099 - 3 Ways Curiosity Propels Independent Physician Success

Ever wondered how a little curiosity could be the key to unlocking a stress-free, prosperous medical career?

In this episode of The Independent Physician's Blueprint, Coach JPMD (Jude A. Pierre, MD) explores why embracing curiosity is essential for physicians—from those fresh out of medical residency and surgical residency to seasoned surgeons, family doctors, and medical specialist. Discover how a growth mindset and the willingness to question the status quo can decrease stress, boost patient satisfaction, and pave the way for financial freedom—even if you’re juggling independent practice, locum tenens, and physician side gigs while managing medical school loans.

You'll learn:

• How cultivating curiosity can lead to innovative solutions that increase income and practice enjoyment.
• Strategies to challenge conventional views, follow the money, and reprogram your approach for a thriving, independent practice.
• Why exploring opposing perspectives is key to reducing burnout and achieving long-term success in medicine.

Don’t miss out—play this fan-favorite episode now to transform your medical journey and harness the power of curiosity!

Link to live e-prescribing TV segment - https://youtu.be/LTNpuTBmmng

Discover how medical graduates, junior doctors, and young physicians can navigate residency training programs, surgical residency, and locum tenens to increase income, enjoy independent practice, decrease stress, achieve financial freedom, and retire early, while maintaining patient satisfaction and exploring physician side gigs to tackle medical school loans.

Transcript

Coach JPMD (00:00.482)
By the end of this episode, you will understand why following the money can satisfy your curiosity and help you thrive in your career. Welcome to the Independent Physicians Blueprint with your host, Coach JPMD, and that's me, where we help younger physicians decrease stress and increase income by transitioning from corporate to independent practices even without any business experience.

In this episode, you'll discover my 2025 theme for the Independent Physicians Blueprint podcast, how the lack of curiosity can stunt your growth as a physician and why you should explore opposing views as you practice medicine. Welcome to another episode of the Independent Physicians Blueprint with your host, CoachJPMD. That's me. And it's been a minute, it's been a while since we recorded an episode. And some of that was because I took an extended vacation from the practice in January.

We're now here in February. can't believe that the month has gone by so fast. And I wanted to kind of bring up what I would like the theme of 2025 to be. We have been recording lots of episodes. If you haven't had a chance to listen to previous episodes in season one, we talked about Medicare Advantage. And in season two, we have been focusing on the independent physician practice and how physicians can practice independent of corporate controls and the way they want to practice medicine.

I was thinking and reflecting on what I should have the theme of 2025 be. The theme of 2025 should be about curiosity. So curiosity as per the Merriam-Webster dictionary is defined as the desire to know inquisitiveness or inquisitive interests in others, interests leading to inquiry. So it's about being curious, right? And why is that important? Why is it important for you to be curious as physicians?

This year, I'd like to be focused on things that we can learn more about people, learn more about systems, and not let others tell us what to do. So how you can benefit and how you can benefit your patients is by forcing yourself to think, ask questions, especially in the practice of medicine. Sometimes we become lazy and we have our laziness get in the way of doing the research. And it's not just about doing the CMEs and learning and getting credits for your license renewals.

Coach JPMD (02:18.392)
but it's about being curious about different disease processes. You'll hear me talk about the root causes of disease, something that I've been curious about because we didn't learn it in medical school when we were studying. We learned about disease, we learned about pathophysiology, medications to treat, things you can do to correct different conditions, surgical procedures, but we didn't really learn about the root causes of disease and how that may be affecting our health. And so that's something that I'm going to be

curious about this year and maybe even bringing some guests who are really intent on understanding the root cause of disease. Because we can't let others dumb down our profession. We have to, especially not let technology dumb down our profession. I think it's important for us to understand that AI has a role in medicine and sometimes may be able to catch certain things. But I think we still need to remain curious. And in addition, I think being curious also and asking questions

helps us improve relationship. Part of treating patients is to develop good relationships so that patients can follow our lead, can listen to instructions and can listen to or follow the advice that we're giving them. So what happens when you're not curious? done some reflection on that. And I think what happens is you let others think for you and define your destiny. I think that's one of the things that I've seen, especially in COVID era where we...

allowed others to tell us what to do without having any knowledge or any desire to have knowledge on disease processes and treatment protocols. We take less risk and taking less risk, I think, causes us to be a little more complacent and we don't push ourselves to do better and to be better. I think we grow less and we probably make less money when we're not as curious because we are not pushing ourselves and we're not taking that risk. So I think those are the things that you should be careful about if you are not curious.

So what are three things that you can do to remain curious? Well, you can listen to podcasts like this one. So there's lots of episodes in previous podcasts that can help you understand certain things that you may not have been taught in medical school or residency training, or even fellowship training. I invite you to kind of peruse or browse through the previous episodes and just get curious about different things like grounding, treatments for mercury toxicity and things that I didn't know about and I didn't.

Coach JPMD (04:37.742)
to learn about in medical school. so that's one thing you can do. The second thing you can do is you can read opposing views. And one of the things that I find interesting is when I see a patient who may not be willing to change their habits and I introduce things like, say, cold exposure, something I've been really promoting recently because I've done some research on cold exposure and how that can help with inflammation, how that can help with pain. And we have patients with a lot of

pain issues as they grow older and as they do things to their bodies and eat certain foods that can be pro-inflammatory. So I introduced cold exposure, but sometimes people are not willing to look at the opposing views of things. So they're not willing to change and it would become complacent or they do the same thing and expect a different result. And we know what that is. Right. And the third thing is I think we need to follow the money. In our curiosity quest, we should always follow the money.

So I'll give you an example. A couple of years ago, I think it was in 2008, 2009, I was running my own practice. had a second office down in the Tampa area. My main office is in Spring Hill. I was invited to give a talk on e-prescribing because I was one of their first early adopter e-prescribers of our time in the area. And this TV station, I think it was Studio 10, invited me or at least I was told that we were doing spots on as physicians in this morning show.

and they wanted me to talk about e-prescribing. So I went ahead and talked about e-prescribing. Maybe I'll upload that video link to YouTube because it was crazy looking at that video and seeing what it looked like back then. It was scary. I was basically invited to the show. We talked about e-prescribing and at the end of the show, it said this segment was paid for by PrimeCare, which was the IPA or MSO organization that I was involved in. And it was at that time that I realized

Things on TV are not necessarily what you think they are. This segment was paid for by an organization that I was involved in. And I got all the questions beforehand and I was able to basically answer them and how I wanted to answer them, show hosts knew what was going on and knew the question that they wanted to ask me. And so the segment was a nice segment, right? It was clean and there was no contentious things said and it was pretty benign. It made me think

Coach JPMD (06:57.134)
How many more segments on TV are benign or are being curated? However, the person who pays for that segment wants it to be curated and shown to the public. So I'm going to let that sit there with you guys as we move on in 2025 with curiosity episodes. I invite you to remain curious. Don't let others think for you. Take the risk. Don't be lazy. I think these are things and qualities that we need to be

or have as physicians so that we can take care of our patients powerfully and that we can decrease our stress and increase our revenue as we practice medicine. Because curiosity is something that I have felt has helped me tremendously in my career. It's got me to doing podcasts. It's got me to doing online courses that I did. It's gotten me to interview guests that are teaching me sometimes things that I didn't know before I started doing this podcast.

Thank you for listening to this episode on curiosity and I'm happy to be back recording again. We've got some exciting episodes ahead. We've got some guests that I know that you guys will enjoy. So what you learned today is what my 2025 theme is going to be for the podcast. You also learned the reasons to remain curious as it is a key trait for the growth mindset of an individual. You also learned how listening to various podcasts like this one and even opposing views can help you grow as a physician. So it's great to be back this year.

And so don't forget to subscribe and tell your friends about this podcast also so that you can get alerts of new episodes and when they're released.