Welcome to the Becker's Healthcare podcast. I'm Chris
Sosa, your host. And until today, to be
joined by two guests, pediatrician doctor Shannon Hayes
and doctor Beverly Lee, who both practice at
tech Texas Children's Pediatrics.
Beverly and Shannon, thank you so much for
joining us today. How are you? Great. Thank
you. We're great. Thanks for having us. So
wonderful.
First, I just wanna give you both an
opportunity,
to introduce yourselves. Shannon, can you tell us
a little bit about your background?
Sure.
I
I attended Baylor College of Medicine,
which is also where my little colleague here
went to.
And then I went and did my residency
and internship at Texas Children's Hospital.
I initially started private practice,
and I did that for twelve years before
coming over to Texas Children's Hospital. And I've
been in the same practice since then.
Thank you, Shannon. Alright. So, Beverly, tell us
a bit about your background. I am a
native Houstonian as well.
I went to Baylor College of Medicine for
med school, similar to doctor Hayes, and also
did my training at Texas Children's Hospital
after residency.
I did do a chief resident year, which
is an additional year of training at Texas
Children's right at the start of the COVID
pandemic. And then I joined doctor Hayes' practice,
Texas Children's Pediatrics Braesewood, which we are at
right now.
And I have been working here as an
attending for the past five years.
Excellent. Thank you for giving our audience an
insight into how your careers have flowed so
far. We'll get into more of that, of
course. The arc of this story that we're
gonna touch on today is just so very
heartwarming
because it is a great example of how
mentorship just is able to proliferate throughout
not only medical community, but the patients that
you serve. So I wanna give you both
a chance to explain
and tell us all about how you know
each other
and why it's important to be mentors to
not only,
each other, Shannon, you to Beverly, but Beverly
yourself to other,
budding physicians.
So, Shannon, why don't you take us through
how you came to know Beverly?
Yeah. So,
when I was in
practice initially, Beverly came to me as a
first year medical student. We have a program
that the time was called patient physician society.
It's when first year medical students come out
every other week
for a year to a generally primary care
practice, and the intent is literally to learn
how to do physical exam.
So each week, they come with a different
system that they've been studying and will learn
how to do that physical exam. So they
come to our office. We help guide them
through how that works.
So she did a year with me
as that
student.
A few years later,
she came again as a,
medical student that was doing her core pediatric
rotation,
and she spent two weeks with me.
And I loved her every time, asked her
to try to come back when she could,
and she did. And then when she started
residency,
she actually,
joined my offices, her continuity clinic.
And that entails residents come in and work
in your clinic once a week for three
years. So they literally learn
the basics of pediatrics.
They learn
everything. In the hospital, especially when you're associated
with a great hospital like Texas Children's, you
have such volume that in the hospital you
see such
acute care with very chronically ill kids, sick
kids.
And so part of the residency program is
to come out to the community into general
pediatrician offices
and really learn
the everyday
medicine of pediatrics.
And so she was my resident for three
years, and the whole time as she was
nearing towards her finished
date, I was
harassing my administration
to,
make sure that I could hire her and
she could join my practice, because that's all
I wanted.
And she did, and we've been working together
for five years, and it's been amazing.
Well, I'm so glad you got that wish,
Shannon. So, Beverly, from your point of view,
what drew you to pediatric in general and
to then to Texas Children's?
Sure.
I knew from a very early age I
wanted to do medicine.
Pediatrics was just a natural fit. I've always
loved children. I love taking care of them.
I think pediatrics
is such a unique field in that we
get to partner with the patient and their
families from the time they are born to
the time they launch into adulthood.
And it is that longitudinal relationship that drew
me into pediatrics and keeps me in pediatrics.
We love the fields. We love our patients.
We love our families.
I
have loved working with doctor Hayes since
it was eight years of my training with
her and now five years out of training.
So we've been together for a long time.
I viewed my time with doctor Hayes now
looking back more like an apprenticeship,
if anything, and I think that's super rare
in medicine these days to have that true
apprenticeship
type
of relationship.
So I remember learning the bread and butter
basic physical exam when I was a first
year and then getting on to the nuances
of how to form a differential,
how to form treatment plans.
But I feel like those eight years were
instrumental
for me in forming the type of pediatrician
I am today. I remember just taking mental
notes of everything she did, how she did
a physical exam,
how she spoke to patients and their families,
anticipatory
guidance,
how to create that bond and trust with
families.
It's really helpful now as partners and as
colleagues because we share a lot of patients.
When I'm not available,
my patients will see her. When her she's
not available, her patients will see me. And
it creates a good seamless continuity of care
because we practice so similarly,
and we know what each other are thinking.
We can often
patients really don't notice a difference when one
of us cannot be there for certain reasons.
So it's caused a lot of just harmony
in our clinic and in our patient care.
Bradley, I'm so glad, in particular, you mentioned
this aspect
of apprenticeship and mentorship. It's such a a
wonderful point
in in any industry, including my own, including
yours. It's one thing for you to walk
into
any sort of career and be handed a
playbook. Have someone say, oh, here are the
things you should do. You could read in
the book, watch a video, whatever. It's entirely
different thing to have someone say, you know
what? I'm gonna help you out because it's
important. You know? Not only does it help
me, but more importantly, it helps you as
as the learner. Right? So as we get
into that so for you, Shannon,
so as a mentor, how would you define
that and what does it mean to you?
Well, I had a really good mentor myself.
And so when I, first started out, I
had a a physician named Nancy Berger, and
she was my mentor. For three years, I
was also in her continuity clinic,
and then I went to work for her.
And
it was from her that I learned how
important mentorship was because I learned every every
aspect of physical exam that I know was
from that from doctor Burt.
And I recently,
got to visit her in the hospital. She
came into town for the for a hospital
issue, unfortunately.
And I actually got to thank her and
tell her how amazing she was for me
and how much it meant to me,
that she spent so much time and effort
with me. And it really made me kind
of appreciate even more my bond with, Beverly
because
we really
it's a special
bond that you get. It's important to me
with mentorship and primary care, especially in pediatrics
that, yes, I'm helping her to teach her
how to do physical exam, how to do
differentials, how to diagnose and treat patients. But
equally important to me is, how are you
a working mom? How are you a wife?
How are you,
you know, shuttling back and forth between clinic
and going to teacher,
you know, lunches that you can't possibly make,
but you're gonna make because you're trying to
be superhuman?
And I think what I like to do
with my residents
is
teach them that medicine is absolutely worth doing,
and it's going to be hard.
But
I understand how hard it is, and I'm
here to help you. Because, really,
it is a very
rewarding lifestyle,
but there are many times where you might
wanna quit because of how hard it is
to raise a family
and work at the same time and be
married.
And so I I hopefully am here to
be a pillar for them to to go,
okay. Can be done. We're we're good.
Beverly, I wanna ask you the same thing.
I mean, your perspective is a little different
because you've had Shannon as a as a
mentor, but you're working toward,
becoming a mentor yourself. I actually, I take
that back. I think you're there already.
But I'm gonna let you explain that, what
your journey as a mentor has been like,
whether it's related to Shannon or otherwise.
Yeah. That's a great question. I totally agree
with what doctor Hayes says. I think as
much as it is important that we are
learning from our mentors regarding the medicine,
it is equally just as important
to see our mentors as full persons in
regards to their physicians, but they're also
wives or husbands,
mothers and fathers,
members
of their community.
And
I have learned so much from doctor Paige
just watching her,
raise a family in the midst of
being a pediatrician
so much so that I have followed her
footsteps pretty much to a t.
And I have raised my own two boys,
fresh out of residency.
And
turning to her, whether it's as a patient
or as a colleague, asking her the same
questions.
Things like
breastfeeding
and
balancing just work life
in general.
And so I think that mentorship component of
the whole person is super important and something
that I want to continue to do as
well. Chief residency gave me an introduction to
mentorship. We are basically mentors
to the residency program as a whole. That's
really where I got my first taste as
being a mentor instead of being a mentee.
I would have many residents come into my
office asking about career tracks, asking about,
different situations with co residents.
And I understood the importance of being there
for them, being a listening ear, providing the
wisdom that I had or some guidance that
I could provide.
And at Texas Children's Pediatrics, not only in
our clinic, but in many clinics
here, we value having learners in our clinic.
I think it is extremely important to have
them. We have first through fourth year medical
students,
but we also have residents who are with
us for their continuity clinic, like doctor Pays
mentioned, for us for three years.
And
mentorship can often feel like we are giving
ourselves
to them, but they give just as much
back to us.
We
benefit from them each and every day that
we have them. They are often the most
up to date on evidence based medicine, being
in the hospital and getting
all these lectures about what's coming out. And
so they keep us fresh with the evidence,
they keep us up to date, and they
keep us accountable
to doing things that are scientific and evidence
based, so we appreciate that. We also
see either useful joy and passion on why
they came into medicine, especially those young med
students who are just eager to learn. And
it reminds us of why we are here.
And so we
love having learners at Texas Children's Pediatrics. It
is a core component of our clinic, and
we hope to continue to do it for
many more years.
When you look at that learning environment
at Texas Children's Pediatrics,
this is a question for either or both
of you. So how do you see that
momentum building? I mean, I I'm hoping
I'm gonna go out of it and say
that you are not the only two mentors
at this organization.
So how do you feel that that is
again, the momentum is building at your organization?
You know, Texas Children's Pediatrics
has really
grown.
We are, in fact, celebrating our thirty year
anniversary,
which is a huge mile stone for us
as an organization.
We are extremely proud to be a part
of this organization. And from the get go,
Texas Children's Hospital has always been about being
a teaching hospital. That was the way it
was designed from the get go, and it
is
carried hopefully into our everyday
clinics and not just the hospital now because
we are such a wide network of clinics
throughout the Houston and Greater Texas area, actually.
So we hope that we can be examples
to other clinics saying that it can be
done. It is hard when we have very
busy long days to think, how can I
even incorporate a medical student
in this type of environment where patients
need to be seen at a quickly and
efficiently?
But
we like to show them that it can
be done, and
patients
tend to love having an extra learner. They
are an extra set of ears. They're an
extra set of eyes for us. They get
to know our patients. And similarly to me
and doctor Hayes, I was here with eight
years getting to know these patients. And so
they have seen me grow up from medical
student onto being an attending now. And so
it has been a rewarding experience, and we
hope to continue
showing other clinics, those who are hesitant about
having a mentorship,
relationship with students that it is worth doing.
Thank you both for sharing that. And hopefully,
the momentum does build within Texas Children's and
other places, obviously, in in the medical community.
I'm curious, though,
what is something because being a mentor
lends itself to learning about yourself,
no doubt. So what is something each of
you has learned about yourself just from this
whole process?
Of course. So I would say that one
of the things I've learned is that students
come and residents come from very various different
backgrounds,
and various different levels of training
even within the same year of of training.
And one of the things I've learned is
that I've have to have to become very
adaptable
to the differences in that level of training
and in the difference in differences in personalities.
And over the years, I think I've just
gotten better at that.
I I think that's a great tool to
have certainly,
for anyone, including a medical professional.
Lastly, I simply wanna give you both a
chance to let our audience know what advice
you'd give to someone who's considering
a career in medicine.
I think for myself,
thinking if I was that high school or
college age student
interested in pursuing
medicine, I would remind them that this is
a delayed gratification
road.
Medicine
is a long journey,
and it can be very hard and challenging
at times. But in the end, it is
extremely rewarding. There is not a career like
it, especially us being in pediatrics where
you get to see
healthy children flourish because of the integral role
that you play in their lives.
So it is worth it, but it is
long and it is hard at times. And
so I would say find a support system,
whether that's family or friends or peers that
wanna do it with you or mentors along
the way, I think that having that support
to remind you of why you're doing it
and to help you along the way is
extremely important to keep you on the road
and the journey that is medicine.
Yeah. And I would say that I just
think medicine is a calling. I mean, it's
it's
a you're either in it with your heart
or you're not. And and anyone that says
they don't wanna approach medicine these days because
of
the way medicine is or the problems in
health care, I just think that's maybe it's
not for them because this is really a
gift to be able to be a physician.
And specifically to be a pediatrician, it's like
being a superstar without all the fame. I
mean, you walk in every room and they're
like, doctor Hayes.
And they jump up in the air and
come hug you. And so it feels like
a rock star every single day of my
of my work.
Even when I'm dealing with really difficult situations,
I can walk in the next room and
just be greeted with this great hug,
and it's such a meaningful career.
And I just don't think there's anything like
it, so I would never turn anyone away.
I I encourage everyone that's slightly interested in
coming into it because it's a great deal.
Shannon, Beverly, thank you again so much for
spending some time with us and letting our
audience know
what your journey has been like with each
other as mentors, as pediatricians.
We're gonna love sharing this story, and we
can't wait till the next time we get
to connect with you. Thank you. Thanks for
having us.