Oncology, Etc. – Rediscovering the Joy in Medicine with Dr. Deborah Schrag (Part 2)

ASCO Education

In the second of this two-part conversation Drs. Patrick Loehrer and David Johnson sit down with Dr. Deborah Schrag, the current Chair of the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to continue the discussion of her roles as a leader, researcher, oncologist, public health expert, and more.

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TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Dave Johnson: Hi everyone, welcome back to Oncology, Etc. an ASCO educational podcast. My name is Dave Johnson. I'm at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. And I'm here with my good friend Dr. Pat Loehrer who serves as a director of Global Oncology and Health Equities at Indiana University. In the second half of our conversation with Dr. Deborah Schrag, the current chair of Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

In part one, we heard about Dr. Schrag's early life and background, as well as the importance of affordable cancer care and much more. Let's jump back into the conversation and hear about her current goals and initiatives at Memorial Sloan Kettering.

I have a question for you. Jumping ahead a little bit. But I mean, you're such a role model for all of us. But you're now in a very powerful position as head of medicine at the preeminent cancer center in the world. So, I'd be interested in knowing what are your top initiatives? What did you come to this role wanting to do short-term and long-term? I'd be curious to hear from you about that.

Dr. Deborah Schrag: Yeah. So, I have lots of specific initiatives, all the things that are probably very similar across medical cancer centers. We have to figure out the role of immuno-oncology. We have to figure out the role of CAR T-cell Therapy.

There are lots of specific things, but let me tell you about three sort of overarching principles and things that I think we need to think about. So, one of the reasons why I decided to leave my job where I really focused on training researchers and building a research program to lead a department of medicine that has a mix of clinicians, educators, and investigators is that there's really a profound sense of exhaustion and disconnection. I'll use the word even burnout or people get the sense of losing the joy in the practice of medicine.

And as corny as it sounds, and I know I'm going a little corny here, Dave. But I really want to help bring back and connect people to the joy in the practice of medicine. It's the joy that we experience when we crack a tough case, when we help a patient, when our patients make us laugh, when our patients and their families make us cry, when they drive us bananas, when they cook us food that is inedible, just reconnecting us to the joy, to the stories.

I really wanted to try to be a different kind of leader because I felt that I could make a contribution to the field of academic medicine in general and oncology in particular, by working with faculty to set them up to tap into that joy, because I know they all started with it. I know they all went into medicine because they care about those human stories, because they do want to make a difference.

This past week, a fellow intern of mine who you may know, passed away. His name was Paul Farmer. He was the head of Partners in Health and he was an infectious disease physician. There's a book about him by Tracy Kidder that's really moving. There's also a documentary about him called, Bending the Arc, which I would highly recommend.

Paul was an incredible inspiration, just incredible, but he brought so much joy to the practice of medicine. I remember when Paul was going to some of the poorest places on the planet, specifically Cange, Haiti. He got an idea that he needed to bring chemotherapy because there were large cancers that were untreated. And he wanted to get leftover chemotherapy from the Dana-Farber.

So, in the 1990s, when I was a fellow, he would ask me whether I could get him any leftover Taxol. I was like, ‘Paul, I can't do that. It's not safe. You can't take leftover Taxol to Cange’. And he said, ‘Deb, just wait, the drugs will be oral soon, and then I'll get it’. But guess what? Paul came back to me in 1999, and capecitabine had been approved. The oral equivalent of 5-FU. He held my feet to the fire. He said, ‘Every time you have a dead patient, if there's any leftover capecitabine, I want you to get it for me’.

Inspirational leadership, connecting people to the joy in the practice of medicine. I would say that's number one. There's no one simple formula or way to do that. It's hard work. It requires a team I think a lot more teamwork into the practice of medicine. I think we're coming out of a hard two years where we’ve been confined to Zoom boxes. But it's a lot easier when we can sit together in a room and have a pizza and a beer on a Friday afternoon. But we have to figure this out, and we will, step by step.

The other big thematic area, I think, has to do with the patient experience. Dave, I mean, when I started out as a fellow, patients with advanced lung cancer were living for 10 months, 10-12 months, that was a pretty good run with advanced metastatic non-small cell lung cancer.

Well, these days, it's 2-3 years, and there's even quite a tale of patients who were living 4-5 years. And that is a long journey. It's no longer the 800-meter sprint, it's a half marathon, turning into a marathon and even an ultra-marathon. So, the way we deliver care needs to change.

So, we're really rethinking here, how we deliver care. So, as an example of some, if you go back to the 80s and 90s, cancer chemotherapy was something that happened in the hospital. And in the last quarter century, we've transitioned that to an outpatient practice. I think in the next quarter century, we won't transition all of it, but we will transition a lot of it to home.

As an example, I'm struck by when patients undergo IVF, they get handed some Lupron and are taught how to self-administer Lupron every day, so they can undergo a fertility cycle. But when those same women get breast cancer, they have to come into the clinic and sit and wait and take half a day off of work to get the same Lupron. The same is true for men with prostate cancer. Why is that? It's because of policies, and it's not safety, it's not patient-centered.

So, I think we have an opportunity to change the patient experience. I think we'll be able to give immunotherapy at home, and HER-2 agents at home. We have to do the trials and make sure that it's safe, but we have to make cancer care more patient-centric and improve the experience. And that's just essential when it's a marathon that we're asking our patients to run, not these 12-month sprints. Families need this also. So, those are a few of the challenges that I want to take on. Joy in medicine, patient experience, and of course, the physician-scientist pathway needs to be strengthened.

Dr. Pat Loehrer: I love it. You can imagine between Dave and me, I think that resonates so much about having joy in medicine. I've not heard other people talk about that, but I really think that's an important vocation. But I'm going to ask you something else too because, in the efforts of being joyful and being a role model for that, there's the other side of it, where you can't actually let your hair down, and really be depressed, if you will, or down because you can't let the other side see that.

And so, who do you lean on if you will, your confessor that you can talk to when you're feeling down when you're trying to fight the anti-joy part of your job?

Dr. Deborah Schrag: I have lots of friends outside of medicine. And I've always found that that's really helpful to make time for friends outside of medicine. They help connect me to humor and other things. I'm coming up on a big high school reunion. My high school classmates and I still meet for picnics in Central Park. And there are about 120 in our graduating class. And I think we'll have about 110 of us getting together. We still have picnics with 40-50 people attending.

So, there's nothing like old friends from childhood who now do all kinds of different things. So, that's really helpful. But I've also found that my mentors and colleagues who trained me and who know me really well, are a great source of advice.

So, leaders in academic medicine, and I've always found that I've been able to get advice from people who were senior and leaders, people such as Dr. Mayer, Dr. Benz, Dr. Jim Griffin, and also junior colleagues.

I now increasingly as I get old, I rely more and more on my trainees and my mentees. So, some of the folks I know best are people who I trained. So, I'll just give you one example. Many of you may know Ethan Basch. We worked together when we were both just coming up. I was an assistant professor. He was a couple of years behind me. I mentored him.

Well, he's now chief of the Division of Oncology at UNC. He and I have written lots of grants together. We're really partners now. But it's been a lifelong professional friendship. Sometimes when I just need to let my hair down, I get on the phone with Ethan, and yeah, there's a little bit of commiserating.

But I'll give you an example that runs through Dave. Some really valuable experiences had to do with being asked to serve on committees. I think it's great. I just want to give a shout-out to ASCO. Some of my earliest professional relationships were with superstars that I met through ASCO. So, people like Joe Simone, reading his Simone's Maxims everyone needs to read Simone’s Maxims if you haven't. There was a guy by the name of Christopher Desh, who sadly passed on. But he was an ASCO member who practiced at the Virginia Commonwealth University back in the late 1990s. Boy, did that guy understand the joy in medicine, some of the early folks who started QOPI.

Being introduced to those individuals who practiced in different parts of the country and who had different kinds of challenges - having that sort of rich network has been incredible. At some point, I think through such a connection, maybe it was through Dr. Mayer, I was referred to Dr. Johnson, who was then running the American Board of Internal Medicine committee that wrote the oncology exam. I participated in that for a few years that was led by Dr. Johnson.

And I met incredible people on that committee, including Dr. Johnson, just Dr. Johnson's stories could inspire anyone and get them back on track just in terms of the humor and the joy and the love, and really the pride in the profession. But I met Jamie Von Roenn that way, who's now leading educational efforts at ASCO, she was on that committee. Lynn Schuchter became a good friend of mine as a result of that.

So, I would just say, sometimes you need to get out of your own space. And sometimes I need to get out of Dodge, as they say, I need to get out of New York, get out of Boston, and being connected to colleagues across the country has been so rewarding.

I have a network of friends at other institutions who I rely on. Serving on external advisory boards is a great place to meet people. Study section, if anyone has the opportunity to be on study section. That's a fabulous opportunity.

So, I think participating in peer review, showing up at meetings, serving on ASCO committees, or ASH or AACR. These are really important experiences. And I will say in my leadership role, I'm really trying to make it clear to faculty that I encourage them to take time to participate in these activities and attend these events and even travel because the traveling is important, too.

I could not have gotten the same dose of Dave Johnson, if I had not actually gone to the meeting, spent all day writing board review questions, and then having a nice meal afterward. That was part of the experience. I don't know what you would say, Dave, but that was my view.

Dr. Dave Johnson: So, one of the things that Osler talked about was the fellowship of the profession, and how important it is to have those relationships. Even if one can't physically be with that individual, developing that spiritual relationship is really critically important. I'm so glad you brought this up and expanded on it in the way you did because I think it's absolutely critical to retain the joy of medicine. It's our colleagues, as well as our patients that make it such a marvelous, majestic profession, in my view.

Dr. Pat Loehrer: I was going to just add something if I could. So, Deb, replace me on the ABIM, just to let you know, because we had certain slots on there. One of the not sure if it was the rules or guidelines that were mandated is that everyone needed to take the oncology boards, even though we wrote the questions, we had to take the test. And you knew that and you had such unbridled enthusiasm for this.

I still remember this deeply, and that not only did you recertify for the oncology board, but you also studied to take the medicine boards too. Your love of medicine is so contagious. And I'm sure everyone at Memorial benefits from this.

Dr. Deborah Schrag: Thank you. That's very nice to say. I do, I love the stories. I've been rounding with the house staff on the inpatient service. I think both of you know, inpatient oncology, as we're able to do more and more in the outpatient setting, our inpatients are very, very sick. And we often get a front-row seat to what I would call the social determinants of health challenges.

In other words, if you've got relatives and resources, you may be able to be at home. But if you have severe pain or symptoms, and you lack the relatives, or you live on a fifth floor, walk-up, or just don't have the resources to get the home care that you need, you're more likely to be in our hospital. But as I round with the house staff, I find myself asking them to tell me more about the patient stories. Because when I round and they tell me that it's a 74-year-old with peritoneal carcinomatosis, jaundice, and abdominal pain. I'm so old that I've seen so many hundreds of those patients and the management hasn’t changed very much. But what's really the privilege is to understand the journeys that got people where they are, and to learn a little bit about who these people are.

I try to do that when I round with house staff and I find that it makes the experience better for them. I have to say that I do worry about how we train young physicians in oncology because what they see on the inpatient side is really the hardest of the hard, that's obviously less true in a leukemia service, where they're delivering lots of curative therapy or a stem cell transplant service. But in solid tumor oncology, it's really hard. I think it's something we have to have to tackle. We have to rethink education and medical oncology. I'm hoping that we're going to do that. That's also on the bucket list, by the way. I think we have to do that as a profession. And I know both of you are passionate champions and advocates for education, as is ASCO. But I think it's really imperative that we do that if we are to keep attracting talent.

And then I just want to make one more point, which is that New York City is one of the most diverse places in the United States. I don't know about the planet, because I don't know the whole planet. But in the United States, we are incredibly diverse. But the oncology workforce does not yet look like that.

So, we have a lot of work to do to train a much more diverse workforce. We're doing well with respect to gender, very well. We're literally about 50/50, we may even have a little bit higher proportion of women on the faculty here at MSK. And I think that’s true nationally as well. But with respect to Blacks and Hispanics, and other underrepresented communities, Native Americans, we've got a long way to go. And we have a pipeline problem. And that's going to be hard. But it's hard work that we have to do, and I know you guys are working on that in your own centers as well.

Dr. Dave Johnson: Let me follow up on that. What attributes are you looking for in trainees and newly hired faculty? Whether they be junior or senior faculty? What are the characteristics or attributes you seek that you think predict, or certainly you want your individuals to possess?

Dr. Deborah Schrag: We all want people who have everything, but I would say creativity, the willingness to take risks, and the ability to ask a question. I say this to the trainees, frankly, I say it to my own children as well. ‘It's okay, take a harder course.

Yes, you may get a B minus by trying something new and different, that doesn't play to your strengths. But try something new. Take risks. Yes, the trial may fail. Yes, you may not get that grant.’ But I think a willingness to take risks, a willingness to put yourself out there, a willingness to stretch. I'm also looking for people who can work in teams because there is no aspect of medical care that happens in MSK, I suspect that it's also true that maybe medicine in Antarctica, but even medicine in Antarctica is probably a team sport.

Medicine has become a very complicated team sport. It's a very complicated dance with pharmacists, nurses, and APPs. It takes a village to give a course of immunotherapy. It is very complicated.

And so, when people like to control things and like to do everything themselves, they're going to have a hard time. And that's true I find for teaching, laboratory investigation, wet lab, dry lab, most good, impactful, important science in oncology these days, clinical trials, wet, dry, all of it gets done in teams. Teams that have people with different levels of training, different skill sets, early stage, late stage, people who are quantitative, people who can write, people who can program, people who can do lab experiments, and people who know what an organoid is. People who know how to program an in R. All different kinds of skill sets but they have to be able to work in teams.

People who can't do that are going to struggle to achieve maximum impact. I'm not saying that there isn't room at the end for the occasional genius person who likes to work solo. But that's not really what we need to move the needle.

So, I need team players. I think there is a big emphasis on collegiality. Of course, we want smart and we want brilliance. But sometimes a drop less brilliance and a drop more collegiality and being able to work together in a team, it goes a long way and it’s the difference between doing something impactful and not.

That's what I look for. I also think that it takes all different kinds of people. And no one has to excel at everything, but it's great for people to be able to excel at something. So, passion, drive, and ability to ask questions, and not being afraid to occasionally fail and having some tolerance for that and trying to make sure that leaders are able to tolerate that, too. We have to be able to.

Dr. Dave Johnson: Yeah, I think those are great suggestions. We're getting near the end of our time today, and we have a lot more questions to ask. But what's your biggest fear, as the head of the Department of Medicine, looking to the future, what causes you to lose sleep at night?

Dr. Deborah Schrag: I think the business of medicine. If medicine turns into something that feels just like [inaudible] work, and losing physicians, if we don't respect physicians’ need to take care of themselves, to take care of their families, and yeah, to find that joy, then we will not attract the top talents.

I think we need great minds and great hearts and people from all walks of life to enter the profession, because that's the talent that we need, to quote my friend, Paul Farmer, ‘Bend the arc’. And you know, we need to bend Kaplan-Meier curves in the right direction. And we need the talent to come into the profession, and if they see that we are not happy and not thriving, the next generation is going to go elsewhere.

I don't want to begrudge my wonderful endocrinology colleagues. We need people to tackle diabetes, and we need great surgeons and great anesthesiologists, too. So, it's not just oncology. In medicine, I'm responsible for all kinds of discipline. And boy, we need a lot of cardio-oncologists because we've created all kinds of new challenges.

So, it's all of the sub-disciplines of medicine, but I think physician well-being and attracting talent to the field is really essential and making sure that the business side of medicine doesn't take over and destroy the core promise and premise of academic medicine. It is a spectacular profession and calling, and it has led to so many advances that have really changed the world. And we have to, I think, preserve the good in that. My fear is that that gets further eroded.

Dr. Pat Loehrer: Just one last question from me. Thank you for all your wonderful comments. But I think I have to ask this because it's such an unusual thing as they brought up at the beginning that you're the first female Head of Medicine at Memorial and Lisa DeAngelis is the first Physician in Chief.

And so, although there is gender equity in medicine, there is not gender equity and leadership around the academic world. And this is a very unique situation there. Can you reflect a little bit about the significance of this and perhaps, lessons learned, particularly if you're speaking to a younger version of yourself or a young woman who's thinking about a career? What are the lessons between you and Dr. DeAngelis mean?

Dr. Deborah Schrag: I'm not sure I've been at it long enough to have lessons. I'm just so grateful. So, I'm not in the generation that was a trailblazer. I'm a beneficiary. So, I've had the privilege of being trained by Dr. Jane Weeks, by Dr. Judy Garber. I, myself, had so many great mentors who were women.

I would say to women, that you can have it all. You just may not be able to have it all at once. Women and men have to make choices. Can you have a lab and be a laboratory investigator? Yes. Can you do that and have a family? Yes.

I think running a high-power lab and having a gigantic clinical practice and running clinical trials, I think the three-legged stool and the so-called triple threat is really, really hard. But I think it's hard for women and men.

What I would also say to women is you don't have to be the boys - be yourself. I think the best advice I can give to leaders is to be authentic. Because everyone, men, women, people smell a phony and no one likes to phony.

So, I think if you know how to partner, you understand that it's a team sport. I think women do that really well. So, I think being authentic, and I think women need to hear that, you don't have to emulate male role models. You have to be yourself.

I would love to emulate the two of you. I have to thank both of you because the Indiana Miracle and Dave from his Vanderbilt days, Vandy, as Dave likes to call it, from his Vanderbilt days to his Texas days, like, the two of you are such incredible thought leaders and inspirational leaders in oncology, but I can't be you.

The best we can be is sort of the best version of ourselves but we can be inspired by the great qualities that we see in other leaders and carry a little bit of that with us. So, I think that goes for women and for men.

Dr. Pat Loehrer: Thank you! Well said, and I appreciate the thoughts. We've kind of gone through this and we're going to have to wrap it up. One of the questions that we often times ask our visitors is if there's a book that they're reading, a documentary that they're watching, a movie they're seeing, or anything you'd recommend?

Dr. Deborah Schrag: That's a good question. So, yes, actually. One of the ways that I learn about leadership that I find, actually a fun way that's both relaxing and educational, is to read a biography. I love reading biographies.

I'm going to name two. And these are popular books - for scholars these may not be. First really fun book is ‘The Splendid and the Vile’, by Erik Larson. It's a book about Winston Churchill in 1940, and how he has to try to persuade the United States to enter World War Two, but it's really about a particular year in history and Winston Churchill.

Dr. Dave Johnson: It's a great book.

Dr. Deborah Schrag: It's called, The Splendid and the Vile. I just learned so much about leadership from that book and the decisions that Winston Churchill makes in his bathtub. So, just read that book and think about what Winston Churchill does in his bathtub. I can't lead from my bathtub, I live in a New York City apartment, but that's one.

Then more recently, I guess there's a little German theme happening here, is, The Chancellor. It’s about the life of Angela Merkel. It's long, I haven't finished it yet. But it's incredible. What a story, East Germany, her leadership style, how she studies chemistry, how she rises. It's a fantastic book. It's called, The Chancellor. So, I will recommend that one.

Then the last one, my beloved nephew who's like a son to me. He's about 36 years old, and he has ALS. And he's completely paralyzed. He is on a vent and he has two little kids. But he released a documentary that actually won at the Tribeca Film Festival called, Not Going Quietly, which is about a cross-country trip that he made. He's a pretty inspirational character, despite the fact that my nephew was completely locked in, he communicates only with his eyes. He is living a remarkable life. I think that documentay, I know this is a shameless plug for my nephew, but he's a pretty inspirational character. I don't necessarily agree with 100% of his policy prescriptions and recommendations. But there are lots of ways to make meaning in the world. So, that's another documentary.

Dr. Pat Loehrer: That's incredible. Thank you so much for sharing that. I'm going to look it up. People think cancer is the worst thing you can get but there are worse diseases to have.

Dr. Deborah Schrag: Yeah, I think this one might change your idea. And then I would also say Paul Farmer’s Bending the Arc. I think for young physicians who haven't seen that movie, I would recommend Bending the Arc.

Dr. Pat Loehrer: Thank you.

Dr. Deborah Schrag: Thank you! It's been great to chat with you.

Dr. Pat Loehrer: It's great. So, that's all the time we have for today. And I really want to thank you, Deb, for joining us and for all your insight. It's been wonderful. I also want to thank all our listeners for tuning in to Oncology, Etc. This is an ASCO Education podcast where we'll talk about just about anything and everything, if you've heard. If you have an idea for a topic or guest you'd like to see on the show or a host that you would like not to see on the show, just email us at [e-mail]. Thanks again. And Dave, I just have a riddle for you here. How do you make an octopus laugh?

Dr. Dave Johnson: Show him your picture.

Dr. Pat Loehrer: Ten-tickles. That's all we have for today. You guys have a good evening. Take care.

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