00:00

And then I woke up, and all of the pain medicine that was keeping my pain down after the surgery was gone out of my system. And I for the first time in my life experienced 10 out of 10 mind numbing, all consuming pain. And in that moment, I probably would have done anything sold anything given anything for that to end, because I couldn’t even consider anything else going on in the world.

00:28

Hey, it’s Nate Disarro and welcome to titans of industry, the podcast where I talk to industry leaders and innovators who are at the top of their game and leading the pack in their fields uncovering some of the best stories in today’s business landscape. In today’s episode, I sit down with Dr. Jonathan Gauri, the director of interventional pain management at ua Ms. Dr. Gorrie has a passion for bettering the quality of life for as many people as possible when not seeing patients. Jonathan also teaches at the Medical School equipping the next generation of doctors to find solutions to life’s most painful problems. In our conversation, Jonathan tells the story of how early personal experiences with sports and mouth surgery led him to pursue anesthesiology and pain management. He describes how the lessons he learned on the football field still permeate his leadership style today, and how he’s a champion for diversity and inclusion. These are the key elements of his mission to bring health care to people that have been historically underserved. Jonathan is also an accomplished speaker traveling nationally to speak about innovative breakthroughs in pain management.

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Now let’s get to the episode.

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But before we do, our team at content Titan wants you to know that we understand the challenges business leaders and marketers are facing right now, with moving to a more virtual world. We are experts in taking human connections and turning them digital. From virtual Events and Video presentations to promotional content and advertising. We’re here to help guide you through the process of staying in front of your audience and making your life a little bit easier. People tell us all the time that they are lost and don’t know what to say or do and we exist to help your business continue to move forward, virtually. So if you’re ready to take your business and content strategy virtual, we’re ready to help. Let’s get your business back to business.

02:22

Now, here’s my conversation with Dr. Jonathan, Gauri.

02:26

Jonathan, we’ve known each other for a little while. And I appreciate you taking the time to jump on the show here and tell us all things pain management. I don’t know what the statistic is, maybe you do. But how many people are affected with pain, chronic pain every year. First of all, thanks for having me. I’m a fan of the podcast. And I’m glad to join the group of people who have graced the show. So thank you, chronic pain is is challenging. And it’s you know, the best way to start is that pain is really a part of life. And it’s a necessary part of life. It’s our messenger system from our body to our brain, that something’s wrong. You know, if we sit uncomfortably, we start to experience pain to tell us to move. And so we get back to statistics at start with that everyone experiences pain, probably at some point in every single day.

03:24

Chronic Pain is really when that pain becomes dysfunctional.

03:30

And our body sends pain signals past the amount of time that it takes for us to either fix the problem or heal. And the statistics vary, but I think you can safely say that a third of people are in the country are experiencing some sort of chronic pain every single day. And I would even include myself in that as I’m starting to get older. You know, I have a little bit of back pain here and there that comes in. I call I call my back pain Charlie and Charlie comes to visit me you know, probably, you know a couple times a week well I can completely empathize with that I’m the same way I think when I hit probably around the age of 3031 I started to notice these little things that just I had never noticed before pain was just discomfort and then I didn’t do anything about it gradually kind of get a little more uncomfortable and then you start not sleeping as well and then you know I would assume like said a third of the population experiences something like that. At what point did you decide this is the field I want to go into this is what I’m going to do is help people manage their pain. How did you get to where you’re at? Yeah, there’s there’s a long and a short I’m going to go with the long end Feel free to cut me off if I get a little long winded as they used to say

04:49

you know I I played a lot of sports growing up and I played football in high school and wanted to play college football but unfortunately you

05:00

Know, the maker decided I wasn’t going to be tall enough to be an NFL defensive then, even though I’m pretty sure I had the talent, I’m just gonna throw that out there.

05:09

But I decided I wanted to be around sports and and I was a smart kid I was a nerd. And so how can I be around an NFL team without being an NFL athlete, I watched the movies and any given Sunday, there was a doc around the team given he was a villain, so I didn’t want to be like him. But I was like, I can be a doctor. And so that made me decide that I wanted to go to medical school. So you know, I, I wish I could say that, you know, from the age of 10. I had a physician mentor that I followed, but honestly, it was my ego and wanting to be around sports.

05:46

When I got to medical school, I tried all the different types of medicine. And I realized I didn’t love surgery, most of the docs around sports orthopedic surgeons, but I enjoyed what I miss most about sports was that game time feeling of it being fourth in one, and you having to make a play to win the game. And I experience that most with anesthesia. So ended up being an anesthesiologist because anesthesiologist are professionals at saving lives in kind of very dire situations. I’m

06:27

trained as an anesthesiologist. And what I realized, and I had a specific moment when my path changed, and it was honestly, I had a surgery.

06:38

I had my wisdom teeth cut out because they were impacted. And the surgery went well. And I was in the recovery room. And I was having severe pain. And the nurse came over and gave me some fentanyl, which been those kind of in the news as a drug of abuse, but it’s commonly used during surgery. And after about 30 seconds after getting that medicine, I don’t remember anything. So I went what we call APNIC. So I basically overdosed, stop breathing was completely out, they called a code, as we say in medicine. And I was given Naloxone or Narcan, which is kind of known in the news as the reversal agent for pain medicine.

07:27

And then I woke up, and all of the pain medicine that was keeping my pain down after the surgery was gone out of my system. And I for the first time in my life experienced 10, out of 10, mind numbing, all consuming pain.

07:43

And in that moment, I probably would have done anything sold anything given anything for that to end. Because I couldn’t even consider anything else going on in the world. All I could think about was the pain going on in my mouth. And I was fortunate enough that, you know, 30 minutes later that were off, and they were able to give me medicine and my pain was treated. As I continued my career, I realized two things. And that’s one that there are people all over this country that experienced that level of level of pain every moment of their life. And that to me was terrifying. And I wanted to help them. So that was the first thing. The second thing I realized, and this probably really is the reason for my two major interests is that there are a lot of people who look like me,

08:39

due to access reasons, implicit bias social reasons, who don’t have access to high quality health care to get their pain treated.

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And I wanted to help them. And so after finishing my anesthesia, anesthesiology residency, I did an extra year of training at Emory in Atlanta to really focus in on those two things. How can I help people who have severe complex chronic pain? And also how can I help underrepresented minority groups who don’t have the same level of representation in medicine? And then I was recruited here to back home to Little Rock at you Ms to start my practice. Love it. Well, thanks for sharing that whole the whole journey because it does give a lot of context. I think it’s really fascinating to know that that you’ve sort of been on the patient side so you get it, you know, what a 10 out of 10 feels like you understand what you’re helping and, you know, with with the era of COVID Now, we know that that that’s caused a lot of changes and challenges for people and especially like you mentioned the minority segment of the population. There’s been a lot of conversation about the the lack of care and the lack of resources to

10:00

really support those that are at times in the most need. So how is that affected? what you guys are doing now in pain management? Has there been any new discoveries that the virus has has added to your plate? Or is that not really anything that you have to worry about? Yeah, that’s, that’s an outstanding question, as you alluded to COVID, has really changed how all of us have have done business. Over the past year and a half, I would say it’s affected me and my field really in two ways. Or I would say three ways. The first is that medicine is a very hands on field.

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You know, traditionally, touch is a big part of medicine. And I made sure that, you know, I examined every patient, I’m a pretty old school doc. And then we have all these new imaging modalities and MRIs and x rays and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, there’s no substitute for someone who has back pain, touching their back, while they’re in certain positions to understand what’s going on. During COVID. I couldn’t do that, especially at the beginning of the pandemic. And so medicine really transitioned to a telemedicine format. And so for probably two or three months, I saw 100% of my patients on a video screen.

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And that was a huge change. For me, it’s it’s, it also challenged my creation of the patient physician relationship,

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not looking someone in the eye, not shaking their hand, and being able to gain trust and buy in because I’m creating plans for people to really try to transform their quality of life, and not having them present to really smile at the right time, or help kind of build that relationship.

12:02

It’s challenging. Also, a lot of the things that I do, kind of offering opioid sparing modalities of pain, involve injections, implants, things like that, that were more challenging to do. So we had to kind of quickly adapt our hospital protocols to be able to allow patients to come and safely

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you know, having patients sit in their car until we’re ready for their appointment, spacing out our recovery room, making sure that we have strong COVID protocols. And so that was a big part of it. The second thing is this long haul or phenomenon, that COVID while it is a viral disease that’s very dangerous in the short term in the first month of contracting it, people are having long term effects. And

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a lot of our field of pain management is really about improving quality of life, for people who have been discarded by the medical system.

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When medicine says, you have this problem, you know, patients come to the doctor because they’re in pain, they don’t come to the doctor because they have a disease. They don’t know what their diseases. If doctors say, Well, I can’t fix the reason you came, you go see a pain management doctor. And so a lot of these patients are starting to come into our practice, because medicine doesn’t know what to do with them. And that’s kind of I enjoyed that challenge. But it has really caused me to have to think outside the box, because I don’t have a manual for how to treat these patients. No one does. But I’m the last stop, you know, the buck stops here. I can’t, there’s no one for me to send them to. And then I would say the third thing is, I’m really engaged in a lot of clinical research, and a lot of kind of conference networking around the country to move our field forward. And that really hit a halt during COVID. And so figuring out how to educate our physicians of tomorrow, and still collaborate to make sure that our advances in technology don’t halt for a year. And you know, using mediums such as this using using zoom and using teleconferences has been a big help with that. So we’ve talked a little bit about your, your travels, your your speaking around the country, your involvement, and like you just mentioned.

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And of course you talk as though someone who’s been doing this for 30 years, for somebody who’s been in the field for a long time because you’re educating other physicians, you’re, you’re leading the field, but you’re under 40 years old and you’re doing things that

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Most people probably aren’t doing a lot of people enter the workforce, and they find their niche. And they coast. They just kind of go through the day to day and make a living. And that’s nothing wrong with that. But you have a passion, you have a desire to push the industry forward to educate people to do things in a way that aren’t being done.

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What what’s your motivation and drive? Why are you maybe different than the next pain management? Doctor?

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I think that’s a, that’s a great question.

15:30

And requires a lot of introspection. You know, I think that I went into medicine or my love of medicine is, and I’ve used this buzzword a few times is really about changing quality of life for patients. And what I realized about two years into my career is, you know, I can go to work, and I can be in a clinic. And I can see 15 to 20 patients in a day, and have an amazing impact. And those 15 to 20. Patients are gracious, they’re thankful. They’re appreciative of what I did, for them, getting people back to work getting, you know, grandparents back playing with their grandkids is great. But there is there are ways that physicians can have much larger impacts. And when I look at our state, which is number two, or n has been for the past four or five years number two and opioid prescribing.

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And when I look at a rural state that doesn’t have access to cutting edge, high quality pain care, in Magee Arkansas, Alma, Arkansas in the four corners of our state, or even honestly, in Little Rock, before we started building our clinic, compared to the places I trained, Manhattan, Atlanta, where you could throw a rock and hit someone who’s a well trained, fellowship trained pain physician,

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I quickly realized that I can if I focus on education, and policy, and recruitment and program building here in Arkansas, if I bring multi national research trials to Little Rock, if I bring in physician partners from four corners of the United States, if I open education programs for doctors in rural Arkansas, that I’m not just having an impact on 20 patients a day, I’m having an impact on 1000s of patients, because the entire of culture around quality of life care is going to change. And once I realized that it was a no brainer. And so I still see patients, I still, you know, I’m wearing scrubs right now, and then no one can see me. But you know, this afternoon, I’m going to do some procedures on patients to help with chronic pain. But I only see patients about 50% of the time. And the rest of my time is devoted to really educating our state, educating the physicians of tomorrow, educating the physicians of today and working on policy for you IMS and for for the state and bringing in high quality research and partnering with other physicians around the world to advance pain care, and make sure that we have access to that right here at home.

18:45

It’s incredible.

18:47

You mentioned that a lot of what you do, it’s sort of the the the buck stops here, there is no other option for your patients.

18:56

And that at times, you’ve got to figure it out. There is no manual, there’s no solution. I would assume at some points, there’s there’s times in your career in your practice that those exercises those those results and in not being what you want them to be. I think anybody who’s successful has always experienced some level of failure. Are there any specifics that come to mind when it comes to like something you tried that didn’t work, but that ultimately led to better outcomes down the road? Like what have you failed at that ultimately helped helped you succeed? Yeah, I can I can talk more generally, and then I’ll get into a specific, specific example. It’s so so most of the patients that we see, as I’ve said medicines already failed them. A lot of times other physicians will question the research in our field, not realizing that, that the 10% of patients that you couldn’t fix are 100% of our patients. So that leaves us in a little bit of a lurch because

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We are trying therapies on folks who have who are the exception to the rule for every other medical therapy.

20:11

And we don’t always, we don’t always do great, we don’t always make the change we desire. And some of my most challenging conversations is to sit down with someone and say,

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I don’t think that we can make a real dramatic change in the source of your discomfort.

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But I’m going to be here with you, I’m not going to toss you away, or send you somewhere else or keep having you jump from position to position. Let’s figure out what little small changes we can make to get you there.

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I think one specific disease process example is diabetic peripheral neuropathy.

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We are one of the leading states in diabetes in the nation. And we have a lot of patients who have severe foot pain, because diabetes damages the nerves in your feet.

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And a lot of those patients ended up in my practice when I got here. And we didn’t really have an answer for it. You know, we tried a lot of things, I tried things that had not been tried before in the literature at all.

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And some of it didn’t work.

21:27

But there was a new product on the market that was doing a multinational research trial. And they were choosing 15 centers around the world to try that treatment for this disease. And for me,

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one of my passions is to make sure that those treatments aren’t just in San Francisco, la in New York. And so I was and with my partner, Eric Peterson, were really persistent about making sure that little rock was a part of that trial. And that trial has been pretty successful. We just published one year data and we’re working on further data. But that is going to change the way that we treat diabetic peripheral neuropathy. Probably going forward. And we have been fortunate to have a few wins like that. And the other is with a disease called complex regional pain syndrome, which is considered the most painful disease known to man. And so

22:34

it’s it’s really been exciting and but it’s really kind of getting together with either my partners locally, or my partner’s nationally or internationally, and coming up to solutions to really complex problems that we’re all seeing in our individual practices. I love that. Obviously, you’re you’re a leader within your practice within the organization, but also within your field on a national level, if not International. And leadership comes in a lot of different forms and functions. And everybody has their way of leading the charge in what they do. What would you say are some of the principles or practices that you apply on a day to day basis to maintain that level of, of motivation with those around you, obviously, you’re very collaborative and your approach to pain management working with other people, what what stands out to you as far as how you lead and what you do?

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You know, for me, it all goes back to sports, pretty simple guy, if I i one time post on Facebook that I learned more on the football field that I learned in the classroom, and I had a few teachers who were pretty upset about that. So I don’t know if I would necessarily say that anymore. But I think that my leadership style definitely came from those moments of being a team captain on a football field. And I see myself, I really see the leader of an organization as a really good quarterback.

24:06

And there are a few analogies there. But the first one is, when a play comes in, and you’re calling a play, you’re in the huddle and all eyes are on you.

24:20

And you have to get 10 other people to buy in to whatever that play is because if one of them doesn’t really believe that the player is going to work and they have to do their job, then the whole plane is going to fall apart. And so that’s the first thing is looking at your team and really making sure that they believe in the mission. And they believe that their piece of that mission is important. You know, sometimes on a football field, your mission is to basically sacrifice your body for the greater glory of some

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What else.

25:02

But helping that person understand how that is so important to the advancement of the mission and the advancement of the team is, is going to be a big part of that.

25:16

The second thing is you get up to the line and you you see what those around you are doing that aren’t a part of your team, and you’re responsible to Audible. And so you have to have the trust of your team and be able to communicate to all of your team members that sometimes we have to change path. And even though we had a plan coming into the situation, COVID is a great example. We need the audible, and I have to be able to quickly communicate that we need to change our focus, but have again have their buy in that even though that they may not be able to see the entire landscape, that they’re going to trust me,

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then I think the last thing is, it’s then my job to make sure that they’re set up for success. So, you know, Tom Brady rarely scores a touchdown.

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The others around him score touchdowns. And so I need to make sure that I call the right audibles to get my team members in the right position. So that they can be successful and use their talents and their abilities, which are all going to be different. So some are going to be running back, some are going to be wide receivers, some are going to be tight ends, they’re going to score touchdowns in very different ways. And make sure that I understand what their natural talents are, and set them up for success. And even though I’m not scoring the touchdown, our greater team is going to rise. And everyone gets credit from the success of this one person who is being celebrated. And so I take those lessons into the workplace. And so I’m constantly thinking about how can I make sure my team has buy in. And that’s by making sure that my team is really educated about the end goal. Even my nurses, my, any of my front desk staff understands the importance of every little thing that we do,

27:24

then making sure that our communication is right so that we can audible at any point. And then really understanding their talents and studying their talents. So that can set them up to be successful.

27:37

I love it to continue with the sports theme. I’m sure Tom Brady, his rookie year.

27:44

He’s learned some things now that he wish he knew back then, of course, him as an example, when a Super Bowl What? Oh, 304 was his first one. So pretty early in his career, he was able to figure some things out go win Super Bowls, and he’s been dominant ever since.

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One, what are some things that you’ve learned over your career that you wish you knew day one, when you first met with your very first patient? And had that opportunity to consult with them and handle their their pain management? Yeah, that’s a that’s a great question. I think that I more and more understand the importance of patient, the patient, physician relationship, and patient physician buy in. So if you, if you break down what I do every day, I have a patient who comes in and delivers really intimate information that they probably haven’t told anyone outside of their family a lot of times, and they expect me to use my talent, expertise and education to really improve their quality of life.

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If any of those things break down, then we’re not going to be successful. So I have to build a relationship in order for them to share all the things that I need to know for me to help them. Then on the other side of the coin, I’ve heard pretty much every quarterback talk about the amount of work that they have to put in, in the NFL the amount of study that they have to do to be prepared for a Sunday.

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I’ve done a lot of education. You know, I did that 13 years of post high school education before I earned my first paycheck as a physician. But that’s not enough. And I have to continue to read the literature. I need to have really young, hungry, talented people around me to ask those difficult questions so that I’ll continue to stay curious

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and I need to make sure that I am continuing to communicate with those who

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are more knowledgeable about specific disease processes than I am. So that I can make sure that I’m delivering the best product. So who are some of those people that, you know in our world we call them Titans? Who are some of the Titans in your life, the mentors, the role models, the celebrities that you look up to and say, you know what they’re doing it pretty cool. I want to apply those principles in my life. Yeah, I was very fortunate that I trained at at Cornell in New York City, which has been one of the kind of stalwarts of chronic pain, one of the original chronic pain programs in the country, if not the world. And so there are a lot of mentors that have come from that program. One being Sudhir Diwan who, who started that program, back 20 years ago, who actually texted with yesterday. And I’m going to go to New York and have dinner with him. And a couple months.

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There’s another person who was a couple years ahead of me, in that same program, named Dr. Woods, high Ed, who is at University of Kansas in my same role. And as I started this program in Arkansas, he was doing the same thing in Kansas, but was kind of two years ahead of me. So having someone who had literally just gone through the every single challenge that I had gone through,

31:26

was extremely helpful. I’d also say that, while you know you, you learn a lot of things from people in your field, I think you also learn so much from those outside of your field. And so really studying kind of the Titans in, in business and the Titans in sports and the Titans and other industries, is also extremely, extremely helpful.

31:55

I 100% agree with that.

32:00

One of the things we’ve been talking about lately is how do we do business better, I really have started to adopt that phrase, because COVID forced us to, in some cases, just do business differently. But really, we hope that that means do business better. Sometimes people don’t look at the medical profession as a business, it’s more quality of life improvement. But of course, there’s financial transactions involved and everything else. So it has to operate like a business just like anything else. How can can your industry or your world do business better? or How are you helping to conduct better business? Yeah, a couple of things, I think that we, as a medical profession, are behind most business organizations, and our ability to track data

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on the patient experience. And that’s something that we’re rapidly catching up on.

33:05

You know, I now use Power BI, for those who are who are out there, you know, I now track I track kind of the quality of our chronic pain interactions throughout our entire hospital system.

33:20

And I think that physicians have been a little resistant to that, because medicine we think of is such a niche and nuanced interaction. And that, you know, the one thing that I’ve heard many old physicians say the, the one difference that separates medicine from other fields is that the customer is not always right.

33:44

But kind of the new school of thought of medicine is, even though the customer may not necessarily understand what’s best for their long term health outcomes.

34:00

It’s my job to educate them on what’s best. But ultimately, I should allow them to make the decisions about their health care. And I may not be the best physician for them, because we may have a disagreement and they you know, we may have to change relationships, which is true of any business.

34:20

But then we should figure out how to best provide that service to the patient, and make sure that the patient is satisfied with the quality of their care. And so really diving into what is good quality care, and tracking those metrics is kind of something that we do now at ua IMS and I do as a part of our clinic. And and I think is really becoming kind of the new wave wave of medicine.

34:53

I love it.

34:55

Part of that whole thing, as you mentioned is customer experience or patient experience.

35:00

every business, every organization, if there’s $1 exchanged for a service or product, there’s an experience to be had. And I think, when it comes to medicine, like you said, it’s it’s one of the few, if not the only industry out there that the patient’s not always right. You know, when you think of the power company, it’s almost, you know, providing electricity into a home or office is, in some regards equally as important, but it’s not 100% necessary tap power, quality of life is a whole lot better with it, just like medicine. And at some point, you have to realize, it is up to the customer or the patient to have an experience that is worth going back to are worth telling somebody else about. And in my mind, and in my business, it’s all about the story, right? So how do we create a better story that allows that person to have a better experience? Or tell somebody else, either the positive or negative experience and ultimately bring more patients more customers more, you know, sales? How do you look at stories, and the outcomes of your patient experiences as the way you’re doing your job? You know, because ultimately, you want to hear these stories, right? I mean, to us, stories matter, stories are important. How do stories fit into your world? Yeah, I want to, I want to touch on a couple things that you said there.

36:23

Starting with the stories piece.

36:27

One of the benefits of being in medicine is oftentimes I get follow up. And so when you put if you know, if you’re a roofer, and you put a new roof on a house, it’s not like you say, Hey, I’m going to come back in three months. And let’s talk about how good the roof is. I see most of my patients after whatever I’m doing, and get to hear what worked and what didn’t work, and begin to really grow that story of that patient experience. And log those stories both physically in an electronic medical system, but also in my brain, so that when I see patterns of new stories, I can then apply those previous stories. The other thing that we’ve changed in our practice is we use a database called promise. And promise asks a series of questions via an iPad. And we do this while patients are waiting for their appointment, that help us understand the story of what’s really the deficit in that patient’s quality of life.

37:42

Patients come to us because they’re in pain. But sometimes the deficit may be that they’re depressed, or they’re not getting enough sleep. And so using those kind of tools, really help us really understand the full story that we may not even get from a patient interaction, because there’s only so much you can gain from a 1520 minute conversation.

38:08

The other thing I wanted to touch on what the patient experience is something that I think that we’ve done in our clinic that’s really different than a lot of other other hospital experiences. His pain is trying to think of a good word, but I’m going to use the word crappy, you know, it’s, it’s not fun to be in pain. And so I’ve really tried to make our experience our total experience as fun as possible. And so I try to encourage our nurses to laugh and joke and there’s normally laughter, there’s noise, there’s music, there’s pretty loud music, in our in our in our recovery room, there is always normally some pretty loud music in our procedure room, when patients are getting procedures. I ask patients what they want to hear, we try to make it as upbeat as possible. So for that little bit of time, while they have to really think about the worst aspect of their life, we try to make it as fun as possible. And hospitals tend to be so sterile and kind of dry. I think that’s been something that I’ve seen that’s really improved our our patient experiences is kind of zigging in that regard when everyone else is asking, I love it when it adds to the story, right? Because the second a customer stops talking about what you did for them. The story’s over, right? And if they’re going to go out and tell people how their lives better or improved because not only did the medicine work, but the experience worked, and they keep telling that story. I think that’s super important.

39:50

So if I’m a patient or a potential patient who experiences some level of pain, what do I do? Where do I turn? What what’s the patient

40:00

To alleviate this pain,

40:03

yeah, so

40:06

patients are normally referred to us from other physicians,

40:11

primary care doctors surgeons, so if you would like to see us then, you know, pain at you a pain that your MSA Edu just throwing out there.

40:21

But your physician can send us a referral. And patients then are seen by me or one of my four colleagues in our clinic space. And it’s really a conversation about what you’ve gone through. And how we can. And my question that I always like to ask is, what is your goal? What are you able, what do you want to do that you’re not able to do, and then we create a plan to help you get there.

40:54

Sometimes that plan includes medications, and hopefully non opioid medications, but sometimes, you know, with a lack of options that can become opioids.

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Most time, that becomes some sort of procedural intervention. And so I spend 60% of my time in a procedure room. And that’s kind of the other half of our clinic, where patients come in, and we, you know, it may be that your knee after a knee replacement, doesn’t work in the same way that you hoped it would, and you have really severe pain, when you walk, well, maybe I can burn off the nerve that goes to the knee replacement, so that you don’t feel that hinze going back and forth, so that you can walk a little better without pain, maybe it’s that you’ve had seven spine surgeries, and you have a lot of nerves that are encased in scar and they are not sending functional signals to your brain. So maybe I can put a little electrical lead similar to a pacemaker on your spinal cord above the area where you had all those surgeries to intercept and use the correct frequency to intercept those dysfunctional nerve signaling so that your brain doesn’t catch them sounds almost like the noise canceling feature in my air pods. Right. So it’s, it’s still there, we’re just masking it is that exactly, that’s exactly exactly what we’re doing. Allowing you to still function still do all the things you need to, but getting rid of that kind of that noise that’s bothering you.

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And so it can be any number of things. And then that’s kind of when we bring you into. And of course, patients are nervous. Patients haven’t heard of these kinds of treatments before, they seem scary, you know, having something, I’m going to burn a nerve in your knee, or I’m going to put an electrical lead in your spine, or all those things. So that’s where that bind comes in. And that’s where that you know, what we call in anesthesiology. ainsdale. ISIS comes in and trying to remove or help kind of mitigate someone’s anxiety. So helping make sure that the experience is good. So that patients when they leave, they say, you know, I really expected that to be terrible, but it was actually kind of a lot of fun. And the people were smiling.

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And I could tell that everyone cared for me. And that’s what we’re shooting for. I love it. And I can only imagine the outcome and the result.

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And the satisfaction with life that a lot of your patients are able to experience because they were able to come and take that leap. get educated. I’m assuming education is such a huge part of what you do too. Because, yeah, I would think every patient it goes in you say you’re gonna burn something off my knee will tell me about like, educated make me feel okay with this process, because that sounds more painful than the pain I’m already in.

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But yeah, I think that’s, that’s incredible. And I tell people all the time, you know, in our world, in our storytelling world, we aren’t saving lives, right. But what we are doing is helping other people be impacted by the stories we’re telling. Because just like this story that you’ve told us today,

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without the story of what you guys are doing, how many people are out there living in pain every day because they don’t know there’s an option. And so I commend you on everything you do. I want to jump into some quick hit questions. Get a little personality behind the the doctor here. What’s the best or latest book that you’ve read? So my my favorite book is lies my teacher told me

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because not really fully because of the content. But what’s the contents amazing, but it’s a book that really goes through moments in history that we’re told incorrectly

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but it really reminds

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To me that

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our education can’t stop in the classroom? And that we have to continue to question what we’ve been told, you know, a classic example of that I’m really passionate about making sure that

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minority minorities get the same level of health care that others get. And one of the lies that has been told historically in medicine is that black people don’t feel pain the same way that everyone else does.

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And kind of if you take what you learn in the classroom at face value, then you can propagate incorrect information, and actually harm lives. So sorry, I turned that quick hit into a long hit. I think that’s incredibly important to think about, and I could definitely dive into that for a long time. I mean, I’ve said all the time, because sometimes people say, Well, what did you What was your biggest takeaway from college? or What did you learn in college? And I say, really, I don’t remember the classroom. Honestly, what I learned is how to learn, because you should never stop learning, you should never stop questioning, you should never stop exploring and getting better, and understanding the world better. And I agree with you 100%. I think, you know, do teachers do incredibly valuable things? Absolutely. And I have a lot of teachers that I can credit, a lot of, you know, how to learn references from you know, but I can’t remember what I took away in that classroom. But I can know that I’m smarter today than I was last year, because I continue to learn. So I appreciate that. What’s a daily routine that you have to do, I would say exercise. And I had an ankle injury, pretty severe ankle injury in in January. And just like everyone who has the means to do so on the planet did during the pandemic, I bought a peloton.

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But moving my body and clearing my mind, having time when I have to focus on getting through a workout is essential for me to get through my day. And when that was taken for me. From about two months, one I gained a little bit of weight, but two,

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I noticed a change in my mental health. And so I now know that that’s something I have to do to stay healthy. Absolutely. Yeah, I think

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a lot of people, myself included, because I mean, it was probably about four or five years ago that I really started to get back into exercising consistently fell off a lot during the pandemic, of course, because I’m a gym guy, I have to go somewhere to exercise.

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And the mental health aspect of it is huge. That I think a lot of people that just aren’t used to it or don’t exercise don’t realize the impact to the mental side of the physical gain that you get from it.

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What is the best piece of advice that you even either given or received? It’s it’s something that my father told me, and it’s really corny. And I actually said it yesterday, I gave a talk to a bunch of college athletes who are looking to go into medicine is that your network is your net worth.

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You know, in the in the black community, we use a lot of alliteration, but I think that it the people around you is what matters. And a lot of my success has been because I’ve been fortunate to have really talented people around me to keep me focused, and to make sure that I am doing all the things that I need to be successful and I’m reading the right things I’m continuing to work out. And those those people you know more than anyone I mean, it includes my wife, Maya, who I’ve known since I was 18 years old, but a number of other people, my family, my friends, etc. Love it. If you could write a book or have a billboard with a short message on it, what would the title of that book be? Or what would that billboard say? To steal a phrase from Kevin Garnett? I think it would be that anything is possible.

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Love it.

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What’s the best thing you’ve bought in the last year for under $100

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so I’m going to nerd out for a second as you can tell, I’m not for folks listening. I’m not good at quick hit so sorry. Love it. Really two things. I have really my wife is vegan and right now for the past three months I’ve actually been become vegan.

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And so we have because of the pandemic really cooked a lot at home. And so we have every single cook Cooking gadget known to man right now. So the first one is a coal chimney. Because I have I grill and now smoke and I make the best brisket even though I can’t eat it anymore.

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But switching from lighter fluid to lighting my own colds has been a huge change. So that’s one. The second is a serrated bread knife, actual bread knife.

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I, my wife has made me realize that you need more than one knife in your house. And so now we have, like, all the super nice, you know, all the super nice knives. And I was like, oh, when you cut bread, it’s actually a clean slice, if you use the right knife. Got it. So that’s something I learned during the pandemic. Obviously, this is something that probably everyone else listening already knew. And I’m a Neanderthal and I did not know. But when you cut bread with a steak knife, it doesn’t come out as a clean slice. So that’s probably number one. I have a really

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talking about nerding out. I won’t share it here. But a really interesting story of random pieces of information I learned years ago about knives and blades and why serrated works better in some cases than a flat but you know, all the So what? We’ll talk about that over coffee sometime, anytime. All right, favorite artist or musician? I would say, Wow, that is that’s a very challenging question. Because I another way to put it is what’s the next concert you want to go see.

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That made it even harder.

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You know, I lived in New York City for eight years. And I actually only saw maybe one movie my entire time in New York City because I went to a concert a week. And so I saw a lot of really amazing artists.

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You know, the best concert I ever saw. And this probably is my favorite artists is Robert glasper. He is a jazz pianist who did all the music for the Miles Davis, Miles Davis movie that came out a couple years ago. And he has a jazz trio and then a group called the experience where there’s a key tourist and an electric basis. And

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absolutely amazing kind of really niche like as, as my father would say confusion fusion jazz. And so that’s kind of where I go, but I listen to I mean, if you told me there was a concert next door, and it was I’d never heard of the person I’d probably go But yeah, I love like live music and the Kitab is an underrated instrument that I think needs to make a resurgence. Completely underrated. You’ve already alluded to this, but maybe you have a different answer but favorite food or restaurant. You said you make a really good brisket. So I make a really good brisket. But I am I’m vegan right now. So right now my favorite food is probably beyond burgers. That sounds crazy. But I’m really kind of nerding out on how the vegan meat alternative world has really exploded. And it’s just it’s just been mind blowing. I would say favorite restaurant is is probably ucci in Austin. Absolutely love that restaurant. High quality sushi, high quality food. Nice. Love it. Yeah, I think I’m due for a trip to Austin, so I’ll have to check it out soon.

53:35

Dr. Gorrie, what else have we have? We skipped over that that’s an important part of your message.

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You know, I think the one thing that I haven’t really touched on a lot in this conversation is the importance. And I put this out there because I think it’s important for the titans of any industry. I think that diversity is important. And I think paramount to improving outcomes and making sure and a lot of times we talk about diversity, we always focus on race, but having differences of opinions and differences of life experiences in a room where decisions have made or made, making sure that there are women, people who grew up in impoverished backgrounds, people of different sexual orientations

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who understand where the customer or the patient may be coming from, that may not be seen by kind of the majority. It is something that I think that we as a community and a nation really need to work on cultivating talent at a very young age so that we have pipelines of people from different backgrounds and experiences. And I think that making that change, really improve the quality of

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product of patient experience of business interactions across our country. I love that. Well, Dr. Jonathan glory. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate you sitting down and having this conversation with me. Thanks, native. I’ve known you for a long time. And so I appreciate and congrats on everything that you’re doing. And this was a fun conversation. A great, thanks, man.

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