Dr Paula Johns Optometrist talks to Dr Trosclair on A Doctors Perspective Podcast

Our fabulous guest today is Paula Johns Doctor of Optometry.  She studied at University of Alabama at Birmingham and is currently finishing her masters of Public Health in Epidemiology at Harvard. Yes, that Harvard. The program is 3 weeks on campus in the summer with the rest being online learning.  She has a passion for research especially in diseases that could be prevented, like diabetes.  Long term Dr. Paula may go into hospital administration, Chief Optometrist or applied research.  Currently she enjoys being a practicing optometrist as well as the Residency Director.

Before graduating, students need to learn time management with patients as well as knowing which tests to order for different conditions.   You can’t order everything.  Doctors, make sure you schedule down time otherwise time will get away from you and the burnout happens.

Show notes can be found at www.adoctorsperspective.net/11 here you can also find links to things mentioned, the Travel Tip and the interview transcription.

Zaditor or a non preservative or disappearing preservative eye drop like GenTeal or TheraTears is handy for dry climates.

Bodum French Press: cheap and delicious , just don’t drink the last two sips

Urban planning book called Happy City Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design, Charles Montgomery : is her recommendation.

Doc scanner.  Take a picture (receipt, file, paper) and coverts it to a pdf

[su_box title=”Travel Tip” box_color=”#292929″ title_color=”#D56A00″]Investigate smaller local airlines like Southwest, Ryan Air, or Ctrip[/su_box]

[su_spoiler title=”Full Transcript of the Interview (probably has some grammatical errors). Just Click to expand”]

Justin Trosclair 0:02
Episode 11 continue the journey. I’m your host, Dr. Justin trust Claire. Today, we’re Dr. Paula John’s perspective

for doctors who want a thriving, practice and abundant. Listen as your host, Dr. Justin first player goes behind the curtain and doctors and guess about real world triumph struggles, practical tips, and entertainment. And this episode, a doctor.

Good day, a doctor’s perspective listeners really appreciate you really appreciate your time. I do request for feedback, you hit me up on Instagram are on the website itself. Just let me know what you think where can we make some improvements, I’m always trying to grow and make it better. If you feel like you could be a good guest on the show. Just give me a quick email. We can talk no problem. Today on the show. We have Dr. Paula John’s doctor of optometry from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She works in a rural based Hospital in New Mexico. And she is furthering her education. And she talks about that that’s what we call the episode continuing the journey. Because we’re always learning we’re always have to learn more things and, and she’s very passionate about that should give you a couple of a couple eyeball tips, and a very helpful app on your phone for business. Are y’all ready for another great interview? Before we do it, I was talking to people about personal branding. And I heard way back in 2007 or 2008. They were like you know you could have multiple clinics in your life. But you know it never changes your name. So I always had Dr. Justin trust Claire calm. And so I’ve had to clinics, you just have like a redirect to whatever your name is. So you can advertise with you know, biotech chiropractic calm and it would redirect to talk to Justin transcript. But on Facebook, for some reason, always kept it as a clinic. And so what I decided to do was combine I had to own pages with different people on different ones and you know, releasing a podcast when a book speaking engagements, I was like, Man, it’s just too many things to manage, and then you lose people that may be interested. And I don’t know, I’ve talked to people and they’re like, Well, you know, there’s pluses and minus two at all. So actually, this week, I starting to combine the two together. And then the bottom things and take about a month to kind of repost a few things, get everything situated and then I’m gonna just combine those two and I don’t know if you should do it. Like said there’s pros and cons maybe ask your your famous and favorite SEO person, but maybe that’s something that you can do. Now I did hear about Facebook reviews to graffiti a wall graffiti a page, if you will. So a screenshot all my Google reviews, Facebook reviews, Facebook, five stars, put them together as a, you know, several different images, put them on my testimony page. And you know, it looks like Facebook, you know, before you might have videos you might have you know, I have a lot of different styles on my own words like, alternate left and right picture with words. And without the written testimony. And then just one after another Boom, boom, boom, side by side, but so I combine them one big page. So I did that the other day, put them all together. Dr. Justin tro squared. com slash testimonies, if you’re interested in seeing what that looks like. Anyway, I’ve heard good things from different salespeople and marketers. See what you think. The last thing I said before we got merchant dice. If you want to pick them up and support the podcast, go ahead and do that last thing before the interview that Kindle version of today’s choices, tomorrow’s health small tips to improve health food choices and exercise. Got the proof in just going over it right now. Should have it approved ready to go next week. Kindle still available. And you’ll notice the the end you can still sign up for the free version if you’d like. Stay tuned the very end for the travel tip. Let’s go hashtag behind the curtain.

Today on the show we have Dr. Paula John’s doctor of optometry from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is now working in the glory is overlooked state of New Mexico. Welcome to the show.

Unknown 4:03
Thank you.

Justin Trosclair 4:06
I like it there. I mean, there’s a lot of snow and you just don’t. I don’t know you just don’t only think about New Mexico too often. But no

Unknown 4:11
New Mexico is beautiful. It’s got all the different terrains, there’s ski hills, there’s desert, there’s Santa Fe, there’s rural areas. It’s pretty great. You know, I had a random when I first had my clinic in Colorado, it was straight out of Santa Fe. Everything that chairs had the classic little Pete triangles after

Justin Trosclair 4:32
that, so you know, no offense, like Santa Fe decorations, but I was not. It’s an acquired taste.

Unknown 4:37
For sure. Yeah.

Justin Trosclair 4:39
renew the lease in that redecorate.

Unknown 4:44
Oh my goodness.

Justin Trosclair 4:45
Well tell us how did you decide to become an optometrist? You probably didn’t know this, but that was my original plan. And then I did not over the chiropractic. So yeah. Okay, now back to you.

Unknown 4:57
So in undergrad, I always wanted to to be some kind of a medical professional. And for the longest time I was pre med. And then I realized about my senior year of college, that I wanted to work on eyeballs, but I did not really want to do surgery. So I was talking to one of my advisors and she said, Well, what about optometry? And I thought, oh, gosh, those people just two glasses all day long. I don’t want to do that. And, and then I realized that optometrists actually do a lot more than just glasses. And I realized that was actually exactly what I wanted to do, because I wanted to spend more time with patients and not more time in surgery, so it just seemed like a good fit for me.

Justin Trosclair 5:40
And what do you do? What else do you do besides glasses? For those who are just oblivious to it?

Unknown 5:47
Yeah, so so I like in optometry to primary care eyeballs, and then ophthalmologist to more surgical care eyeballs. So as optometrists, we can prescribe pretty much any medication treats ocular disease, glaucoma, or

Unknown 6:05
macular degeneration. We see kids we see adults, we see elderly people, and in some states, we can do some forms of lasers and minor procedures but no cataract surgery or anything like that. So primary care eyes versus surgical eyes is is my quick definition, I guess of what optometry does make sense to me.

Justin Trosclair 6:29
Do you have I guess, in general is an optometrist but also more specific to you or their specialties? And subspecialties? Yeah,

Unknown 6:36
yeah, there’s so you can do residency is in optometry. They’re not required. Similar to dentist, you can go into practice right after and not have to do a year residency. But there’s residencies in vision therapy, you can specialize an ocular disease, you can specialize in pediatrics. There’s a lot of traumatic brain injury stuff. So TBI, that’s a new thing, especially in the VA is

Unknown 7:03
you can do primary care. There’s a lot of different specialties. I think most people are probably still primary care. But there’s a lot of different modes of practice that you can concentrate on if you want to. And I’m guessing you can knit like when you niche down, you can market that and maybe work. Do you guys all work in

Justin Trosclair 7:22
private practice or other hospital opportunities? Or do you work in like the mall or just offices predominantly, or what’s your view?

Unknown 7:30
I think there’s a good mix. So in the past private practice was where most people work, they would own their own private practices and an open it in a town and stay there for their whole career. Now, there’s a lot of hospital based practice. So myself, I work in a small hospital.

Unknown 7:48
There are vas employ a lot of optometrists. So there’s hospital practices with VA. And then there’s a lot of optometrist and od MD practices, as well. group practices, referral practices, things like that. So I would say, now the majority of optometrists would still be in private practice, but those other modes of practice are expanding pretty rapidly. I’m curious if you worked in a multi disciplinary clinic, know the MD do od? Is that going to pay you better than working at a big box store? I actually don’t know. Because I have no experience with either for

Unknown 8:26
I know that the retail setting usually pays pretty well.

Unknown 8:32
Because it’s it’s high volume. And you’re seeing a lot of patients. So usually private practice, you’ll make the most because you own your own practice. And then the big box stores are probably be next and then hospital od MD would be after that. But I really have no basis for saying that. That’s just my feelings. My buddies

Justin Trosclair 8:55
in the same profession.

Kramer from but maybe in a hospital setting, you’re probably going to do a lot more exotic. Everybody does exams, but looking more for the glaucoma was looking for the retinal issues, more the pathologies versus private practice who kind of screens but that’s just me thinking that way? I don’t know.

Unknown 9:14
Yeah, I in my hospital setting. We see a lot of diabetics, there’s a lot of just sick people who come through the hospital. So there’s a lot of eyeball stuff going on. private practices, though, depending on where you are. So say there’s someone that is in a rural area and in private practice, and they’re the only eye care professional within, you know, an hour or so then they’re going to see a lot of stuff just like I do. If you’re a private practice in, you know, uptown New Orleans, serving rich people, you might not see as much crazy pathology as you would elsewhere. Yeah, so probably just depends on where you’re located.

Justin Trosclair 9:53
Very good. Do you have any misconceptions about the profession that you would like to clear up right now?

Unknown 9:58
I think I already touched on one, just that we just do glad. Yes.

Justin Trosclair 10:01
Yeah, that’s probably the biggest one.

Unknown 10:04
I think that is the biggest one. I think that that was my perception before I decided to go to Optometry school. So I can definitely understand that other people will feel the same way. I think there’s a lot of confusion about what is an optician versus what is an optometrist versus what is an ophthalmologist? Um, but yeah, I just want to clear up that we do more than glasses

Justin Trosclair 10:24
because the optician is the glasses and contacts person, right?

Unknown 10:27
Yeah, we we do optometrists do glasses and contacts. I say it’s a big part of our practice, but it’s not the only part of our practice.

Justin Trosclair 10:36
I mean that the optician i thought was the person that the optometrist passes you on to, to fit you in the office and actually sells you on what you need and everything.

Unknown 10:45
Yeah, the repetitions are the experts in fitting glasses, measurements, things like that. I totally respect what they do, because I’m super bad at it.

Justin Trosclair 10:54
Is that something they train? Or is it on the job training?

Unknown 10:58
It can be both? I think there’s there’s training programs, we can also on the job training as well. Interesting. Yeah, there, there are certain there are certifications, para optometric certifications, which would be I guess, like a physician’s assistant for optometrist. And then there’s also a petition certifications as well.

Justin Trosclair 11:17
Okay. Now, before before we went live, you mentioned you’re getting a master’s degree at Harvard. Tell us about that. And why did you choose to go even further? And how does that how’s that gonna help you?

Unknown 11:30
Yes. So I am in the process, again, a Masters of Public Health and Epidemiology through Harvard. It’s, it’s the first online on campus masters that they’ve done. So it’s three weeks in the summer, where you’re on campus and kind of intense eight to five classes. And then the rest of the year is online classes. So it’s kind of a hybrid degree. The reason I chose to do it is because in my practice, working in a hospital in rural New Mexico, seeing a lot, a lot of disease, a lot of preventable disease. A lot of I complications that happened from things like diabetes are completely preventable. If the diabetes as well controlled, which I’m sure everyone sees these things, these complications that can be prevented. So I was interested in I’ve always been interested in epidemiology, but I was interested in and trying to learn how can I appropriately investigate these issues that I see in my practice and design studies so that I can make appropriate interventions to reach the people in my community to try and fix some of these disparities and misinformation and, and problems that I see. So the great thing about this program is that I can get a really quality education and epidemiology, hopefully.

Unknown 13:01
And I can still keep my day job, I can still work in the hospital, I can still be in that community where I’ve built these relationships. I know people, I know who to talk to, to get things done. I can, I can do that while I’m learning. And we actually have a capstone project or a practical that I’m working on right now. Where we’re doing a project in our communities, and then applying what we’ve learned in the program to to a problem that we want to help in our communities. So for my capstone are practical them.

Unknown 13:37
I did a chart review to look at diabetic patients that we’re seeing in 2009. And the Eye Clinic taking the subset of people that didn’t have diabetic retinopathy, and then following them to see who developed retinopathy and who did not develop rat Breton up with the in the next five years, and then doing an analysis to see what are the differences? And what are the main risk factors for this progression? So it’s kind of exciting. So that sounds like it’s ongoing.

Unknown 14:07
Ongoing, but that it is ongoing? Yeah, I’ve done the data collection. And I am working on the analysis right now. So I can get back to you in about three months. whenever it’s do email me, just

Justin Trosclair 14:19
the abstract was let’s not pretend I’m going to read the whole thing. Just

Unknown 14:22
do the cliff notes.

Justin Trosclair 14:25
Oh, that’s cool. So you can do like workshops? And you can do we be able to do upper management type of stuff? And 10 years?

Unknown 14:32
I yeah, I think that’s definitely something that that I could I could do. I’m hoping to go more of a research bent with it and more applied research. But yeah, it’s it’s been a great program so far, are nice,

Justin Trosclair 14:47
damn, some of the questions I normally would ask, don’t really count, because I’m sure you don’t do much, much marketing in a hospital setting. But yeah, they’re gonna be doctors who are struggling right now, maybe just starting out or just burned out with whatever they’re doing, are there any ways to encourage them are some practical steps where they can maybe, maybe get their foot in the door into a hospital setting, or any advice for students to better you know, just engage a little bit more maybe in the profession, or set themselves up for a better career once they graduate?

Unknown 15:16
Mm hmm. I think if people are interested in being in the hospital setting, you really have to make connections when you’re in school trying to do rotations in those settings, trying to experience some of it before you graduate.

Unknown 15:34
I know for myself, I did a rotation in the health system that I’m in during school, and I did a residency in that same system

Unknown 15:45
that gets you connected and get you kind of in as far as people who are already in practice who are wanting to transition to that type of practice. I don’t really, it would be difficult, especially for coming from an outside private practice wanting to do more of that system wide stuff. I don’t really know what I would say.

Justin Trosclair 16:10
My my view what you just said would be no matter what you need to be building relationships in the community, with ophthalmologist and with other providers in your community, regardless of where you’re at. Because, you know, it’s all about who you know, he really is.

Unknown 16:24
Yeah, it really is it totally.

Justin Trosclair 16:26
Especially if you don’t want to be in Birmingham. You know it all right. Well,

Unknown 16:31
yeah.

Justin Trosclair 16:32
I rotated in Birmingham, but I don’t want to live here forever. And it is too much. No, definitely many trees.

Or mutual friend who introduced us to be on the show our first guest on the on the doctors perspective. He was like, Oh, my goodness. He’s like, I didn’t have allergies tell I moved to Birmingham. He’s like, there’s just so many trees.

Unknown 16:50
There are so many trees, and they all bloom at the same time. Well, that’s cute, isn’t it?

Justin Trosclair 16:57
You kind of mentioned some goals. But do you have any concrete five year goals or 10 year goals that you are actively pursuing?

Unknown 17:04
Well, obviously graduating would be a goal of mine. lb graduated in May. So Chloe, wonderful for from the master’s degree. You know, I’d like to get in more of a leadership role in the hospital. Maybe a clinic Chief, the optometry clinic Chief, I am residency director right now. And I’m really enjoying it. And I work with students as well. And I really, really like that. So moving into more of a clinic management role, I think would be a really great, great step comes probably the next step.

Unknown 17:36
Yeah, I guess I thought about getting a PhD.

Unknown 17:41
I think I might just be addicted to school. So that’s interesting.

Justin Trosclair 17:46
Well, you’re not the only just to further their education past their doctor. So

what you just interesting, you said you you are resident Chief, what our students struggle with, when they come out of school and they’re trying to get their hands wet. What are they finding out? Where they’re struggling with?

Unknown 18:02
What do the the residents struggle with

Justin Trosclair 18:04
it? Do they have anything that they just aren’t equipped with, and they just have to learn more on the

Unknown 18:08
main thing that residents struggle with? coming right out of school? is time management, and figuring out what are the appropriate test that needs to be done for this patient? I think that residents tend to want to do everything so they don’t miss anything. Okay. And and one of the one of the main things that I try and teach is you have to tailor your approach to your patient and what your patient is experiencing. So say your patient has this issue that you go and read the textbook, and there’s 17 things that it could be? Do you really go and test for all 17? Or do you pick the ones that might be the most likely and let’s do those first, right? Because no one wants to take 17 vials of blood to test for 17 minutes diseases whenever it’s probably one of these four things. And so let’s just test for these for and see what happens. And

Justin Trosclair 19:07
that’s one of the residency right?

Unknown 19:09
Yeah, no, for sure to get that extra time have a guided learning and and have someone precept you and help you just figure out what actually needs to be done instead of doing everything.

Justin Trosclair 19:22
Yeah. Well, that’s a skill that you do learn as time goes by. So

Unknown 19:27
Mm hmm. Where do you see

Justin Trosclair 19:28
the future of optometry going in the next four or five years?

Unknown 19:32
Yeah, I think that our scope of practice is going to expand a lot in a few states. Well, when optometry first started as a profession, we really didn’t have any privileges to prescribe medications and stuff. And that’s definitely changed now. And now, and quite a few states because it’s a state regulated profession. Louisiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, we have laser privileges modified lasers, which is great, it’s great for patients were trained to do that. It’s procedures that we can do an office. So the patients don’t have to travel, you know, to a big city, find out

Justin Trosclair 20:15
what would you do with a laser?

Unknown 20:16
Um, well, so in Louisiana, you would be doing Yeah, bags, which is, and some other things to some glaucoma procedures. But basically, it’s, it’s, it’s the front of the eye. So it’s, it’s, we’re not doing any laser stuff in the back of the eye. It’s it’s more interior segment, front of the eyes stuff. But so after cataract surgery, there can be a kind of a film that will form behind the new lens in the eye that can make vision go cloudy again. So with lasers, we can poke a hole in that film so the patient can see through it again. And then there’s some laser laser procedures that you can do to help with glaucoma patients to help lower pressure without drops. So there’s some other procedures that we can do. So I see scope of practice expanding that expanding to other states, as well. And then, you know, there’s there’s still some states where optometrists can’t even treat glaucoma with drops. So hopefully that will change yet. It’s pretty crazy. Hopefully, that will change soon. It’s it’s just it’s it’s amazing the disparity in practice between states because we’re all taught the same things. That based on where you live, your scope of practice can be very different.

Justin Trosclair 21:33
Yeah. Did you know a chiropractor, and I think, why all mean, at least when we were in school, you could deliver a baby?

Unknown 21:40
Yeah.

Justin Trosclair 21:42
Okay, I mean, if you’re the last resort, and you can’t even fight an EMF guy, maybe you should go there. But I was like, wow.

We are covered checkmark.

Yeah, it’s interesting that the lasers that’s cool. As a hospital, oh, it worker, you probably may not have this issue. But vacation tends to be hard to get as a doctor, even sometimes as a hospital because you get tied up, you might be bonus on productions. So you don’t want to leave because then you missed that out. How do you find time to get vacation? And what’s your what’s your philosophy on that?

Unknown 22:15
Yeah, I think vacation is a hard one, especially if you’re practicing by yourself, or if your clinic is short staff because you don’t want patient care to suffer. Whenever you leave. For me, I guess vacation isn’t much of an issue, because I work in the government system. And so we get pretty generous vacation allowances, right.

Unknown 22:39
It’s actually hard to take all of it because you get so much.

Justin Trosclair 22:44
All right next, next guest that’s out of control.

shut this down.

Unknown 22:52
Maybe I should just stop talking.

Justin Trosclair 22:56
can’t take any more three day weekends out no results to go.

Unknown 23:01
It’s actually been really nice with my master’s program, though, because it hasn’t hasn’t been too much of an issue to take that three weeks at a time because I have enough vacation to cover it.

Justin Trosclair 23:11
That was actually a question I just avoided. But that’s how that’s how you’re able to do a three week off. I mean, I guess you can negotiate it with your boss if you had a boss, but if you’re your own boss, three weeks, that’s a tough one.

Unknown 23:21
It would be tough. Yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of people in my class that work in hospitals. And I know it’s been a challenge for some of them to be able to get that block of time off, and you kind of you have to plan way ahead to to, for myself, I had to try and see as many of my recall patients for June before and after. So my schedule was just completely, completely booked and overbooked for the weeks before and after to try and get everybody in. So patient care didn’t suffer.

Justin Trosclair 23:55
You would think that yeah, it? Do you think the hospitals could be accommodating? Because you’re developing your own skills that could actually benefit the hospital for later?

Unknown 24:03
Yeah, I think I think they realized they see the benefit in it. I my boss is very understanding and that he encourages projects. And he sees that, that this can can help the patients and help the hospital. But if you didn’t have an administration that supported that and understood the the value in it, I think it would be very difficult to do a program like I’m doing

Justin Trosclair 24:27
right when there are other programs.

Unknown 24:29
Now there, and there’s definitely some some online only programs that would work too. And that shouldn’t shouldn’t impact or shouldn’t keep you away from clinic as much as as mine dead. But I like that blended cohort because then you get to know your classmates really well. And make those connections, which is really great.

Justin Trosclair 24:48
Absolutely. So we’re switching gears if you haven’t noticed, we’re going to go into more of a personal side of the interview. Okay, besides work, what else preoccupies your mind any kids? hobbies? volunteering?

Unknown 24:59
Yeah. So I recently Well, I started running when I moved to New Mexico. I’m originally from Louisiana, and then was in South Carolina and then Birmingham. And as you know, the humidity in all those places is absolutely killer. Running that

Justin Trosclair 25:15
area is just so hard.

Unknown 25:16
It It is not pleasant to run at all. So being a New Mexico where we’re at higher elevation, and there’s zero humidity, and it’s nice and cool in the mornings. I took up running. I just ran my first marathon in December. So that Thank you. It was very exciting. Wait, did you finish it was my first and only

Justin Trosclair 25:36
Okay, then congratulations.

Unknown 25:38
I did. I wasn’t I wasn’t breaking any land speed records. But I finished. would you go? It was in Q Island, South Carolina,

Justin Trosclair 25:47
where you went back to the Swanton?

Unknown 25:49
Yeah. I went back to the swamp. But you know what, after you’ve been running it at 6500 feet, Ryan at sea level is pretty easy.

Justin Trosclair 25:57
I got a question. Because I’m not a runner. When I would run in the in the cool, it felt like my throat good. So dry. And I would want to just catch a cold. What do you do you just get used to it? Or do you wear like a little mask or what?

Unknown 26:08
I run with water. So I’ll take a sip of water when my throat starts to feel dry. I think being out here you get acclimated to the dryness. And so it doesn’t bother you as much. Actually when I run back at home, it feels like I’m swimming because it’s it’s so humid and it’s hard to breathe.

Unknown 26:27
And you feel you feel like you’re running so slow. And then you look at your time and you’ve run like the fastest mile you run. And in two months because of the it’s so much easier to breathe at that lower elevation. You’re getting so much more oxygen.

Justin Trosclair 26:41
Here Olympic Training you did. Yeah,

Unknown 26:43
I know. That’s what the Olympic trainers do. They train it elevation, then they run at the lower altitude. So yeah, and unknowingly. I’m training like an Olympian.

Unknown 26:54
not running like an Olympian. Hey, I got a question. Here’s an eye tip.

Justin Trosclair 26:58
You go to Colorado, you go New Mexico, it’s dry. Maybe you’re used to the humidity. Does that affect your eyes? Is there ways to remedy that if you’re just getting scratchy or itchy?

Unknown 27:07
Yeah. I think guys do get drier out here. For sure. Just because there’s no humidity at all. And actually here in New Mexico, allergies can be really, really bad. Because there’s lots of grass and stuff that blooms. And so you think in the in the desert or in the dryer is you’re not going to have as much allergies but because of the grasses and things that can be pretty intense.

Justin Trosclair 27:33
Is it better just like an allergy pill or like some sort of special drops? Yeah,

Unknown 27:36
so they have a lot of over the counter allergy drops as outdoor is one of them. islands really good twice a day. And then for artificial tears, I would recommend either non preserved or ones that have a disappearing preservative, like genteel or Thera tears, if you’re going to be using them chronically, because there’s preservatives in the tears that can irritate your eyes if we’re using them long term. So avoid advising, I guess would be my main main recommendation.

Justin Trosclair 28:06
Boom, call Joe. Yeah.

Unknown 28:09
I

Justin Trosclair 28:09
like it. Okay. Besides running Anything else?

Unknown 28:12
Um, let’s see. I do enjoy camping and outdoors activities. I recently started scheme, which is great, because I live next to a ski area now. Yeah, I’m not very good. A Southern girl scheme isn’t necessarily a very pretty thing. But I did my first blue last weekend. So I’m feeling pretty confident about myself.

Justin Trosclair 28:34
No, I think the hardest part is getting off that lift sometime. Oh,

Unknown 28:37
my gosh, gain off the lift is the issue

Justin Trosclair 28:41
of fallen before like

Unknown 28:47
it’s fun, though. It’s it’s been really fun to learn.

Justin Trosclair 28:50
That’s good. It’s never too late. You’re not married? Right? No. Okay. People would only have like some kind of relationship advice. A lot of doctors end up getting divorced, and things like that. So I’m just gonna maybe you know, we have single people to you want to offer any advice, or any kind of what you’re seeing out there as a single woman who’s a doctor, and what maybe advice for other women that are in the same kind of field as you

Unknown 29:11
dating advice?

Justin Trosclair 29:13
What do you see?

Unknown 29:15
It’s difficult, I think, I think for women who are medical professionals to find, find people that understand and respect kind of how demanding our jobs are. Same with men, I’m sure, but it seems to be especially hard for women. Because we we take our jobs take up a lot of our time. And we’re, we’re highly educated. So that automatically kind of cuts the dating pool a little bit.

Unknown 29:44
So I don’t know, I guess I would say keep on keeping on, but I haven’t had much luck myself. So

Unknown 29:50
I’m probably not qualified to give any advice.

Justin Trosclair 29:55
That’s fair. Well, you like you said, you’re in a rural town. So that makes it more challenging.

Unknown 30:00
Yeah, I think that that does add a layer of difficulty to it.

Justin Trosclair 30:03
Any advice for the guys trying to approach a smart lady?

Don’t be intimidated, I guess would be my main advice. Okay. Hey, where do you hang out? What are the Smart Girls hang out your your clothes smart

Unknown 30:14
folks on Friday night? Oh, yeah, for sure. We’re getting wasted in the clubs. That’s

Justin Trosclair 30:22
I’m leaving this thing.

OK, so moving on. Do you happen to have any kind of morning routine or lunch routine that just ground you for the day or gets you excited?

Unknown 30:35
Yeah. So actually, I try to run first thing in the morning.

Unknown 30:40
Get up around 545 or so and go for a few mile run. And then I take my dog for a walk after that is a cool down. And then I make my French press coffee and eat my breakfast. I have to take my time in the mornings I can’t be rushed or it just feels like my whole day is off. So but it’s not as nice to get that exercise in first thing because if you don’t then it for me, if I don’t do it first thing that it doesn’t get done.

Unknown 31:09
And I find that that helps a lot. And it helped me to keep me balanced

Justin Trosclair 31:14
as a true statement. It’s just the nighttime it gets it does get away like something comes up your friends want to go out and you like will this will be my gym time. But now I’m eating nachos. Mm hmm. Kind of fresh pressed do you use? I’m curious what kind of what? French press? Oh, anything specific or just a generic?

Unknown 31:28
I think it’s a boat. I’m French press. But with them. It’s whatever is the cheapest one on Amazon. I love it.

Unknown 31:36
Very good. Night grind z. I dont I I’ve been told that I need to grind my own coffee, but I haven’t done it yet. Hmm.

Justin Trosclair 31:44
And what about in the you get that thick coffee grind on the bottom of your cup at the end? Or have you mastered not having that?

Unknown 31:51
Oh, I just don’t drink the last couple sips and import it out.

Justin Trosclair 31:54
Okay. That’s why I quit because of that. I was like, I’m tired of this.

Unknown 32:00
It’s kind of nasty that sludge on the bottom of your cup? Yeah.

Justin Trosclair 32:03
Maybe that’s where all the good Pep is? I don’t know. All right. Last couple questions. Do you have a favorite book, blog or podcast that you secretly love? Or one that you would completely recommend everybody?

Unknown 32:16
Well, I just started reading a book on urban planning that I really like called Happy cities. And trying to remember the name of the author.

Justin Trosclair 32:27
I’ll Google it.

Unknown 32:28
Okay. Yeah, you Google it and still notes it. But it’s kind of about urban planning, and how it influences our lives. And it’s really interesting. So I would recommend that very good. Any a favorite apps on your phone, everybody seems to play on that thing. Oh, my gosh, yes, I actually have an app that I absolutely love. And I use it all the time for work. It’s called doc scanner, and it will take a picture and then convert the picture to a PDF. I’m sure there’s other apps that do this besides the one that I have. But it has been a lifesaver so many times, because I don’t, it’s hard to get to the scanner at work because there’s like one scanner for the whole hospital. And then. But having this app on my phone is perfect because I can just shoot a picture of whatever I want to scan, and then email it to myself for my phone as a PDF. And it’s it’s life changing. truly life changing. It’s been fantastic.

Justin Trosclair 33:20
I second that I use a different app, like you said, there’s other apps. And I mean, you know, I’m in China. So I get something like, Hey, we got this text thing that you need a sign like Oh, great, and then

do it that way. And then it’s easy. It’s easy. It’s quick. And I said it’s perfect quality. They have some kind of technology that confesses it. People wanted to get in touch with us maybe to ask questions about hospital life or anything like that. How can people get touch with you?

Unknown 33:45
They could probably email me at Paula Lynn John’s at gmail, com. Li n n g h nS?

Justin Trosclair 33:56
How about this? Do you have anything that you would like to leave with our guests encouragement, words of wisdom or just anything fun

Unknown 34:04
words of wisdom, I guess my words of wisdom would be to make sure that you scheduled downtime. Because if you wait for it to happen, it’s not going to happen. So you have to put it into your schedule for myself at least to make sure you don’t burn yourself out

Justin Trosclair 34:21
the travel a lot to other states, or do you kind of stay local,

Unknown 34:25
I try to do a couple of international trips a year. And then this year, I’ve gone skiing in a couple different places. I try to go home to New Orleans a little bit.

Unknown 34:36
So I try to keep moving. But um, but I think the international trips are probably one of my my first priorities because I like to like to keep traveling. So this year, I went to conquer beliefs and did some scuba diving with a friend.

Unknown 34:51
And then I went to Georgia, the country for about a week. And then I spent some time in Istanbul. And that was really cool.

Unknown 35:01
So those are the places I’ve been this year. Yeah, actually, I was I was in Istanbul, right in between that the airport bombing and the coup. So I left I left like a few days before the queue happened and got there a few days after the airport, Tommy. So I timed it pretty well.

Justin Trosclair 35:19
Would you think i mean, i is more of like a personal thing for me. But I’ve thought about going there. Is it pretty nice. He still felt safe. Even with all that craziness.

Unknown 35:27
I loved it. I felt completely safe. Yeah, I think it’s an amazing city, and I would highly recommend that you go It was awesome. This is a lot of Islamic architecture, right? Mm hmm. Well, they can do yeah, they know what they’re doing. It’s it’s very Middle Eastern. But it’s a nice mix of Middle Eastern European. It’s pretty cool.

Justin Trosclair 35:46
Did you have to wear anything special so that you wouldn’t get harassed or anything like that? Oh, no, no, no, no.

Unknown 35:51
No, definitely not. I was in normal clothes. Yeah. It’s it’s a very European city.

Justin Trosclair 35:56
All right. Well, Paula, Dr. Paula, been a real pleasure getting to know you. Yeah, I’m a bit and exploring your journey. I really appreciate you coming on.

Unknown 36:07
Alright. Thank you so much.

Justin Trosclair 36:11
Dr. Paula, thank you so much for being on the show. I got some good laughs hope the audience did to your fun, enjoy the running and graduating and the travel tips, and much luck on all the travel in the future. Congratulations on that. I think maybe that’s just where I’m at in life I enjoying I’m enjoying. Many have to take vacations and experience that part of the world. And you’re still young. So that’s even better, you’ll be able to see a lot of things all the time you get old. It’s never too late. Travel Tips coming up soon. You can find all of today’s show notes at a doctor’s perspective, net slash one, one, just want to give a gentle reminder, the E book, when it comes out. If you were to go to a doctor’s perspective net, on the right side of the screen on pop up on the bottom of the screen, there’s all kinds of places where you put your email. And when that comes out. For a limited time, I can send it to you for free. It’s not only a book about nutrition and exercise, it’s actually like blueprints. If you haven’t really been able to stick to a diet much in your life, if you haven’t really done much exercise and it’s kind of a daunting and you get demotivated quickly, I have steps implemented steps for you to take to make big changes, overall, but small changes, to start with, to get a custom to maybe eating less food to how to build up to 20 minutes of exercise, and things like that. So if you’re interested, sign up, because it’s not only something that you could implement for yourself, especially if you are

not in peak health, but also something that you can either give our sales to your patients, so that they can have a blueprint for themselves.

You can find me online on all the popular sites, the easiest way to do it is go to a doctor’s perspective. net. And if you look at the top right, there’s all these little social media icons, just click whichever flavor you like best and send you directly to that page, you can subscribe to iTunes, Stitcher, Facebook, Instagram, etc. I do a lot of travel photos on Instagram. So hope you like it, as well as flicker has a wide variety of those same pictures, but a lot more. And of course, I’m very active on Facebook. So Connect comment, and that will respond.

Today’s travel tip, since she mentioned traveling all over the world is to try and find local airlines in that country. I want to say at least they used to be Ryan air and Europe will give you really cheap rates. Just like if you’re listening to this in another country, Southwest Airlines, you’re not going to find them on kayak or the big search engine. So you have to actually go to their website. One that I use here for asia travel is sea trip. It is Chinese based, but also has English and you just get really good local flights for good prices. And when I’m comparing them before it just feels more I just feel more comfortable booking through the sea trip when I’m doing my Asia travels when I get a fancy receipt as well. So that’s always helpful. But do yourself a favor. It’s been a little extra time if you’re going to do if you’re not taking trains like through Europe, you may look at local airlines have a good day.

We just went hashtag behind the curtain can this episode has come to an end. I hope you got the right dose for your optimal life. Please spread the word about this podcast by telling to friends, share it on social media and visit the show notes on a doctor’s perspective. net to see all the references from today’s guest. I sincere thank you in advance. You’ve been listening to Dr. Justin trust Claire giving you a doctor’s perspective.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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