Heart to Heart with Dr. Ambreen Mohamed

We speak with Dr. Ambreen Mohamed, Cardiologist and host of Heart 2 Heart, about what it's like being a ground-breaking Woman in Medicine and tackling the social and cultural issues of today. IG: @drambreenmohamed

Transcript:

you know i was having a conversation with my patient last week and we were going out the door and he stopped me and this was after like a half an hour conversation with him and he's like i just want to to let you know that you have talked to me like i'm a human being to me like i'm a person that you didn't talk down to me you didn't talk at me you talked with me and and many people don't do that and i just want you to realize that that i appreciate that and i was like wow

your head the top of it

thank god i have high cheekbones so we're fine welcome back good people dr clinton coleman along with dr sarad sugger and his less than shiny head today it's a little you did you put some uh soul glow or something on it or no i i did not use slogan like mostly natural juices embarrassing juices and berries yeah yeah and i i am depressed because uh coming to america was postponed did you hear about that we'll get into that later though we'll get into it we gotta start easy with that we'll use it into yeah once again we have a special guest dr umbreen mohammed she is a board certified cardiologist and host of heart to heart which is a web series where she and her cohost uh interview cardiologists about their journeys through medicine i love the the play on words heart to heart now was that your first title because it took us a lot of renditions of recommended daily dose yeah so um i actually am not really good with words at all and my colleague amisha is amazing she's like very amazing with words so anytime we have to come up with like a caption or title or whatever i usually like pin it to her and she's very good with kind of playing around with things and she came up with heart to heart and she's like do you think this sounds a little too cheesy and i was like no i actually feel like it's gonna work and you know i think it it did justice it's working can you explain that to dr sagar what that means heart to heart that's right what does that mean exactly it's been a while no but tell us there's no endocarditis involved

no but what you're you know you're talking to other cardiologists female cardiologists all cardiologists exactly what you know what so initially i came up with this um i i am fairly new to social media at least the public aspect of social media myself and so i joined um because i really was getting bored during this pandemic and i couldn't travel and live my life obviously on my own and so i was like okay well maybe i'm gonna do this instagram thing because everybody else seems to be doing it and so i did it and then i was like it would be really nice to talk about um you know people's journeys through medicine because it's great to talk about you know research and articles and this and that whatever but everybody kind of gets inundated with that especially with you know twitter and and all of these other posts that people are doing on all different social media platforms but what about the journeys through medicine that people really want to know about right because on the surface especially with social media it's very deceiving right to see um all sorts of physicians from all sorts of backgrounds then you think wow they have it all they didn't have to struggle they didn't have to go through x y and z i'm not going to be able to go through you know what they went through but little do they know all of the the years and the struggles we've all had to go through individually to get to where we get to so then um you know i'm sure both of you know cardiology is a very male-dominated sub-specialty and so our initial idea was to just speak to females about kind of coming up in cardiology and really expanding diversity and gender equity within um within cardio or you know for females and so um we started reaching out to some people on instagram and this was literally just going to be like an igtv series and you know um i didn't even know anisha my colleague i reached out to her on social media myself and i was like hey i have this idea do you want to do this with me she was down and then we just started reaching out to various um people on instagram thinking okay we'll talk to maybe we'll we'll dm maybe like 15 people see who gets back to it we're nobody's on instagram right now so no one's even prop you know we'll probably get a response of like five or six it'll be a really short series it'll be a done deal and then within 24 hours of us sending messages everybody responded and we were totally like whoa this is this is crazy and so then we started doing this and slowly realized that this isn't just about a woman's journey through medicine or a woman's journey to get to cardiology this is also about a man's journey this is about men supporting women and women supporting women and women supporting men and everybody kind of supporting each other and it's not just about getting more women into the field this is about diversifying the field of cardiology diversifying the fields of you know medicine and and now that we've spoken to all of these different different cardiologists we've now you know been able to have this open doors in our own careers being able to write pieces for the american college of cardiology we've been able to join a couple sections of the american college of cardiology we've been able to speak at the american heart association and you know we're we're furthering you know our own kind of careers in this and being able to get more opportunities for the both of us and in our career so it's it's actually been pretty mind-blowing how it's been accepted not only within the cardiology community but within the medical community as well wow oh that's sorry that is an impressive intro to what you're doing so our hats off to you know honestly and so we'll touch upon it and then clinton will continue but we talk a lot about about you know inequality and disparity in medicine and of course you're talking about women but i'm sure you break it down even more so in um underrepresented minorities in medicine right so not just women in general but obviously if you break it down even further so tell us a little bit about that or how you might approach that because i think what you're doing is so important because it inspires people coming up right uh who may not necessarily not just okay i'm a woman or a man but maybe certain um ethnic minority socioeconomic status classes that may not even pursue medicine or even think about medicine as a possibility so i think this year 2020 has been significant for a lot of reasons right so obviously we have the pandemic which has brought out a lot of different issues but we've also had a lot of issues with race right with you know black lives matter that whole movement and you know it really has um brought out a lot of disparities within medicine that i think we understood existed right you know it was kind of this undercurrent that we would talk about but you know it really wasn't coming out and so once it was really coming out we were realizing wow there's a there's a lot of there's a lot of disparity within medicine and within our cardiology and we need to talk about it and we need to make changes right because we see it happening everywhere else like i was i was really fortunate in my fellowship class to have an extremely diverse class not only of men and women but people of different backgrounds cardiology fellowship classes are not like that the majority are you know whites uh maybe some asians very and then you know obviously that includes south asians like you and myself um but you know in terms of like black americans and other you know minorities there's not there's not that many and then talk about the male to female ratio we're in the year 2020 why is it that only 16 percent of board-certified cardiologists are women and this is 20 20. i mean this that's crazy right and then you have to think especially if i think more than 50 of uh medical school applicants you know are women so clearly there's there's plenty of women potential you know in the pool but they're just not coming through we hear the more that we talk to people and then we hear from future you know um future generations of physicians well why is it that you're getting discouraged you know we hear that you want to go into cardiology but why is it that you're getting discouraged and we hear that there are male attendants and male colleagues and you know that are you know um discouraging them early on like i remember i had a male attending early on in my training that said oh well i don't know if cardiology is going to be good for you because you have to consider you know getting married raising a friend how are you going to do all of that this field what do you think what's so special about this year there's there's two things i wanted to comment on one is what you mentioned the um identification or the health disparities but also doctors reckoning with that right there was a lot of pushback i think 2020 will be the year where doctors stood up for themselves as far as social issues i can't remember any other time that happened and i think that's part of staying right exactly unfortunately the most recent example was uh dr susan moore she was the physician and i think indiana university that chet covid was treated unfairly and ended up succumbing to her diseases do you think so that was a long way to a question do you think there was something different about this year that doctors were like uh we can't take this anymore we're gonna stand up or it was just a lot of issues that were coming out at once right i mean if you kind of look at this year well you started off with a pandemic and things kind of just started spiraling from there right so people were scrutinizing things a lot more than they were in previous years i mean and if you think about it you know we have had a lot more attention to social media things have been brought up a lot more we're paying attention to the media in general you know everything heavily scrutinized so you really can't make you know big grave mistakes anymore because if you do there's going to be a picture of it there's going to be a caption of it there's going to be video of it and we've seen this and so you know everything that you do you have to be really careful with how you do it and maybe some people didn't have intentional um reasons as to why they did what they did but you have to be really good about you know um you know why you're doing what you're doing so i think our our purpose initially of starting this you know series was was one thing just to diversify the field of cardiology maybe bring more women into the space but i think we're realizing that it's so much more than just that you know that people really look at our faces look at the people that were interviewing and say hey that person looks like me or that person is actually saying that it's okay to have more than just one type of ethnicity or one type of person one type of background go into this career and then to get the messages that we get from people um you know saying wow you actually changed my mind i didn't think that i'd be able to do this but you shared this journey with this person i looked up to for so long and that person had struggled too that's amazing i want to do this too i mean that's that's like you know why else would you go into something if if you're not being able to help change you know future perspectives then what else you know what are you doing so i just feel like it's so it's so gratifying and then of course because this was our passion project all we wanted was just talk to people because we love talking just like you guys do sure we didn't realize all the other benefits that were going to come along with it and i think that you know one thing to really relay is that when you're really passionate about something and you really want to do something um and you pull your put everything you know into that all of the rewards will come like and i my colleague we talk about it all the time and we're still just like in disbelief as to like how well received this has been and how people looking at us is you know wow they're paving the way and we're like really why hasn't anyone been doing this before what do you mean we're paying away you know so um it's it's been so gratifying to see how well-received it's been no yeah i'll say a couple comments i mean you're right hard work always pays off and i mean you know not to sound like my parents or something but you're right so if it's something you're passionate about it'll come through it'll be easy to do and you'll see stuff downstream and you know you're talking about being gratifying i mean i know clinton looks to me as a hero and as an inspiration for him so i'm with you i i'm all about inspiring the other generations but in all seriousness i had a conversation with my wife jess yesterday you know i was talking about on call or something and i i made some comment of like man how did she do it you know she has two kids and she's on call time and she said you know would you ask a guy that you know if he's working hard and working a lot of weekends and as you know that was my own like moment of weakness that's no you're right you know i that would even come up in conversation you know no one would say how do you do it uh you're on call time you're in private practice and you're raising kids so i think that's really important you know because you made a mention of that that in fellowship maybe directors might say well you should do something else you should do something easier i think a lot of people can uh be swayed by that and i think that's wrong and i think people don't realize they're actually portraying that or projecting that to potential med students to trainees you know clint and i both have worked with med students we work with residents you know and and they take to what we say i think to heart and so i think that's extremely important and powerful you know absolutely i mean i feel like we have a responsibility as healthy to you know do our due diligence to portray um you know not only what we're doing but to really you know help encourage others to to get into this field in the right way and we don't realize the type of influence that we have so we hear the right way and especially if you're going to be on social media you know people look up to us right i mean i feel like we have a certain type of responsibility people look up to us so why not utilize that in the best way possible so social media you know like so there's obviously we're at a different stage of our career let's say than you and so i'm probably not as social media savvy as you were someone else but do you think that doctors have a responsibility to be themselves on social media they can do whatever they want i know there's an issue where um i think there's a vascular surgeon had you know picture at the beach and someone attending or someone said oh that's not very uh becoming and then all of a sudden all you know that other female position saying that's ridiculous and you know by the way i'm a great physician but by the way i can also be on the beach and here's a picture of me you know in a bikini and actually clinton posted a picture of himself in a tankini which was weird disturbing you know and i wish he hadn't uh and i can't get that picture of my mind but further along in that what is our responsibility because that's something that we're trying to figure you know we do a lot of media we do a lot of serious business yeah but for us it's also therapeutic to be out there and we realize we can reach people educate people but you know do we i guess i want to ask your opinion like you know do we have responsibility to be very physician-esque can we be more human do people want to see us as more human you know what what are your thoughts people want to see us as more human and that's you know that is the the kind of stereotype that we need to break i will say this and i'll reference this and it doesn't really have to do with social media but you know i um as part of my locum's practice i'm a locum's doctor so as part of my locum's practice i do outpatient medicine and i you know i see patients in the clinic all the time and i'm a little bit you know obviously yeah i'm like two years maybe a year and a half out of training i love to talk as you can already tell so i love chatting it up with my patients and so um you know i was having a conversation with my patient last week and we were going out the door and he stopped me and this was after like a half an hour conversation with him and he's like i just want to to let you know that you have talked to me like i'm a human being to me like i'm a person that you didn't talk down to me you didn't talk at me you talked with me and and many people don't do that and i just want you to realize that that i appreciate that and i was like wow you know like that shouldn't be my that shouldn't be that should be the norm that shouldn't be something that's right so rare but the fact that he pointed that out i was like thinking i was like wow but that's so true it's like we just don't like you know doctors are perceived as these like robots that just don't have that much time and you can only give five minutes to each person and wonder why people get upset when they see physicians because we're not able to allocate our time to everybody but if you use that time that you have and you use it without like you really value that time you have with your patient you sit and hold their hand you sit eye to eye you really have a conversation with them you realize it's so much more than just regurgitating you know uh this is your diagnosis this is what we're gonna do i'll see you later hope you well it's so much more than that right and social media is the same thing like people know that doctors do x y and z and that's fine share that on social media but share your you know chair you as a human too and people will be able to relate to you and you'll be able to gain more garner more of an audience with that and and you want to show a multi-faceted view of you you're not just a physician that goes to work you also like to have fun you also have a life outside of work you have a family you have this that whatever you want people to be able to relate to you i feel like when they do that they're able to resonate with your message more whatever it might be and and i feel like it gets out there more in a relatable way i hope that made sense it makes perfect sense i almost had a flashback to like when i was writing essays from med school and i would say um you know born here but of indian uh immigrants you know who are also physicians that you have like the east and west and you can relate to people all different backgrounds and i think that's important and that might sound like a bunch of hogwash but it's true right i want to actually want to preface that by or expand upon that because i think patients um hey like you said they want to see physicians who have interesting backgrounds and you know if you see a patient they're in a in a vulnerable state that you can figure out well what are they doing and what's your interest you see a movie did you watch tv whatever so i think it's very helpful in that personal aspect but then also and clint and i have talked about why we need more minorities in medicine or at least underrepresented minorities so maybe not more indians or southeast asian doctors but we know that people oftentimes feel more comfortable if they can see something they recognize in their physician the first thing they may recognize is their skin color or their ethnicity or whatever just something they can make a connection to i think that's why it's so important and that's why the ama and other organizations are really making this push to have underrepresented minorities in medicine and it's just what you mentioned is that people our patients you know need to have that connection it's so important that's lost you're right it's completely lost when and i'm guilty of it too sometimes running in running out and then realizing man i should have spent a little bit more time you know where i should have just uh and i i always i never try to do i know clinton doesn't do it either but uh you know try to have something personable you know just for a second it makes a huge difference even if you just share a story about yourself like correct through this or you know whatever like i'm taking something really scary i mean most things in cardiology can be really scary for people so i'm trying to take something super scary break it down do diagrams talk about an event that maybe happened with my dad or you know whatever and then it kind of eases them and they're just like okay i get it now and you're making this a lot less scarier for me than i thought it was initially yeah and i think the the key word that dr sugger used which i'm surprised it shocks me um he used the is it a multi-syllabic word a vulnerable i think just being vulnerable with your patients and that allows you to be compassionate because i think doctors they go through mental health issues just like patients do and especially times times now now you're an advocate for mental health have you had to you know not only for yourself but advocate that more during this time or especially during covet yeah so you know one of again one of the the reasons why i joined um the the public aspect of social media was to talk mental health because i feel like especially within the medical profession we don't talk about it that much as taboo issue it is a huge taboo it's a taboo within our culture being like you know south asians we don't talk about it um in other ethnic backgrounds people just don't talk about it and then also you know as a professional i'm supposed to just be composed all the time with a smile on my face and everything everything's not perfect you know i've gone through my bouts of anxiety my bouts of depression i've had therapy for a really long time and i used to be really scared to talk about those things but that has has really changed my life therapy has changed my life and i realize that one of the ways that i can help people is show them like you guys said the key word being vulnerable even though it's really scary if i can help even one person say oh my gosh like she went through that and she got help i can get help too because guess what we also hear a lot of stories which we have heard especially during this pandemic of physicians committing suicide yeah sure i know people in my own personal life who have committed suicide and i thought that they were the happiest people in the world it happens everywhere and we have to be more open and vocal about talking about it we cannot have the stigma anymore and so i think again one of the reasons why it became such a big deal this year is because there's a lot of disparities in a lot of things that came out you know i mean this pandemic is easy for physicians to to be a part of especially for the people on the front lines very traumatic for everybody that's dealing with it if you've lost a loved one if you have you know other friends or family that are you know dealing with it it's changed everybody's life upside down if you're at home you're stuck at home all the time you're doing telemedicine all the time telemedicine is great but if you're just stuck at home all the time and you don't have the same life you used to have it's hard it's not hard you know it's hard not having a social interaction that you used to have before and so people are going through a much higher rate of anxiety and depression and others yeah yeah we did before so what better time to talk about it than now no you're right and you know being vulnerable i mean of course um being open you know clinton has been very vulnerable and open about his love of jazzercise and making it more acceptable for his patients as you can see we use humor quite a bit which i think humor patients believe or not exactly 19 out of 20 times patients appreciate that so we try to incorporate a lot of humor and um all kidding aside no pun intended i mean i all everything you're mentioning is incredibly um relevant and actually the passion that you show about it is very commendable and so i because a lot of times you know even when clinton had first approached me and said we should do a podcast and social media i'm thinking myself like you know am i gonna just post pictures of fish lips on instagram and i think you know yes which i have done in my younger days i'm not i'm ashamed to say but it was usually a drink in hand like this but that that was like very 90s and early 2000s but you know that's the power of social media and that that's what we want to tap into and that's what i think a lot of physicians want to tap into i think that is very powerful and so we appreciate you know all the passion that you're showing thank you yeah of course and i think now we're seeing it a lot with the um you're getting correct information out about the vaccine so you see a lot of the doctors taking pictures of themselves and promoting that that's right as an example did you have a vaccine okay how was that experience and is there a message that you can give to patients or audience members about how it is the safety of and all that i'm still alive i'm still here today there's no 5g microphone that was injected into my bloodstream right and so it was a great experience um you know i will say and i knew that this was going to happen when once the vaccine rolled out i knew that there was going to be some politics within each and every hospital system that would be distributed and sure enough you know you look at some of the major medical centers across the country and they're putting residents and fellows in on the back burner and vaccinating their own admin and other yeah stanford comes to mind right that was initially in mount sinai in other places as well and so it's um you know it's unfortunate but i feel like with the the more roll out there is now with madonna and and the more production that they're to have i think will be better um but yeah i was fortunate enough to be one of the first people to get vaccinated within my own hospital system it was a great experience smooth process you still have ten toes i didn't lose any digits i was good i was able to talk and walk after my arm was a little bit sore for a day and i was a little tired but that went away within um like 24 hours i'm a little nervous about some of the um like flu-like symptoms you're supposed to have a second dose but it's fine i have like one day of work after and then i'll have the weekend off so i can just recover from that but i really just want to tell people to trust science i mean you know there's a reason why you know scientists and physicians have dedicated their lives to this right because um this is you know i think that the biggest concern or one of the bigger concerns is that oh this is rushed you know this was rushed and why should we trust us we don't know what the long-term effects are going to be well if you kind of look at the flip side well do you want to live in a pandemic for the next 20 years right um you also have to understand that you know vaccine development now versus vaccine development 20 years ago it's yeah exactly it's it's you can't compare the two right we have different science and technology now than we did back then so we are able to expedite and use our multiple resources and that's extremely important because i think people obviously i'm very passionate about vaccines you can imagine just to piggyback what you're saying the messenger rna technology has been worked on for a long time this isn't pop out of nowhere you know this has been working and we knew about coronaviruses going back to sars in 2003 so genomic sequencing things like that while we just found out about it this year we had preliminary information for other non-novel coronaviruses going way back so i think people that's the whole idea of the misinformation going out there so i think as physicians and you you know especially uh it's very important to get whoever will listen to listen to what you're saying and understand and the idea of trust science is kind of like a buzzword now but it's so true it's really unfortunate that we have a huge community that doesn't trust science right right people are rampant on social media and they are the anti-vaxx group will try to take people down and it's it's it's unfortunate and they just they they sound like they're a bunch of brainwashed people that just don't really understand reality you know and then we don't have you know i i don't like to get into politics but i mean we don't have a governing body that is you know um displaying a uniform message right right you don't have that then you have people that are easily influenced one way or the other you have a lot of um you know people that are not going to understand one message and so you have now conflicting messages and you know this is the situation that we're in so if we can even try to just change a few people's minds and let them know that hey it's okay we got it you know we're okay we want you to get it too because we don't want to be in this situation anymore we're hurting too much we need to get out of this so you know let's all stick together well you're right the anti-vaxxers have a very active social media presence so to counteract that where can our listeners find you on social media so i am on instagram at dr ambreen muhammad i'm also on twitter adam breen muhammad um i i just recently joined twitter so i'm trying to figure it out but i'm trying to be more active um but instagram is like my main um space you know i'm very interactive with the people that message me i try to help as many people as i can so who needs help with anything you know um i i definitely try to help in any way that i can is there any plan to expand to um maybe other outlets because i guess you know we we'd love to hear more of your your voice and your insight on different things maybe like uh youtube or cnn or something yeah there you go i never even thought that that would be a possibility cnn please i am not cnn caliber i wish i was but well believe me i think they'll take anyone uh

i've been on there a bunch of times and um sometimes wearing pajamas sometimes with my dog and my feet it can be done believe me believe me it can be done um but yeah i mean i feel like i've kind of you know i've just started to grapple all this and and i'm really loving it i i realize you know someone once told me in fellowship actually my program director told me in fellowship she's like i know that you're going to go far not only because you are you know you're obviously a fellow and you're a cardiologist you're going to be great in that respect but she's like you love to talk and you love to bring people together and you you seem to have this voice that really resonates resonates yeah sure that is your power you need to use that and i never really understood what she meant and i feel like i'm understanding that now so um i'm really excited to see where my heart to heart series with misha is going to go and i would love to work with you guys more and if you guys ever have any opportunities let me know i would i would love to you know collaborate more no but your power shows through and your passion so we're very appreciative of you coming on today and uh in just a short time we met you you know that that's very obvious so uh we expect big things out of you going forward but that is all the time we have today thank you so much for coming on we're very very much appreciative and so i'm dr steward sagar with my co-host as always clinton coleman find us on spotify apple podcast stitcher and other places as well as youtube until next time

be well