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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.
Dr. Cifu:
On today's episode of the Clinical Excellence Podcast, we have my co-host, Dr. Matthew Sorrentino, talking about... Well, about this podcast.
This is the first episode of, or actually the teaser for the Clinical Excellence Podcast sponsored by the Bucksbaum Institute. During this podcast, we will discuss, dissect, and promote clinical excellence, we review research pertinent clinical excellence, we invite experts to discuss topics that often challenge the physician-patient relationship, and we host conversations between patients and their doctors. I'm Adam Cifu and I'm joined by my co-host, Dr. Matthew Sorrentino. And we're here to introduce the podcast. Thanks for joining me, Matt.
Dr. Sorrentino:
Yeah, great, Adam, it's great to be here. Yeah, I'm excited about this.
Dr. Cifu:
So I wonder if you could start us off, because you've been associated with the Bucksbaum Institute for years to tell us a little bit about what the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence is, what it does, how it came to be?
Dr. Sorrentino:
Sure. Certainly. The Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence was put together now over 10 years ago to, as you pointed out, discuss the doctor-patient relationship. It had been recognized at the time that one of the key points of our involvement in the medical world is that relationship between the doctor and the physician. And it was being eroded by so many different things, barriers because of electronic records and technology. And that one on one close relationship was getting harder and harder to maintain. And the Bucksbaum Institute wanted to really look at that relationship very, very closely, wanted to study it, what can we do to make it better? What really worked great? What was so good about it that we can teach to our students and our residents and what can we learn to foster and make this relationship as robust and as important as possible?
Dr. Cifu:
Right. And you've succeeded because the doctor-patient relationship is in perfect condition, right?
Dr. Sorrentino:
It is, I think doing better. I agree. Although, we've certainly had challenges. COVID threw a whole nother monkey wrench into the whole thing. But we've certainly learned a lot and I think we've had more insights into it. We really focused on three things at the Bucksbaum Institute. One is we really wanted to look for individuals who were known to be excellent clinicians. What made them an excellent clinician? Can we try to dissect that out? Why were they such an excellent clinician? Can we figure out how they can be used to mentor students and young residents to also become excellent clinicians? So that was phase one is really looking for these clinicians that we knew embodied the great doctor-patient relationship.
The second was to formally try to teach it. So how do you teach something that we really don't even know exactly what it is? And so we looked at what literature was there, looked at experience from these great clinicians, put together a brand new medical student course, for example, and other lecture series and other symposium to try to figure out how to teach the essence of the doctor-patient relationship.
And the third pillar that we recognized is, if you're going to really teach it, you got to do research in it, you've got to understand it. And in a typical University of Chicago fashion, we wanted to fund research in areas that we're not getting researched and do very careful, critical research into the area. And I think that has been one of the highlights really in my involvement with it, is because if you really study something carefully, it's amazing what you can learn and see about it and hopefully pass it on to your students.
Dr. Cifu:
As people can imagine, those sort of research projects are often hard to find funding for.
Dr. Sorrentino:
Yes.
Dr. Cifu:
It's not an obvious thing of where to get money for that. And I think Bucksbaum has done a wonderful job at of figuring out, "Boy, here's someone who's got really great interests and is interested in starting something off and let's get them to seed money and get the research started." Sometimes you learn a lot from that and sometimes it starts the person on a whole career of where they should go for research.
Dr. Sorrentino:
Exactly. We called it pilot grants because they were exactly, as you said, seed money, small little funds of money. A lot of times a researcher can get some preliminary data, can then put that together in a more robust grant and then can go to other granting institutions to get better grants. But you can't go to those other places unless you've got a little bit to start with. So we wanted to start that out in many of these young researchers.
Dr. Cifu:
So let me talk a little bit about the podcast that we're starting. Our vision is that this podcast will be a forum for doctors and patients to discuss clinical excellence, what it is, how it's achieved, and what are the challenges to achieving it. Conversations that are really adjacent to what the Bucksbaum Institute does. We aim to make the podcast short. We're going to limit them to always less than 30 minutes. We're going to make them high yield and hopefully, we're going to make them enjoyable.
We're going to start with three different formats. The first, which you'll do most of the hosting of, will be discussions with authors who are doing research that the Bucksbaum Institute is either funding or research that's adjacent to the Bucksbaum Institute's mission. The second, which mostly I'll host, will be conversations with physicians about topics that challenge even the most experienced among us physicians. Some of the first topics we're going to address are burnout, dismissing patients from practice, addressing and admitting medical errors. So a lot of things which get you a little nervous just to say.
And the third format, which we're hoping will be really interesting, will be conversations between doctors and patients about their relationships and challenges to their relationships. There are a lot of medical podcasts out there, but not a lot of medical podcasts which actually involve patients in them, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And we're hoping to do that on this podcast. So everybody's probably thinking, "I need another medical podcast like I need a hole in my head." Doctors certainly, patients as well. And so I'll ask you, what are you hoping is going to be special about this podcast?
Dr. Sorrentino:
I think that's a great question. What I see out there right now is what you've talked about, is talking about medicine, talking about research, but we're missing what I think is the fundamental part of medicine. And that's that unique relationship between the physician or whoever the caregiver is and the patient. And we've lost a lot of that touch and that connection. So to hear from patients, to hear from physicians who are directly doing research in this area, to really try to find that special bond that I think did exist many times in the past. Many times, maybe not, but that many people know that there needs to be this connection for better health.
We can have the best drugs in the world, we can have the best procedures in the world, but so much research shows it's that interaction between you as a patient and your physician. If that interaction is a really good interaction, outcomes are much better. So we need to explore that. And I think that's what will make this podcast unique, is we're going to really explore the intricacies of that relationship and how to make it better.
Dr. Cifu:
Great. So we're going to wrap up our teaser here and hopefully, people will join us in the coming weeks and months for a lot of great conversations. Well, thank you for joining us for this episode of the Clinical Excellence Podcast. We're sponsored obviously, 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. We will be welcoming any input, ideas, people to talk to as time goes on. And the music for the Clinical Excellence Podcast is courtesy of Dr. Mayland Martinez.