Ep4: Dr. Kamran Mirza, MD PhD on emotional intelligence

Kamran Mirza, MD, PhD is an academician and social media guru who affirms the importance of emotional intelligence for pathologists, who often are not directly patient-facing. He speaks on being aware of your emotions, sharing, and taking a moment to reset. Hear more about Dr. Mirza on https://anchor.fm/medicus/episodes/Ep24--Dr--Kamran-Mirza---twitterhomework--103--pathology--and-more-e52ia9; Twitter handle: @KMirza

Transcript

[00:00:00] Christine J. Ko: Welcome to SEE HEAR FEEL. I'm very excited today to be talking to Dr. Kamran Mirza. Dr. Kamran Mirza has many titles, including Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Medical Education, Vice Chair of Education in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and Program Director of Hematopathology Fellowship, as well being Associate Program Director, Pathology Residency Program at Loyola. He attended medical school in Pakistan and graduate school at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He received a PhD in Pharmacology and Vascular Biology at that institution. His AP/CP pathology residency training and fellowships in hemepath and thoracic pathology were at the University of Chicago Hospitals. He also completed a Fellowship in Medical Education, Research, Innovation, Teaching and Scholarship abbreviated MERITS. He's internationally recognized and known for his educational efforts on social media. And he has received numerous awards. Hear more about Dr. Mirza on different podcasts. I'll put a link in the show notes and his Twitter handle is @KMirza. 

[00:01:02] Can you tell me, as well as the listeners, a little bit more about who you are? 

[00:01:06] Kamran Mirza: I love that with that introduction, it doesn't necessarily say who I am. That's so funny. That the question is, who I am? I guess it depends. I'd like to think of myself as a good human being. I'm a girl dad, like you and I were talking before the recording started. I have three daughters. I'm a husband, a son, and a brother. I think of myself as an educator. To be honest with you, I think if I consider the first professional attribute of myself, it would probably be education. Probably the reason why I got into medicine and pathology specifically as well. I'd like to think I'm a mentor. I am really always looking out for the next generation of physicians and pathologists and how their career trajectories are. I feel like the best way to give back or give thanks to my mentors, and there's so many of them, is to continue that legacy of mentorship. So educator pathologist looking really passionately about pathways to Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and advocacy for our field of diagnostics. That's how I would describe myself. 

[00:02:06] Christine J. Ko: That's wonderful. I love how you started with "a good human being", because I've been thinking a lot, and hearing and reading a lot of things these days about how a lot of times, so much of our identity when someone asks who you are: it's, Oh, I'm a doctor or, you're associate program director, but say that's taken away from you... then are you no longer you? Being a good human being... you could hopefully always be that. I appreciate your answer.

[00:02:35] One of the things I wanted to cover with you is emotional intelligence and the role that emotions play in the various things you do and how you teach. Could you tell me a little bit about how you use emotions and emotional intelligence? 

[00:02:51] Kamran Mirza: That's such a beautiful question, honestly. Let me start by saying that typically when you think of a pathologist or a diagnostician who isn't always facing the patient, one often thinks that there might not be an emotional quotient or like an EQ that we're using. I would like to say that's not the case. I know this patient, it is a young girl. And I know her without ever having seen her. And whenever her name pops up onto our queues, she's someone that I can connect with in the sense, because I actually had the honor, or kind of the sad honor, to diagnose her with leukemia several years ago, and her leukemia's back. It actually made me pause several times during the day. I carried the weight of that information home with me. As I was driving home, I was thinking about her. I don't know what she looks like, but I was thinking, and the first moment that I had when I saw my own daughter, who was that age, and I hugged her, good evening, I thought of that patient. I would like to think that we keep that emotion of, Okay, this is a patient. We are changing this patient's life. It could be giving them a malignant diagnosis, or it could be telling them that they don't have a malignancy either way. The outcome is very life changing, that my decisions are guided by that. Whether it's about, should I order another stain? That will cost the patient money or should I order another ancillary test that will cost the patient money? I think about it as if this was my biopsy. Would I want that extra stain done? And if the answer is yes, then I feel better about making that happen.

[00:04:22] Christine J. Ko: That's wonderful, that part of the way you use emotional intelligence, it sounds like, is you're aware of your feelings. And then also at the scope, you're constantly remembering there's a patient behind each and every diagnosis that you're making. 

[00:04:37] Kamran Mirza: That's correct. I want to mention two people. One is Dr. Eva Wojcik, who's the Chair of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. And I attribute this quote to her. She often says that healing begins with the diagnosis, the right diagnosis. Behind every slide is a patient, she says that quite often as well. The other person I'd like to mention is Dr. Ameet Kini, who's my Director of Hemepath here. Very good friend and amazing physician. He always talks about how our job as pathologists is to convert analog data that we're seeing visually into digital kind of yes, no data. And I think that whole process is suffused with emotional intelligence. It has to be, right? It has to be so that we can be good physicians. If we aren't thinking about it from the patient's perspective, then we're not really being physicians at all. We're just being mechanical, robotic people. It comes back to not being crippled. I don't want to be crippled under the weight of the emotion. Because it could be I'm so close to this slide and that patient that I just can't process my thinking. We can choose to be as emotionally intelligent as we want to be about it, which is freeing.

[00:05:37] Christine J. Ko: Yes, that is true. That is something also, that's important to researchers in emotional intelligence, they talk about being aware and being able to manage those feelings so that they aren't crippling. Given your background in education and having taught for so long, do you think there are techniques that are useful for, everyone's different, but certain techniques that many trainees do find useful to help manage emotions so that they aren't crippled?

[00:06:05] Kamran Mirza: That's a really very cool question. There isn't any formal education that I think we receive, at least not in many institutions that I know of, that teaches you how to cope with those emotions. And I think that the way we cope with them is just by experience just by sharing with other co-residents and through a shared learning experience.

[00:06:24] And so we're looking at aspects which create an environment where our trainees can thrive as opposed to being crippled. I think that if we keep focus on the diagnostic findings and what, how that can benefit others, I think that will keep us focused. 

[00:06:41] Christine J. Ko: Be aware of that experience and then be able to share it. I recently heard a definition of burnout that I think relates to that. Not necessarily talking about burnout in a healthcare setting, but it was burnout in general. The definition was that burnout is when someone has an emotion that is not fully experienced in the sense that it's not recognized, you're not aware of it, and you don't come through it all the way. The emotion's like a tunnel, you get stuck there, and you never make it out into the light. 

[00:07:14] Kamran Mirza: Yeah. 

[00:07:14] Christine J. Ko: I think that's exactly what you are saying that we have experience X, whatever that is, and if we can share that with someone else, that is making your way out of that tunnel. 

[00:07:26] Kamran Mirza: I love that definition. Think about grief, for example. I know that's a crazy difficult one to talk about, and I don't want this to be about grief, but for example, my father passed away last year. And I think that processing that grief, for example, for me, was a tunnel. Sometimes I feel like I've come out of the tunnel. It's been over half a year now. And sometimes in many ways I feel like I'm still in the tunnel. But I think that I'm at a point where through loved ones caring for me, or me being able to share or verbalize what I'm feeling, is also part of my EQ.

[00:07:56] Christine J. Ko: Do you think that your EQ from work translates directly to home or vice versa? Do the techniques you use at home or work, do you use them in each situation or is it different? 

[00:08:07] Kamran Mirza: Our experiences in life do guide the way we approach things. I think that's the beauty of humanity, that everybody will be doing things differently. I do think you have to tap into an EQ portion of yourself for both aspects of life, professional and personal. I think that lessons learned from one or the other can be applied and leveraged in the opposite setting. I think that people who learn those lessons and who can apply them appropriately are probably more competent in either setting.

[00:08:38] That said, though, if you're having a difficult time at home or a difficult time at work, you may be in tunnels. I might be short with my children because I've had a difficult day at work or vice versa. I might be short with my colleagues because I've had a difficult day at home.I don't know if there's a right answer, but I do think that we're probably learning. And using those lessons in the settings that we're in. 

[00:09:00] Christine J. Ko: I started learning about emotions at home. When my daughter was in kindergarten, she came home, and she was learning this at school. She was telling me she needed to be able to say how she was feeling. So then I'm trying to help her. And I realized, I don't know how I'm feeling. 

[00:09:15] Kamran Mirza: I love how we learn things through our children. I had a similar experience with my middle one, and when she was in elementary school, they were asked to take a five-minute time out, just time out and not like in a punishment sense but in the sense of, take a time out and come to terms with what you're feeling.

[00:09:30] I remember there was like a relatively stressful situation. I was talking to my middle child. It wasn't such a big deal either. And she just looked at me and she's, "Dad, I think I need, I just think I need a few minutes to reset." And I was like, Reset what? And she said, Just reset my emotions. I was so proud of her because I don't know if I take a few minutes to reset how I'm feeling. I didn't have that. We weren't given that type of space. I went to an all-boys school, like very stiff upper lip, all-boys school in South Asia. The last thing you need are leaders that don't know how to process their emotions, and then devastating effects happen. And so hopefully we're doing right for our children. 

[00:10:03] Christine J. Ko: Absolutely. Yeah. Your daughter sounds awesome. She's an emotionally intelligent leader right there because I learned from talking to David Caruso, an expert in emotional intelligence. He said that space is critical. That space of taking the time to be self-aware. Take the space before you react. 

[00:10:22] Do you have any final thoughts? 

[00:10:24] Kamran Mirza: I hope that we can reassure people that for the most part, your pathologist, who is your physician behind the scenes is also making decisions in an emotionally intelligent manner.

[00:10:34] I love that. Thank you so much, Kamran, for being here, I really appreciate being able to talk to you. 

[00:10:39] It was my pleasure. Thank you.