Category Archives: Figure Stuff Out

Thoughts and observations about everything in the kitchen sink from the meaning of life to deep-fried sushi.

What Is the Radiology Personality?

Posted on July 2, 2015 | Leave a comment

What’s your radiology personality?

I recently ran into this thread on an online forum about an introverted medical student trying to choose a specialty. The thread referred to this book which contained a chapter declaring the “best-fit” specialty using Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The types including radiology are as follows:

  • ISTP – Otolaryngology (ENT), Anesthesiology, Radiology, Ophthalmology, General practice
  • ESTP – Orthopedic surgery, Dermatology, Family practice, Radiology, General surgery
  • ENFJ – Thoracic surgery, Dermatology, Psychiatry, Ophthalmology, Radiology
  • ENTP – Otolaryngology (ENT), Psychiatry, Radiology, Pediatrics, Pathology

In the comments section, one astute contributor promptly posted the following… Continue reading →

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The Bliss of Zero

Posted on June 23, 2015 | Leave a comment

The clock hit 7pm. My thumb off the deadman switch on the dictaphone. The glow of the reading room workstation monitors reflected off my glasses. I squinted. A click of the mouse. A curious pause.

And then there it was. I saw…

Nothing. A worklist with zero unread exam.

Inbox zero, Epic Radiant variant.

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Posted in Figure Stuff Out, Residency Productivity 'Hacks'

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Signature

Posted on June 5, 2015 | Leave a comment

A signature is our handwritten imprint on a document for authenticity.

A signature is also a unique identifier for what is distinctly us, like DNA and fingerprint.

Your work, too, deserves a signature. It deserves a sign of authenticity, and if you are proud of that work, mark it yours. If the quality of the work is not to your par, then don’t put it out.

Just as importantly, the work is itself a signature. Innovation is as much about doing something new as it is doing something you. An easy and sobering way to decide is to first write down all the components of a project onto a list. Then, strike away all the parts that could be accomplished by someone else. Your team will always solve those problems. But if nothing is left, then you have learned that the project doesn’t need you.

That which remains, then, is uniquely you. It’s your value-added. Your signature.

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The Natural Progression of Radiology as A Business Practice

Posted on June 1, 2015 | Leave a comment

The terminal destination of all products and services is commoditization.  So that’s a simple answer, though one that’s not all that simple.  The management journal Harvard Business Review dedicates several classic articles on the process of commoditization, including global competition, process modularization, and, simply, the natural resting place of a mature product.

So where does radiology sit in the natural growth process?  More importantly – as junior residents – what have we gotten ourselves into?

Where is radiology in the natural growth progression?

Credit: http://bigideabiology.wikispaces.com/ED+2.C

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Posted in Figure Stuff Out, Radiology Innovation and Quality

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The Virtue of Being a Follower

Posted on May 12, 2015 | Leave a comment

One of my good friends – a respected colleague – once said, “I’m a follower, not leader.”

This (other) guy wrote a book on great followership (i.e. as opposed to leadership).

The first follower takes the courage to say, “Hey these people are onto something!”

The first follower is what makes a trend, just as the second point on a graph makes a line.

Being an expert follower is prerequisite for a good leader, and following is itself a form of leadership.

To all the followers out there, this list is for you:

  1. Thomas Jefferson, first a vice president, then president
  2. Barack Obama, first a senator under Clinton, then president
  3. Microsoft Windows, not the first GUI operating system
  4. Apple iPhone, not the first smartphone
  5. Facebook, not the first but the most successful social network
  6. Frodo, the second Baggins to bear the ring
  7. Jesse Pinkman, the sidekick you root for
  8. The Empire Strikes Back, the better follow-up movie.
  9. Pablo Picasso, a grand follower of classical realism before breaking free
  10. Twitter, a social network that celebrates the act following

So let us, too, celebrate followers.

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How Do You Solve Your Maze?

Posted on February 15, 2015 | Leave a comment

Envision a mouse trying to solve a maze for a piece of cheese, and he has to decide which way to turn at the first cross-section. He takes a look at the three possible routes, thinks for a bit, then turns a sharp left and ran. In a complex labyrinth, the mouse would most likely reach a dead-end by blind guessing.

A regular mouse might get confused (where’s my cheese?!). A smart mouse might think “well that’s all wasted effort, let’s start over” and start again from the beginning. But a smarter mouse might try to backtrack as little as possible, by going back to the nearest intersection and making a different turn.

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Do Your Research Before Doing Your Research

Posted on February 13, 2015 | Leave a comment

Recently I had an idea.  Something just clicked when I least expected it – of course!  Why didn’t I ever thought of that before?  A simple research question.  A simple way to answer it.  Helpful contribution to knowledge.  I began to assemble the idea by writing it down, into outlines and paragraphs, thinking through all the possibilities.

Then it occurred to me to use PubMed.  It turns out that although I didn’t “ever thought of that before,” someone else clearly did.   It was a good paper.  So there was that.

Every now and then we all stumble upon an idea so good, so exciting, so cool that we want to pursue it and make it our life’s goal – a research focus, a project, a new company.

Just be careful that someone else might have had that epiphany too.  Last year. Find out what happened to that idea before starting yours.

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Be a humble impostor

Posted on February 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

There is such thing as the impostor syndrome, in high-powered institutions when students and trainees hear their inner voices tell them that they are a fraud, that the admissions office made a mistake.  And the worst of it – on the next test, the truth will be revealed, and everyone will find out.

You might not be an impostor, but you also might be working among very smart people.  If you are as lucky as I am, you would have the occasional opportunity to be the dumbest person around.

I say lucky because once you realize that you work with a the world’s smartest people and trust that you still belong, you will have the humility to become a little bit more like them and the confidence to believe you can.

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Is your niche too narrow? Too wide? It doesn’t matter.

Posted on February 9, 2015 | Leave a comment

Academics care about being in a niche.  A person only has 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.  It’s practically impossible to be the world expert in everything.

Some days I worry that my interest in informatics is too narrow.  So tell me again, why wouldn’t anyone just hire either a dedicated radiologist or a dedicated informaticist?  What’s the point of you?

Some days I worry my niche is too broad. Because that’s basically all of radiology, you dimwit!  That inner voice in my head would scream.   How can you expect to understand all of what makes my profession tick, all the intricacies behind every segmentation algorithm, every big-data challenge, every line of code?  Give it up.

And then there are days when I spend 8 hours doing something I want to do, and the day feels 20 minutes long.  Days when I feel tired but satisfied, proud to have made those career choices.

These are the days when that voice doesn’t speak.

 

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Back when Xerox invented the mouse

Posted on November 5, 2014 | Leave a comment

Xerox PARC, founded in the 1960s, was among the most cutting edge research group of its time.  On December 9, 1968, Douglas Englebart famously showcased a set of inventions that set the vision for the future of computing.  In a world when everything ran on a black and white screen with punch cards and command lines, he showcased live video conferencing, real-time document editing, and something called a graphical user interface.

In the center of all of this technology was a simple box-with-a-ball device that came to be known as the mouse, which then promptly spent the next 11 years in obscurity, discussed only by the geekiest pioneers in technology.  Continue reading →

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