Fighting for Empowerment and Equity (with Dr. Pamela Kunz)

The Doctor's Art

Henry Bair and Tyler Johnson

Medicine, Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Philosophy

5 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2022

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dr. Pamela Kunz is the Director of the Center for Gastrointestinal Cancers at Yale Medicine. For 19 years, she was at Stanford University, most recently serving as Director of the Stanford Neuroendocrine Tumor Program. But in 2020, Dr. Kunz announced her departure, citing years of gender discrimination, microaggressions, and harassment. In this episode, Dr. Kunz opens up about the challenges she faced, how she overcame them, and how she now taps into a clear-eyed awareness of her values to lead health care settings that empower underrepresented individuals and to advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion in academic medicine.

In this episode, you will hear about:

How Dr. Kunz’s science-filled childhood led her to a career in medicine, and why she took on the daunting task of treating cancer patients - 2:21
What it is like to build relationships with patients who have life-limiting cancer diagnoses - 7:25
Dr. Kunz’s past struggles working in a toxic environment due to constant disrespect and denigration based on her gender - 12:18
How leadership coach Rebecca Merrill (our guest on Episode 7) helped Dr. Kunz realize why she was so unhappy in her work and what she could do about it - 16:15
The development of Dr. Kunz as an advocate of diversity, equity, and inclusion in academic medicine - 18:48
Dr. Kunz’s advice for women and other underrepresented individuals going into medicine on preparing against potential hostility in their chosen careers, and how to create a “tapestry” of mentors - 22:01
How Dr. Kunz addresses her own burnout, and how seeing oneself as an advocate can be a tool to self-empowerment - 32:25
The advice Dr. Kunz would give to her past self if she could go back in time - 41:02

Dr. Kunz mentions the book “Dare to Lead” by Brené Brown as being especially transformational in her journey to overcome challenges in the workplace.

Follow Dr. Kunz on Twitter @PamelaKunzMD

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Henry Bear.
0:03.4	And I'm Tyler Johnson.
0:04.8	And you're listening to the Doctors' Art, a podcast that explores meaning in medicine.
0:09.9	Throughout our medical training and career, we have pondered, what makes medicine meaningful?
0:15.2	Can a stronger understanding of this meaning create better doctors?
0:18.8	How can we build healthcare institutions that nurture the doctor-patient connection?
0:23.1	What can we learn about the human condition from accompanying our patients in times of suffering?
0:28.0	In seeking answers to these questions, we meet with deep thinkers working across healthcare,
0:33.1	from doctors and nurses to patients and healthcare executives, those who have collected a career's worth of harder and wisdom.
0:40.2	Proving the moral heart that beats at the core of medicine, we will hear stories that are by turns heartbreaking,
0:45.6	amusing, inspiring, challenging, and enlightening.
0:49.3	We welcome anyone curious about why doctors do what they do.
0:52.9	Join us as we think out loud about what illness and healing can teach us about some of life's biggest questions.
1:04.0	Our guest today, Dr. Pam Coons, is the director of the Center for Gastrointestinal Cancer at Yale Cancer Center.
1:11.6	For 19 years prior to that, she had been at Stanford University, most recently serving as director of the Stanford Neural Indochron Tumor Program.
1:20.0	But in 2020, Dr. Coons announced her departure due to years of gender discrimination, microaggressions, and verbal abuse.
1:28.2	In this episode, we are fortunate to have Dr. Coons join us and share her experiences while at Stanford,
1:34.0	how she overcame these challenges and how she now advocates for equity in academic medicine.
1:40.2	At Yale Medicine, Dr. Coons is currently also the vice chief of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiative in the Medical Oncology Division.
1:49.3	In 2021, Dr. Coons was recognized as the woman oncologist of the year by woman leaders in oncology.
1:56.4	And I will also say that she is a dear personal friend and mentor, and probably as much as any other person responsible for both the current position faculty position that I have,
2:08.1	and also for a lot of the work that I do.
	...

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