RWL Newsletter #112
Greetings from the snowy University of New Hampshire! We’re due to get five inches today, and possibly 7-10 more tomorrow night. I’m writing to you a day late this week because I came down with a case of food poisoning yesterday and was pretty much knocked out all day. Feeling much better today, but wow! That was unpleasant.
This was a lousy end to week that started badly. On Tuesday I learned that one of our recent graduates (class of ‘15) had passed away unexpectedly. I arrived during the spring semester of his senior year, so I only knew him a bit from our mutual time here at UNH, but he participated in a 2 year longitudinal study that I conducted looking at the school to work transition. As a result I got to know him quite well. In his short post-college career he was making excellent progress in healthcare finance, and showed real promise. It was a privilege to observe him mature from a college student into a hard working professional over those two years. The industry has lost a fine young man, and we here have lost a friend. His passing is a stark reminder of how tenuous life is, and to make sure you tell the people you care about how much they mean to you. The picture above is for Sean.
Now, contrary to that rather dark introduction, some inspiring links to get you through the rest of this weekend!
Read
What: NYT, Kaiser Permanente’s New Medical School Will Waive Tuition for Its First 5 Classes
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/health/kaiser-medical-school-free-.html
Why: KP is starting its own medical school and will waive tuition for the first five classes. When I talk to physicians about their career choices, debt is a real factor, though from my limited and admittedly non-statistically significant sample, I am not sure how much debt influences specialty choice. It seems to me people who are drawn to primary care are drawn to it for the sense of mission. What I usually hear is, after the fact, they didn’t realize how much the debt they were incurring would weigh on them.
What are your observations on this topic? Perhaps KP should waive tuition conditional on their graduates completing primary care residencies? Or taking primary care jobs following residency, since internal medicine is potentially a primary care residency, but is also the gateway to all of the medicine specialties?
Watch
What: Royal Air Force, No Room For Clichés. (1 minute)
Why: When I look out over my classrooms, I see mostly young women. That reflects the reality that I experienced when I was a practitioner as well - almost all of my employees were women. I love this advertisement for the RAF and how they make fun of the cliche messages we feed women day in and day out. This commercial is both humorous and inspiring.
Listen
What: NPR How I built this, TOMS: Blake Mycoskie (56 minutes)
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/08/692781997/toms-blake-mycoskie
Why: TOMS is probably one of the best known socially conscious brands, with their clever marketing concept of giving away a pair of shoes to a person living in a poor country for every pair they sell commercially. This interview is with the founder of TOMS, Blake Mycoskie. Listening to Blake’s story, you would not have expected him to create a mission-driven brand based on his early career. I think what hit me about this interview was the importance of working for an organization whose mission you really believe in. I just did a new Health Leader Forge interview with a healthcare executive who switched from the practice of law to healthcare administration mid-career, and was surprised by how much being in a mission driven organization meant to him (look for the interview in 2 weeks). Life is about more than making money.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line by e-mail, or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
Also, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://tinyletter.com/markbonica
Have a great weekend and do amazing things!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Assistant Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast: http://healthleaderforge.org
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor." - Henry David Thoreau