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Note: this post originally ran on 12/2/21.
I was recently interviewed by Dr. Jeremy Toffle for his Imperfect Dad MD Podcast. Dr. Toffle is a pediatrician who’s on a mission to help physician dads become the parent they strive to be.
We are both part of a physician entrepreneur Facebook group and have gotten to know each other over the past 18 months or so. Notably, he was my discussion buddy for The Mandalorian Season 2 and we had a lot of fun exploring themes on that show and forecasting what we thought would happen.
He was kind enough to invite me onto his podcast to share some tips about charting and my take on being a father. What follows is the transcript of our discussion.
You can listen to the podcast episode by searching for his podcast in your favorite podcast app or by clicking here to listen on his page!
Imagine This Intro as a Star Wars Scroll
Jeremy
This is the Imperfect Dad Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Jeremy Toffle. In this episode, I am talking with Dr. Junaid Niazi. We are talking dad life and a few other things on the side. Dr. Niazi is a board certified internist and pediatrician who works as a primary care physician for a large healthcare organization in the upper Midwest. Part of his time is spent as an Information Services Medical Director working on optimizing the EHR for physician use and patient care, which I think all of us can attest that all of our EHRs need a little bit of work on them!
He completed his undergraduate studies at Rice University, medical school at Baylor College of Medicine, and residency at the University of Minnesota. He is married to a pediatrician, so yay, go pediatrics! And they have two rambunctious toddlers.
In addition to the above roles, though, Dr. Junaid is also a physician life coach and an entrepreneur via his business Prosperous Life MD where he blogs and coaches physicians on all things wellness, productivity, finances and careers. He has a group coaching program to help physicians complete their charting at work and has helped dozens of physicians reclaim their time at home for themselves.
And I’ve actually been talking with Junaid you know, for the last year and a half or so just kind of off and on. He’s really great guy. Really easy to talk to.
But, if you have more, feel free to go on!
Jeremy
And I was really excited to be able to finally kind of meet up with him and talk with him and get this interview done. So I hope you get something out of it. We are going to talk dad life, we’re going to talk charting a little bit!
Alright, I am here with Dr. Junaid Niazi. Junaid, thanks for hanging out with me today. I appreciate it.
Junaid
Yeah, thanks for inviting me. I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun today!
Jeremy
Yeah, definitely. So, you know, for people out there who don’t know who you are, can you just kind of give a brief background of who you are, what you do?
Junaid
Yeah, so I’m an internal medicine-pediatrician in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Been out of training for the last five and a half years now, I guess. I’m also a physician life coach. And I run a group program related to helping physicians get their charting and their work done at work so that they can enjoy their time at home. And I think most germane to your podcast, I’m married to another pediatrician and I’m a father to a three and a half year old son and one and a half year old daughter.
Jeremy
Nice. Yeah, so two, I mean, because you’re med-peds? So you do internal medicine and pediatrics? Right?
Junaid
Yeah.
Pediatrician Parents Have It All Figured Out!
Jeremy
So two pediatricians in the family! You have all this parenting stuff figured out? Right?
Junaid
Oh, of course! Never doubted ourselves or had any questions along the way!
Jeremy
Never! Yeah, do they kind of drive you crazy sometimes when people are like, “Oh, you must be like the perfect parents or something.” You guys ever get that?
Junaid
I think most people know us pretty well and understand that that’s not the case. I think there are a lot of people out there that think there’s a right answer to parenting. And that’s, I think, where a lot of the education comes in. But you know, most people who know us are like, “Oh yeah, they’re going through the same struggles that everyone else goes through.”
Jeremy
Yeah, that’s cool. So yes, you have the two kids—are they both boys? Both girls? You get a mix?
Junaid
Three and a half year old boy and one and a half year old girl.
Jeremy
Okay, yeah. So yeah, yeah, yeah.
I’ll be curious to see how the boy and girl match up their works for you guys going on. Because two boys is…it’s a lot of energy in our household. So….
This x 2.
Junaid
Yeah, our daughter has a lot of energy too. So this is a—it’s turning into a more interesting dynamic. And the funnest thing right now is she’s finally becoming you know, quote-unquote “fun” for the three and a half year old and being able to play with him more. So, they’re getting into all kinds of mischief now.
Let's Cut to the Chase—Gimme the Deets on Charting!
Jeremy
Yeah, definitely. Well, you kind of touched a little bit on, you know, doing the coaching and the charting program you have. What kind of drove you into starting that charting program because I, I obviously, I know, a lot of doctors I’ve seen in the clinic myself that struggle with charting and have to get charting on at home and everything there. So what kind of drove you to start that?
Junaid
Well, I had sort of gone through this journey of, you know, burnout and looking for solutions. And I thought the answer was going to be sort of financial independence and retire early. That wasn’t very fulfilling. And then I stumbled across coaching, enrolled in a program, loved it, decided to train as a life coach, went through a certification program, and came out and started coaching physicians. I did some one on one but also did some coaching through another physician’s larger program.
And, you know, I was always chiming in on the group coaching calls about workflow efficiencies and charting, because it’s a major pain point for a lot of physicians. If you look at some of the data, you know, it’s time spent at work and bureaucratic tasks, which includes charting, that are often listed one and two as the the leading causes of physician burnout, which is a actually a sort of a public health crisis in this country.
And, you know, I was challenged by somebody who said, “Why don’t you just lead a class for the docs in this group coaching program? Why don’t you lead a class on how they can optimize their charting, and get home on time?” And I did that class, and it was very well received. And, you know, I was like, “Oh, I think I have a niche on my hands here!”
So, you know, I sort of stumbled across it, but then it just made sense. I didn’t think of it ahead of time, but I made efficiencies in the workplace an intentional endeavor over the last few years. Because like I mentioned before, my wife’s a physician too, and we’d spend a lot of our evenings and weekends just typing away on opposite ends of the couch. And that’s just not how we wanted to live our lives. And that was before kids. So I got intentional about it and made some changes, but I never thought of sharing it on a more global scale until, you know, I had that opportunity to do so.
I’ve run the group program twice now and it’s been very successful—had a lot of transformations for physicians.
This is the type of transformation we see. Oh, and they also get better at charting.
I Can't Just Strategery My Way Out of This?
Junaid
What’s interesting about it is parts of it are strategy, but a large part of it is mindset. And so there’s a lot of mindset baggage we bring as physicians. Some of it has been sort of inculcated into us from our training. Some of these tendencies like perfectionism and imposterism, are almost selected for through the rigorous standards that we have to go through to become physicians. And we carry that with us through our workday, and it can really hold us back. So that’s what the coaching aspect of it addresses.
And it seems to be resonating: physicians seem to be benefiting from it. And that’s really exciting for me. Because, again, we have this physician shortage, docs are still burning out. It’s even worse now because of the COVID-19 pandemic. And, you know, if we can keep people happier at their jobs, practicing medicine, enjoying it more, and still getting a life outside of medicine, we’re gonna keep them in medicine longer. And that’s just a win-win-win for everybody involved, including their patients.
Jeremy
Yeah, no, that’s cool. And I, I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there that would benefit from that. I mean, like I said, I work with a lot of physicians, both older and younger. And I don’t know, for me, I’ve always been somebody who’s gotten my charting done pretty quickly. Because I know I don’t like to chart at home. That’s just my mindset. And sometimes I feel like I’m being super anal about it at work, like, “Nope, I can’t talk to you, I gotta get this done. I gotta do this.”
And it’s funny because even the doctors in my office will comment like, “Oh, Jeremy’s leaving again, right after five, while I’m over here charting for the next hour.” And I’m like, “Well, I mean, there’s probably ways you can fix that, but I’m not the one to tell you how to do it.” So I don’t know, I’m gonna have to pass your information along to some people in my office and our groups so you’re gonna have to let me know when your next group opens up. I might have to pass that along there.
Junaid
Certainly, we can mention that at the end, maybe? But, you know, it’s all decisions right? You’re making intentional, conscious decisions about how you want your day to go and you’re constraining your work to your work timeframe, and you’re getting it done.
And they maybe sort of started out that way, but over time, got lax and just started getting a little too relaxed about it. And now they’ve sort of opened up all this extra time for work to spill over and once you do that, you start working slower, you get sluggish, you start getting distracted more easily. So that’s, those are things that we definitely address in the program.
Parkinson, Stop Expanding to Fill Up All My Posts!
Jeremy
Yeah, definitely. I know, I’ve heard you’ve talked before on this, and I know you’ve brought up the whole concept of Parkinson’s Law and everything there too. And, you know, it’s funny thinking about that. And we can kind of say what that is exactly. But I know for me on those days that are crazy busy, I seem to do better charting than the days that I don’t have any patients to see, because I’m like, “I got all this time, I don’t have to worry about my charts right now.” And then it just takes me longer to do it compared to the day that I have, like, I don’t know, 34 patients that I just had to see and slam into, you know, a day and I’m just churn away, churn away, churn away. And I feel exhausted by the end of it. But I’m done with it versus kind of slacking off a little bit.
Junaid
Yeah. And for the listeners, Parkinson’s Law is one of those things that’s dubbed a law, but sort of unofficially. It’s named after a British civil servant who basically postulated that work will expand to fill any time given to it. It’s akin to how a gas will fill any container that you put it in. And it’s, it’s really true.
So if you look at your day, you know, whatever your workday is, I’ll say eight to five, and a lot of physicians will laugh at that. But if eight to five is your workday, and you say, “I’m going to finish my work by five, or shortly afterwards,” you’ve mentally set yourself up to constrain your work to those hours, and you’re going to more likely get it done in that timeframe. If you say, “I’ll do it, when I get home,” you’ve now opened up the rest of your whole day to that work. And you’ll just, even if you’re not actively thinking this, at a subconscious level, you’re like, “I’ve got time, I can do this,” even if it’s incredibly painful to you, and it’s eating up your family life.
And I’ve had some physicians that sleep an hour a night. They chart until really late, and then they wake up really early just to get their work done or prep for the day. And I mean, you know, I worry, I worry they’re going to get in car accidents on the way to work. They’re shaving years off of their life, we know that. It’s really important. And you know, some people say, “Well, that’s easy to say, oh, if you just constrain your work, but what does that mean?”
But think of if ever in college, for example, you had a paper that was due, and you left it for the last minute. What normally might take you five to six hours to crank out a five page paper suddenly you’re doing it in like an hour because you forgot about it. You woke up, you slept through your alarm, and suddenly you just got to hammer it out. And you still do decent work and get a paper done. That’s Parkinson’s Law in action, where your time for this task was constrained, and by golly, you showed up and you did it.
Phew, you did it! That paper just saved the galaxy!
Jeremy
Yeah, that was essentially most of my college life was that exactly. So, I guess for you then, I mean, have you always—like you’ve always been pretty good with the charting side of things? Or did it take you time to figure that out?
Let's Get Intentional, Intentional
Junaid
It took me time. My residency training was very inpatient-heavy, and clinic is just a completely different beast. In terms of not only the notes, which is probably the thing I was most familiar with, but just the in basket, all the calls, that stuff I didn’t have to deal with nearly as much during residency training.
And I mean, the message I got throughout med school and residency was leave your notes for last. And, you know, I remember being in the hospital at nine o’clock at night, having missed lunch, having missed dinner, being like I just want to go home and eat a meal before I finish these notes. But then being told, “Well, you need to finish your notes before you go home,” and you’re like I only saw 12 patients so how did I not finish any of these notes!?
When I first started my clinic job, I would frequently be the last person leaving and got to know the janitorial staff really well. I had the lights turned out on me in clinic, had security system turned on while I was there and set it off. And so I know how to, you know, disarm and everything now but—
Jeremy
They give you the keys to the shop just to close up?
Junaid
Pretty much! But now it’s not an issue because I was able to get intentional and build systems that work. And yeah, I mean COVID has complicated that, right?. If I get a call from daycare saying there’s an exposure and you have 30 minutes to pick up your kid, I work five minutes away from daycare, so that’s my job to go pick them up. So yeah, I’ll have a chart left open or something. And it’s funny because now if I do leave a chart open, I’m so used to not having charts open that I forget that it’s not done and then come in the next day and be like, “What the heck, what is this charting deficiency you’re alerting me to?!”
But no, I mean, it’s interesting when I compare myself to some of the folks that I help through the program, because they’re missing out on dinner with their kids regularly, bedtime routines, all kinds of stuff, even weekend stuff. One of my clients who made probably the greatest transformation getting through a backlog of 400 charts in eight weeks, went on her first vacation to Disney with her kids and was overjoyed that it was the first trip she’s taken where she didn’t have to take her work laptop with her. And her kids were like—she mentioned something that her kids said: “Who do we have to thank for this?”
Anytime, Keanu. Hope you enjoyed Disney! And hope the forthcoming fourth installment in the Matrix series doesn’t suck!
Two Truths and a Joke
Jeremy
Yeah, I remember working in an office—so I was in another office before I kind of switched just for lifestyle changes. And you know, we’d all post up our pictures of our kids and what they do at school and things. And one of the doctors in the office, her kid had kind of put up—it’s one of those things like, you know, tell us about your mom, tell us about this about them, that about them—and draw a picture. And the picture was the mom sitting at the computer and the subtitle was, “This is my mom finishing her charts at night.” And it’s just like, oh, man, that dagger in the chest.
Junaid
Yeah, I know. I don’t want to go off on a tangent about where charting comes from in general and how it’s impacted medicine and made it less enjoyable, I think overall. But I remember…I just want to tell a story about—there’s somebody I follow on Twitter, a pediatrician, you know. She posted a tweet about her daughter wanting to become a pediatrician, too. And she took one of these career aptitude test things, and she brought the results home to mom in tears saying, “I wanted to be a doctor and this is saying something else.” And her mom said, “Well, let me take a look.” And number one, it said, you know, you could be a data entry clerk, and number two a social worker. And so her mom, the pediatrician, goes, “Oh, perfect. That’s a pediatrician’s job!”
Charting is a big, big issue. And if we can minimize it as much as we can, again, I think that has tremendous repercussions for physicians, their families, and patients, honestly,
As Good a Segue As Any
Jeremy
Definitely. So yeah, kind of transitioning back to the parent life thing. So you said, you know, you guys are a two physician household. You know, for me, I’m the physician, my wife was in accounting, and now she stays at home. Do you feel like for you guys as being in like, two physician household, do you feel like you guys have kind of figured out a good system of, you know, not having to both be spending so much time at work and getting that time with your kids and making it to activities? Or how have you guys balanced that out?
Junaid
You know, I think as much as we’ve tried to balance things 50-50, it hasn’t been, and that’s more sort of negative commentary probably on me. You know, we both now work 0.8 [FTE]—those are changes we made, mine just this last year, and my wife changed to 0.8 after our oldest was born. I think in certain, you know, in some ways, obviously, you know, the pandemic has taken a toll on everyone in so many different ways, but some of the silver linings have been, you know, we had a newborn in the midst of the pandemic. And with everything shut down. I mean, my clinic had actually closed physically, and I was able to work from home for several months. And that was sort of a blessing in disguise. I just got to spend a lot of time at home with our family. So I think we’ve become a very tight nuclear entity, if you will.
Some may even call us the Golden Girls!
Yeah, the balance can be tough at times, but we’ve—my wife and I have—really tried to schedule our schedule so one of us is available in the afternoon, or late afternoon, and assigned to pick up and such. And there’s days where things go, you know, go off the rails and we’ll try to help each other out as best we can. You know this too, and I don’t know if you have family close to you, but my in-laws are in town and just having a village is what helps tremendously.
Remember Southwest Airlines "Wanna Get Away?"
Jeremy
Yeah, definitely having a village is very important. And sadly, none of our family lives where we are. We’re in Omaha, and you know, I grew up in West Virginia. Her family used to be near here, and they’ve all since moved away. So that’s that’s been, you know, for us, one of the biggest struggles is yeah, having that extra help and extra care.
You know, like this past weekend, we had basically like a date weekend. We had something planned Friday night. We had something planned, like all afternoon, Saturday. And it was just like, oh, this is what it feels like to like, maybe have family to take care of your kids. We were just it just—the stars aligned in terms of babysitters being able to, you know, watch our kids.
Our kids were like, “What the heck are you guys doing? You’ve been gone for two days in a row.” Like we didn’t spend the night anywhere where they’re like, “You weren’t here last night to put us to bed, and you weren’t here tonight to put us to bed, what’s going on?” It’s like, “It’s okay. Mom and Dad just needed a break!” But yeah, you absolutely do need a village and you got to find a way to do it. And it’s not easy.
Junaid
We did that same thing just at the end of October. And it was our first, you know, our first time away from our daughter and from our son in so long that the kids are like, “What? What’s going on? What’s happening?” Like, we love that, you know, our grandparents are here spoiling us, but the kids were both like don’t you ever do that again. But also do that again—when’s the next time? My son’s like “When’s the next time we’re going to do that?” Because he got all kinds of gifts and got spoiled rotten.
But that was the first break we’ve taken. I mean, most of our vacation time has been co-opted by COVID exposures [and ensuing quarantines] at daycare. And so we sort of stopped planning stuff for a while, but we were very intentional and thankfully there was no exposure leading into our two days off at the end of October. We actually we stayed in town but actually just went to a hotel for a couple of days by a nice, scenic lake.
Jeremy
Pseudo-staycation kind of thing?
Junaid
Yeah, exactly. My kids—my son was like, “So you guys flew on a plane somewhere?” And we’re like, “No….”
Jeremy
We drove there and just leave it at that. We just drove it, it was far.
Junaid
Really, really far away, a long drive.
Agree with the Boss.
There's a Star Wars Reference in Here Somewhere
Jeremy
So how do you feel like, you know, for you kind of that dad role, being a physician, being a dad, you know, I think in a lot of aspects is really definitely changed for our generation and the generations coming compared to, you know, when our parents were, you know, dads and moms and things like that. Those gender roles, and everything have kind of shifted a little bit. Do you feel like, I guess for you starting off, I mean, who was your father figure growing up? Were you pretty close with your dad or a grandparent or a coach or, you know, who was your person that really felt like helped you? Kind of see what a dad was supposed to be like?
Junaid
So, interestingly on this question, my father is an orthopedic surgeon, and he actually trained in Pakistan. And then we were in England for a number of years. I was actually born in Ireland, and he was in the British system of training. He would get sent to a different hospital for like six months at a time as part of his training. So we were moving constantly when I was young, and then when we finally came to the States, we were in the Midwest. He did some residency training in Indiana, and then we settled and ended up in Iowa and Kansas. But he’s one of those classic surgeon-like-workaholics type. In the UK, he’d have 72 hour calls, so he’d just be gone for three days.
Jeremy
Yep.
Junaid
Actually growing up when I was young, it was I mean, it was my mom who really ran the show. Um, and, you know, when you asked me about a, a father figure, you know, my father was great when he was at home, but it was like, he would need to sleep after 72 hours and he would do trauma calls so pretty exhausting. You know, I had a an older brother, who’s five years older than me, and just moving around. I mean, I think it was just literally my mom filled like every role. I was a total mama’s boy.
The Sins of the Fathers
Junaid
Growing up, it’s, it’s interesting now seeing myself in that fatherly role, because, you know, I was actually interested in surgery. And that sort of got weeded out me in early med school. Just interest-wise, I was more interested in sort of pathology and such so I went into one of the more, you know, more cognitive specialties than procedural. But, you know, I think I have a very different relationship with my kids compared to what my dad had with me, and I really like it.
I mean, I think when I was a kid, I didn’t actually know what my dad’s interests were. I don’t think, I’m not sure he knew what his interests were. At the time. I mean, I knew he liked squash because they’d have a squash court right next to most of the hospitals because that seemed to be what all the docs over there did. And Cricket. But beyond that, I didn’t know much about it.
So, you know, for me, and, you know, my son’s the older of the two but like, he knows I’m a dinosaur nut so he’s a dinosaur nut. We have so much fun just getting into things and it’s like I’m almost reliving my childhood with him in a way, and it’s a ton of fun that way.
As I got older, yeah, I mean, I had some pretty impactful teachers in high school, especially. Not in a fatherly, father figure way. More in a—it was rural Kansas and more like looking for who can sort of, you know, I knew I was gonna try to get to a good college, and who’s gonna help prepare me for that. And that’s where I had a calculus teacher and a history teacher, specifically, who were instrumental in sort of me getting ready for college. But yeah, I mean, I was like—no joke—still am to a degree a complete mama’s boy.
We Are Family, I Got All My Patients With Me
Jeremy
Yeah, I think it’s interesting, you know, because I have a similar background, it’s not exactly. But you know, my dad being a physician and being on call all the time with those kinds of things and it’s tough, I think, trying to—we’re learning as we go, right? I mean, because things are just so different than where they used to be with it. And so, and definitely, I think, as a physician, and you know, kind of leaning back on charting, it’s how do you manage your time, where’s your time focus going to be?
And I think that’s one of the hardest things with being a physician is our job is really to bring more people into our family life and kind of like treat them as family, but then it actually takes away from our actual family. And it’s such a weird balance of life compared to other jobs out there. And so it is such a it’s an interesting, you know, kind of concept of trying to figure out I think.
Junaid
Well, to be on your game for multiple hours every day handling, you know, what turns out to be—I mean, there’s a lot of emotional baggage and obviously dealing with—I don’t mean that negatively—I just mean dealing with health issues is very stressful. And we have to absorb that. Handle that. You know, how do you come home and still have the energy and the wherewithal to sort of be present, and not just see it as, “Oh, now I need to deal with these same things with with my kids or my partner,” and “Oh, great, here it goes, again,” type thing. And I think that’s, that’s challenging, you have to be intentional about that. You know, because you don’t want to be that person that—there’s that Sublime song when I was growing up, Summer Lovin’, I think: “You get home and there’s no love left for me” type thing.
[Ed. Summertime (Doin’ Time) is the actual title…yikes, I was way off! Must have had Grease on my mind…]
You don’t want that to be the case at all, right? Because these are the most important people in your life. So how are you able to show up for them? And, you know, that is a big distinction generationally, right. So for my father, medicine was life, right? For me, it’s a part of life. And you know, I think if you asked him, like, in one word, describe what you are, he’d probably say like, “Surgeon.”
If you asked me, I’d be like, “I don’t know, I’m a lot of things.” “Physician” doesn’t necessarily come to the forefront for me. And not that I don’t take pride in what I do or enjoy what I do. It’s just, I think it’s just one of those changes generationally, and I think it’s a positive change. Because I think burying everything down and just forging ahead with work is not a healthy way to go about living your life.
Droppin' Sage Wisdom
Jeremy
Nope, definitely. I totally agree with that. Yeah and with I mean, I guess with that said, you know, as a dad, as a physician, if you had somebody come up to you at work, be it a resident, be it another physician say, “Hey, I’m about to be a dad.” Or, you know, “I got this young kid, what’s your one piece of advice for me?” What would you tell me? You know, what’s, what’s your one piece of wisdom you would give to me as a dad.
Junaid
So fatherhood is gonna be the hardest thing you’ve ever done. I think I joked with my wife in the early postpartum period after our oldest was born, and I was like, “Oh, my gosh, you know, I’ve spent months overnight taking care of people on a ward, like whole floors of sick people on wards, and by far, helping with you and helping with this newborn, it’s just been the hardest thing ever!” And that was just the immediate postpartum.
[Ed. It goes without saying that my wife had it WAY harder]
It’ll be incredibly hard. It’ll be incredibly rewarding no matter the frustrations along the way. Just watching your little humans develop their personalities, learning to tease and tell jokes, and then just making ever more abstract connections about the world and just putting things together, it’s like insanely joy inducing!
I Got More Where That Came From!
And at the same time, I would say, you know, the thing I wasn’t prepared for was how much my wife and I would change. And how much we almost had to rediscover our relationship with one another now as parents. And it sounds silly, maybe or, you know, maybe you’re like, “Well, duh, yeah, of course, parenthood is such a life altering thing.” But it’s like having to get to know this person that you knew and know, having to get to know them all over again. And there’s a transition when your partner goes from being the most important person in your life to now your children. And I think you just need to be really open about that and talk about it.
Because you might have talked about how things are gonna go when you’re a parent, or like, I’m going to do this or in your mind, you’re like I’m going to be the cool dad, or whatever, and you might have said we’re gonna raise our kids this way, but when your kids come, things change. Things evolve as you go along. And you have to navigate their personalities, and all of that, and it affects your relationship with your partner.
And so you just have to be able to, you know, I guess my advice there would be, just to be aware of that. And it’s completely normal. No matter how disconcerting it might seem that the person you thought you knew most and best in the world seems like they’re different all of a sudden, because you’re also different to them. And you have to navigate that while trying to keep these little helpless beings alive!
Wait, what happened!? Who are you?
Jeremy
Yeah, I think that, you know, I think that’s really, that’s really good advice. Actually, that’s the first time I’ve had somebody comment on it like that. Because, yeah, it’s when it’s just you and your spouse, you know, all the stresses of life then are totally different than when you’re a parent. And you start to see, like, maybe how they were raised is coming out when they when you have the kids and it’s like, “I’ve never seen that side of you before. Let’s dive into this a little bit.” But maybe not as more than I want to here and how am I going to handle it? So no, that’s—I like that. That’s really good advice. That’s good.
Someone Look This Up for Us...Seriously
Junaid
I’m curious if there’s, if there’s degrees of change based on like the order of the number of child you were. Right? So I’m the baby of two, my wife’s the oldest of four. So I probably changed more because I was used to probably being the baby, you know, stereotypically getting more attention. And, you know, there’s enough separation between me and my brother where I was able to get all my parents’ attention when he was five, where she was almost in that maternalistic role, especially for her youngest sibling. So I’m wondering if there’s…I haven’t looked at any of the data out there anything I’m sure there’s something about that. But I’d be curious.
Jeremy
I have to go look that up now, research and and homework for me to do. I’ll have to go figure that out.
Junaid
Don’t add it to your plate. Somebody will comment in here.
Jeremy
Yeah, somebody out there, do that for us! That’d be great!
Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace
Jeremy
Well, I really appreciate you taking time out of your day and talking dad life with me, and you know, talking about the charting side of things. Again, I think that’s, I mean, it’s such an important thing that, sadly, we aren’t really taught much in, you know, residency and med school and all that.
And, you know, I try to push the importance of it, you know, we have a new partner in our office this year, and I just keep telling her, “You get it done here. You can’t—don’t save it for later.” But it’s still hard until you unless you actually put the work in to try to do it. So, yeah, I don’t know, if you have anything else to say about that specifically, or any other comments on anything?
Umm…how much time do you have!?
Junaid
I mean, I think for your physician listeners out there, if you’re struggling with charting, there are strategies, yes, but a lot, again, a lot of it is your mindset, and how you’re approaching charting. And a lot of that is the narratives we’ve constructed for ourselves or that have been told to us that we’re supposed to adopt, and how that impacts how we think things are supposed to go.
And once you—it’s almost for a lot of my clients, it’s been like a light bulb. Like you just point that out. And you go through examples of it, and you start asking them, “How does that show up in your life?” And when you start thinking about these things, you start realizing like, “Oh, my goodness, I totally do that!” Or yes, there’s, you know, the anxiety of a patient waiting in an exam room, if it’s been five or 10 minutes even, and spending only two minutes finishing this chart now, that overwhelming anxiety, like I have to go see them before closing that chart. And then at 10pm tonight that chart is going to take 10-15 minutes. You multiply that by your 34 patients and that’s a lot of extra time you’re spending working.
So know that there are ways to make things better for yourself. And it starts with just being thoughtful and intentional about like, “How’s my day going? And how can how can I make it better? Like what’s what’s a simple way that I could make it make a change.”
Jeremy
More great advice from the charting coach, so I appreciate it! Well, thanks again, man. Thanks for taking that time out, and chatting dad life again, and we’ll have to bring you back on the show again sometime to talk more about it, all right?
Junaid
Certainly!
Cue the Outro!
Jeremy
Okay, I’d like to thank Dr. Niazi again for coming on the show and talking dad life with me, talking about charting and those kind of things. And hopefully you got something out of that. I know I did. Even though you know, I am very particular about charting in my work, because I do not want to chart at home. I still find myself with some hiccups here and there and I find myself, you know, some varying mindsets when it comes to charting and I’m sure you guys do too out there.
So if you haven’t checked him out yet again, there’s gonna be some links to his blog and his other links in the show notes. So check that out! Embrace the imperfections and see you next time!
That was a fun interview and I think we touched upon some really insightful ideas related to parenting and charting.
Just so you know, if charting is a struggle for you, then I can help. You can learn more and join that program I referenced in the interview, Charting Conquered, by clicking here.
What did you think of our interview? Any big takeaways? Let me know in the comments!
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