic shift, but then the cultural shift.
[00:14:18] Dr. Cifu: Right.
[00:14:18] Dr. Martinez: And then like you asked, going from the Midwest to Southern California, that was actually quite a culture shock.
[00:14:26] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.
[00:14:26] Dr. Martinez: It's a very, very different sort of life down there. Um, my husband and I both found it... It was difficult to settle in. We couldn't like really get our footing with sort of, you know, making friends there. It just, that was hard. So it was difficult to settle in Southern California for sure. So after that we were, you know, eager to get back to Chicago and here we are.
[00:14:51] Dr. Cifu: Great. Any other questions that you would like to answer that I haven't asked you?
[00:14:58] Dr. Martinez: Um, with regard to my non-traditional path, um, not any that I can think of.
[00:15:07] Dr. Cifu: Okay. So Maylyn, thank you so much for talking to me today for The Clinical Excellence Podcast. And thank you for joining us for this episode of the podcast. We're sponsored by the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence at the University of Chicago. Please feel free to reach out to us with your thoughts and ideas on the Bucksbaum Institute Twitter page.
The music for The Clinical Excellence Podcast is courtesy of....?
[00:15:31] Dr. Martinez: Me.
[00:15:32] Dr. Cifu: Yes. So the other thing we have to announce, so Dr. Martinez has generously given music to both the S2D, the Symptom to Diagnosis Podcast, and now The Clinical Excellence Podcast, and it's always been a little bit of an inside secret who she is.
[00:15:46] Dr. Martinez: Mm-hmm. And now here I am.
[00:15:48] Dr. Cifu: Thank you very much.