Alexis talks with guests Dr. Amy Pearlman, urologist and director of the men’s health program at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, and her research assistant Laura Olds. They discuss the intersection of public health and health care where information and access are keys to connecting with patients and helping them lead their best, healthiest lives.

Alexis Clark:

Hello everyone. Welcome back to From the Front Row, brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. My name is Alexis Clark and if this is your first time with us, welcome. We’re a student run podcast that talks about major issues in public health and how they are relevant to anyone, both in and outside of the field of public health. Today, we’re excited to have Dr. Amy Pearlman and research assistant Laura Olds on our show. Dr. Pearlman is a fellowship trained urologist, clinical assistant professor and serves as the men’s health program director at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Laura is a current first year Master of health administration student and assists with different research initiatives in the Department of Urology. Welcome to the show.

Laura Olds:

Thank you.

Amy Pearlman:

Awesome to be here, thanks for having us.

Alexis Clark:

Let’s start off with you, Dr. Pearlman. What’s been your journey to get to your current role?

Amy Pearlman:

Gosh. If you were to ask me how many years I spent in training, for some reason I can never remember, but it was 10 years of postgraduate training, which for some people listening may not seem like a lot and for other people, it might seem like a lot. But let’s start from the beginning. I grew up in the big state of Maryland on the East Coast and had the opportunity to train all over the country over the years. I did my undergrad at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, medical school at Baylor College of Medicine in good old Houston, Texas. Urology residency for five years at the University of Pennsylvania. And then I topped off my training in a fellowship at actually Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Amy Pearlman:

At the end of all this training, when we’re asked, “Well, what do you want to do with the rest of your lives?” And I’m sure some of you listening are facing this as well. We spend so much time and resources and money on all of our training and at the end, I think we have very little guidance in terms of how to go from there. And so I was looking for a job and Iowa had a job as director of men’s health program and I said, “Yes.” And that’s how I ended up here in the Midwest.

Alexis Clark:

Laura, how about you? How did you first get introduced to public health? And what about urology enticed you to want to conduct research in it?

Laura Olds:

My introduction to public health was pretty random. I went to Iowa State University for my freshman year and just majored in business, and then I was home on Christmas break and my friend had told me that she was in the public health program and I was like, that’s it, that’s what I want to do. I wanted to be in healthcare, but I was scared of blood and needles and all of that, so public health was the right track for me. And then when I did the switch to Iowa, I was just looking for jobs and the student clerk position opened up in the urology department, just for scheduling and doing behind the scenes type work. And I did that job for three years. And then one day Dr. Pearlman reached out to me and asked if I’d be willing to quit my student clerk job and do research for her.

Amy Pearlman:

Okay, I’m going to interrupt here, that’s not exactly how it went. She was actually going through my clothes that I was giving away in my closet and we were chit chatting. And I asked her, I don’t think I said, “I want you to quit your job.” I think I asked her what her goals were.

Laura Olds:

Yeah, I accepted and here I am.

Amy Pearlman:

And I think just to touch on this a little bit. Laura and I, we’re both in healthcare. If you were to ask us, 10, 15 years ago, why do you want to go into healthcare? Like most people we’d say, “We want to help people.” What does that mean? What does that mean for people in public health, in business, in finance? Does it mean you become a nurse or a medical assistant or a doctor? And not everyone should become a doctor. I wouldn’t say that I wish my life on most people, but it works for me and I think it’s the same thing for Laura.

Alexis Clark:

That kind of leads into my next question, how do you both go about ensuring that your work has an impact on the communities you serve in your different disciplines?

Amy Pearlman:

I do a lot of research in my work and I initially thought that we as researchers came up with a relevant, interesting questions and I’ve been humbled over the last year and I’ve understood that actually our community members come up with the interesting questions and the important ones. And so I do my best to listen to my patients and what our community needs. And sometimes that starts with a single patient’s need. And there are medications that we put our patients on and some of them have persistent side effects. And I had a single patient come in and say that he was concerned that he had long lasting, persistent side effects after this medication. And that single patient, because I didn’t know how to help him in my office, really helped direct me to research initiatives, which now span globally and just trying to partner with other people.

Amy Pearlman:

And other times it’s social media is an interesting thing and I hop on closed Facebook groups. And I just, I look at their posts and the posts are of young men all over the country that say, “I asked my doctor this and they didn’t know the answer and so this is what I’m doing.” And you see what is the mistrust of the medical community? What are their needs? And so they’re not even necessarily my patients in the office. If you look and you’re observant, it’s actually quite easy to see what our patients need and our community members need.

Laura Olds:

A lot of the research that we do touches on many types of urology patients, whether it’s testicular pain patients, erectile dysfunction or transgender patients. And when we do this, when we conduct this research, we have their best interest in mind. Many of them are surveys regarding their experiences with pain or even experiences within our clinic. Much of this work is designed to better the care of existing and future patients. But on the outside of research, during my observation of Dr. Pearlman and on her clinic days, she’s not only serving her patients, but she’s also serving the people who assist her in clinic, the MAs, the PAs, the med students, me, she really thoroughly takes the time to explain the details to these folks and for me, that’s extremely important.

Amy Pearlman:

Yeah Laura, you make a good point. It’s not just about my patients, even though they drive my practice, my goal is to help people work at their highest level of licensure, whatever that means. From the person checking in the patient at the front desk, to whoever’s helping transport that patient down the right front desk.

Alexis Clark:

Yeah. It’s really a great point that you brought up that you’re trying to perform and make everyone perform at their fullest potential. Especially in medicine when I feel like everyone is so intertwined and trying to give the best possible care to the patient. Dr. Pearlman, as a urologist what do you think your top public health concerns are?

Amy Pearlman:

I do a lot of complicated surgery, but that’s not actually the most super cool part about my job. The most difficult part I think are in fact the public health challenges. And an example of that is what is our community, especially in Iowa, telling us that they need? And some of that is for the transgender bottom surgery. And so, me and a colleague of mine, we went to Oregon to learn how to do that surgery. But again, I can drastically change the external genitalia in a person, but that’s not the most difficult part. The most difficult part is when a person comes in and says, “These are my struggles. This is a type of surgery that I want and I don’t know if my insurance covers it.” Then what happens from there? Because as a physician, I can look at that person’s chart and see what insurance information is in the computer. But I have no idea whether that surgery they want as a covered benefit.

Amy Pearlman:

And even if a surgery or intervention is a covered benefit, that doesn’t tell me anything about what bill my patients should expect in the mail. And for most of what I do, which is quality of life issues, it matters. It matters because however my patient decides to proceed, largely will be dependent on what bill they will get in the mail. And yet, oftentimes we don’t have the infrastructure in place in the healthcare system to provide that information in real time. And that tends to be the most difficult part. And part of that is we all have our own assumptions in a healthcare system about what each of our roles are. And you have patient financial services and all these different people.

Amy Pearlman:

And so we direct people to call certain offices and oftentimes we’ve never called those offices and those people ourselves. And when we do that, we realize we’re actually not setting each other up for success because we never told those people we were going to direct our patients to call them. And maybe that’s where it starts is understanding who are the important stakeholders in whatever process we’re trying to change or help with? And then you have to get every single stakeholder on board, from the person picking up the phone, to scheduling. A 100 different things have to occur for someone to make it into the OR and unless every single step is understood and the people understand their roles, it’s honestly a miracle sometimes these things actually occur.

Alexis Clark:

That is a great point you brought up. And for many listeners, I feel like they’re connected to public health in one way or another. Do you have any advice for those listeners that are working in public health to try to improve this infrastructure as we go on our daily lives?

Amy Pearlman:

I think as much exposure to as many jobs in the healthcare system can be helpful. And Laura, when she was working at the front desk, she was very patient facing. And so when patients would come up to the front desk and say, “Oh my gosh, why is Dr. Pearlman running two hours behind in clinic?” That’s all she hears and I’m sure Laura was thinking, gosh, why can’t Dr. Pearlman just hurry it? Well, how is she two hours behind?

Amy Pearlman:

And now she sees in the center over at our outpatient clinic all the providers are in the middle and the patients are on the outskirts and she sees every single second of that day and what I’m doing. And I think it’s very obvious why I run two hours behind. I am the limiting factor in that clinic. And unless she were to see what my struggle is and I think it also helps her see, why is it important for me when I’m involved in research to have a research assistant is because even though I can consent any of my patients and enroll any of my patients in clinic, if I have 30 or 40 patients to see, it just doesn’t make sense for me to do that. And that’s where Laura plays a really critical role.

Alexis Clark:

And that’s a great lead off into my next question. Laura, while you’re pursuing a degree in health administration, what has working alongside a physician taught you about the industry that you may not learn from coursework?

Laura Olds:

That is a good question. I think there’s a lot of benefits of doing both the MHA coursework alongside this healthcare position. Dr. Pearlman has been generous enough to let me see into some of her administrative components of her practice, outside of research. And I can bring a lot of various parts of healthcare from my coursework, such as insurance and reimbursement like she was talking about, to her clinic days. And even just asking Dr. Pearlman questions about her practice. But there’s a lot about the industry that we have yet to learn in school or I don’t know if we ever will. Like she said, she has a very busy clinic and that’s not really something that you can get that specific into, into coursework. And I really appreciate how much time she spends with patients. Like she said, just one patient or even two patients can throw a whole day off. And my previous answer about how she spends time to teach everybody and get the benefit out of their position, she does the same thing with her patients and seeing how that affects her clinic day as been Eyeopening.

Amy Pearlman:

Yeah. And even though I’m a surgeon, most of my work is just with basic education. And that gets back to what some of these top public health concerns are even as a surgeon, who’s a urologist. And the reality is that many of the conditions we treat are preventable. And so the question becomes, how do we address these factors as surgeons? Who should address these factors? And I’ll provide a few examples here. Tobacco is one of the leading causes of bladder cancer. Bladder cancer is a very expensive disease to treat and we have a known risk factor here. But the reality is most people come in in their 50s, 60s and 70s with bladder cancer and they didn’t know that tobacco was a leading cause of bladder cancer. And the question is, if they knew 30 years ago, would it have changed their behavior?

Amy Pearlman:

We know and people know that tobacco is a leading cause of lung cancer and yet people still smoke and so part of our job is to figure out what are the relevant concerns of the people in our offices? And that will look different depending on who’s in our office. And that’s where this personalized care comes in. An example of that would be if I had a 20 year old gentleman in my office and he comes in smelling of tobacco, so what do I say to that guy? Do I say, let’s say he’s coming in because he has concerns about erectile dysfunction. Do I say, “If you continue smoking, you’ll be at higher risk of bladder cancer.” I could say that, or higher risk of lung cancer. I could say that too. But will that resonate with a 20 year old?

Amy Pearlman:

I don’t know, maybe, probably not. But if I tie that into the reason that he came to see me, which is his erections, his sexual function, and I say, “We know that tobacco worsens sexual function,” then number one, most obvious thing, low hanging fruit here is to cut out the tobacco and I’m not saving his life right there, but maybe that’s what it takes to resonate for him. And that’s where I see the role of public health is these big behavioral things, the preventable diseases, the things that people have control over, how do we address those patient by patient in my office that will down the road actually change public health?

Alexis Clark:

That’s a very impactful point. Dr. Pearlman, I think this is a great time to bring up your commitment to social media and Laura in the past had recommended I follow you on Twitter and let me tell you, it was one of the best follows I’ve been able to do. Creating that digital content for different initiatives, we see that. How do you think social media will impact the future of practicing medicine?

Amy Pearlman:

Yeah, I think social media has to be taught early on in school. And I know that’s a weird thing to say. And I did 10 years of training and yet again, going back to the point, much of what I do is education. How do I educate people and perhaps not run two hours behind in clinic? And the reality is, even though every person who steps into my office is different, the stories are varieties of the same story. People verbalize it a little bit differently, but the guy who comes in who’s 22, is asking the same questions as the guy who comes in who’s 77. It’s just that 77 year old guy never sat down with someone and that person never said to him, “Hey Bill, let’s talk about your body today.” And so my goal is to help educate people in a way that’s relevant for guys who were in their twenties, who as they develop these habits in college and whether it’s just daily habits.

Amy Pearlman:

Whether they’re working out, what they’re eating, any drug or substance abuse, is for them to understand the effect on their body early on. And most guys in their 20s aren’t going to come to see someone like me, only a subset do. And the subset who come to see me are the pictures of health. They are the everyday man, the athletes walking around this campus, but they were courageous enough to see a healthcare provider to bring up their concerns. And so when the pictures of health show up in my office, it makes me wonder how many thousands of people are walking around with the same concerns and they just don’t know how to verbalize their concerns? And that’s where social media and having a digital presence can be helpful because I can verbalize those scary terms before I make my patients.

Amy Pearlman:

And so if I verbalize on a Twitter post or an Instagram post or a TikTok video, that over 50% of men over the age of 40 will develop erectile dysfunction, then maybe that 44 year old gentlemen who sees that post will say, “Huh, I thought I was the only one and I’m not.” And maybe it’ll encourage that guy to seek help. But we have to, the consumer and our community members are on social media and if we expect our patients to change their behavior and be educated, then we have to meet them where they’re at. And oftentimes that’s on these different social media platforms, not necessarily on our University of Iowa website.

Alexis Clark:

Historically men are more hesitant to seek healthcare in comparison to women. When looking at that older demographic that might not be as present on social media, how do you fight that stigma? And do you see that stigma every day regarding men’s health?

Amy Pearlman:

Yeah. Part of it is I’m sure all of us when we were adolescents and correct me if I’m wrong, but our mom said, “Amy, it’s time to see a gynecologist.” And you’re 17 years old and you dread that visit for the weeks leading up, it’s a worst thing you can imagine. But we get plugged in into the system. And when we start getting our periods and whatnot, we get plugged in and our pap smears we get plugged in. And if we decide to have children, we get plugged in out of necessity. And so my question for the two of you are, when do men get plugged in? What is their milestone that says, “Hey Billy, it’s time to see a men’s health specialist or a primary care doctor?” And just think about that for a minute. What is that milestone?

Laura Olds:

Probably when they have an issue.

Amy Pearlman:

When they have a problem. And so now instead of preventative medicine, we’re trying to treat a symptom of perhaps a much larger problem. And maybe the symptom is erectile dysfunction, but the reason, that’s a symptom, we call it a disease. It’s really a symptom of perhaps undiagnosed and untreated high blood pressure over 20, 30 years. It’s not just high blood pressure, it’s all about vessels and you need good blood flow for things to work. And so just high blood pressure is a leading cause of erectile dysfunction in men.

Amy Pearlman:

And so it’s this lack of milestones. It’s this men have to be tough and that’s part of how some of them define their masculinity. And it’s we as healthcare providers have failed the important men in our lives. And you see this now where men come in, into the healthcare system or they ask someone and they say, “You know what? I’m in my mid 30s, my erections, aren’t quite what they used to be. My sex drive is a little bit low. Doc, I’m working out five days a week. I’m watching my calories and I’m trying to lose 10 pounds and it’s really hard. And five years ago, it just wasn’t this hard and I can see changes in my body and I’m trying to lead a healthy lifestyle and I’m working all day and I get home from work and I’m exhausted and I want to play with my kids, but I’m just too tired. I need help. Is it just age? Did I reach my prime in my 20s? Will it just go down from here?”

Amy Pearlman:

And the question becomes, where does he fit into our current healthcare system? He doesn’t have high blood pressure. He doesn’t have diabetes. His chief complaint, shall we say, is I want to live my best life and I’m struggling. What’s his diagnosis? Maybe depression and maybe he gets put on a medication that can worsen some of those symptoms, sexual side effects, libido. And so that’s where that guy you see on some of these support groups online is a lot of men have really good thoughtful questions and they want to talk about those things but in medical school, we don’t really learn how to address the everyday concerns of men if there’s not a specific diagnosis and you don’t have a specific medication to provide that person.

Laura Olds:

Right. And I think it’s a struggle, especially in your clinic when patients are on SSRIs and they have low libido and you kind of have to make that call. You don’t really want to tell them to get off the SSRI because they have another mental health issue going on but they also don’t like their current state where they’re at with their erectile function.

Amy Pearlman:

Yeah. The answer is there is no right answer. And that’s where these visits can take longer and that’s where the social media and the digital education can be helpful is to say, someone coming in, let’s say with depression, how do I address that and talk about the 10 different options to treat that some of which are behavioral and getting better sleep and stress reduction? And what are the relevant medications? But it’s really having that entire conversation and educating our patients in a way that at the end of that conversation, we can say, “John, what are you thinking? How would you like to proceed?” And if John says, “I don’t know, you tell me.” Then we as the healthcare provider have not done our job of educating that person in a way that they could make that decision. And that’s on us as healthcare providers.

Amy Pearlman:

At the end of a visit, if I say, if I talk about, let’s say a surgery, and I say, “Ryan, what are you thinking? Do you want to proceed with surgery? What questions do you have for me?” And Ryan says, “I don’t have any questions.” I worry about people like Ryan, because if I just spoke to you about surgery and you have no questions, I don’t think I explained it in a way well enough where it doesn’t elicit any questions. I worry you didn’t understand a word that I just said. The people who ask questions, I worry less about and some of the online stuff can help address some of those questions.

Amy Pearlman:

But even more than that, even if someone doesn’t come to see me, it’s arming them with the questions to ask. And you have to understand some basics of health to know what questions to ask and to create a safe space where they can use any terminology they decide to use. And I won’t verbalize some of the terminology on this podcast, but however they refer to their genital parts and it might be slang and it might be awkward but if that’s the way our patients communicate, then we as healthcare providers have to be comfortable with that type of communication.

Alexis Clark:

I think he brought up a good point when practicing urology, mental health plays a big role in this as well. How do you go about that balance between what’s best for someone’s body and what’s best for someone’s mind?

Amy Pearlman:

Yeah, everything is important and everything is relevant. And when people say, “Why is this happening?” I say, “It’s probably from 10 different reasons and causes that we can identify and a 100 others that we don’t know that exist.” And so I might talk about the common causes. Another way that I think we miscommunicate this psychogenic versus organic cause of many of the symptoms that we treat is I have patients who say, “Well, so-and-so said it was all in my head and I didn’t like that.” And maybe that’s how so-and-so said it or maybe that’s how that person heard it. But I don’t think we explain it well. And mental health concerns affect everything. And we say, “Oh, stress increases heart disease and stress causes this.”

Amy Pearlman:

And I think what we don’t verbalize is that stress, it’s a feeling. Anxiety is a feeling. Happiness is a feeling. Frustration is a feeling. Excitement, they’re all feelings. Those feelings are chemical reactions that are occurring in our body. It is not just a mental health thing. These are actually physical signals that are occurring in our body that are telling other parts of our body to react in a certain way.

Amy Pearlman:

If someone feels anxious about being in a sexual relationship, it’s not the anxiety itself, it’s the chemicals that are going to say, “Look bro, you’re stressed out right now. You’re studying for a big exam.” And the penis is like, “Well, I don’t need to be working if you’re stressed out with a big exam.” And so you’re physically constricting blood vessels that will not allow blood to the penis. That is a physical response, but we try to separate them out. Is it a mental health or a physical problem? And it’s both because mental health concerns are chemical reactions that cause physical changes.

Alexis Clark:

Laura, as an early careerist, what is the most pressing issue that you hope to address in your early career? And how will you take what you have learned in your current research role into you when you go post MHA?

Laura Olds:

That’s a good question. I think my mind initially goes to the access into her clinic and the thousands and thousands of dollar combos she has to have with transgender patients because they don’t have insurance that covers it. And I think in my career, wherever that may land me, I think I would like to work on some of the infrastructure changes she made earlier about communicating with financial services and all the players to make sure that these people have all the resources they need to be successful in her clinic. I think that would really change some lives, even if it’s someone telling them it’s a $40,000 procedure before they even get to her so that she doesn’t have to have that kind of conversation with them. My career, I would like to work on the access issue and creating relationships with multiple departments within a hospital.

Amy Pearlman:

And I’m going to put Laura on the spot here for a second because Laura witnesses my struggle every Wednesday in clinic. And so I just want to pick her brain for a second. Laura, when you watch me in clinic over the eight, 10 hour span of the day, where do you see me struggle?

Laura Olds:

I see you struggle most in the how far you are behind. And when you come in at 7:30, she’s the happiest. She’s ready to talk anything with you and then come around 10 to one, she’s a little bit frustrated. And then about 2:00 o’clock she’s, “All right, well, I’ll just see whoever is here.” And I think it’s definitely how much time she would like to spend with a patient versus how much time she’s given and the schedule. But she will spend all the time with people and they won’t leave because they want to see her.

Amy Pearlman:

Yeah, and if you think about how we get graded or how patients make comments on us as healthcare providers and we see our Press Ganey scores, I’d rather someone complain in a comment that, “Gosh, Pearlman always runs behind in clinic and I had to wait an hour, two hours.” And for anybody to say, “I came to see Dr. Pearlman and I didn’t have all of my questions answered.” And I’m willing to take the she runs behind versus I came and she didn’t address my questions or explain it in a way that I could understand. But access is a public health issue so I will add patients onto my clinic schedule last minute if they need to be seen. And so part of the way that we’re trying to combat that access issue is to train people who can do what I do and me not have to be there to do it.

Amy Pearlman:

And as much as I would love to say that I’m one of a kind, I am 100% replaceable and that allows me to sleep well at night, to be honest with you. And I know that sounds weird, but it allows me to sleep well at night because I know that I don’t have to be everything for everybody. And as long as I train people who can have the types of conversations that I feel are necessary and to do the research that I feel is important and should be done, then I have a team of 30 that can help take care of the patient. And it doesn’t always have to be me. And that provides me relief at the end of the day. And so my job becomes training people and understanding how they can maximize their productivity and performance.

Laura Olds:

Yeah. I think that’s telling how she asked me to do research for her. She knew that she didn’t have a time in her clinic day to support all of the research projects that she wants to do. And she’s a part of a lot. And so adding me, takes that burden off of her. She’s in the next room while I’m seeing the patient that she just saw and works out pretty good.

Alexis Clark:

Would you say, Dr. Pearlman, access is the pressing issue you’d like to address during your career? Or is there something else that you’d like to solve while you’re in your tenure?

Amy Pearlman:

I’m going to even, I’m going to bring it down even more basic than access. It’s men understanding their bodies. If someone doesn’t understand normal structure and function, they can’t possibly understand abnormal structure and function. And that’s where it starts, is understanding if I do this, what will that do to my body at the very basic level? And that’s not even specific for men’s health, that’s specific to health in general. And it’s tricky because there’s so much information out there online. And if someone comes in and they’re overweight and they say, “I want to lose weight, how do I do it?” It probably doesn’t matter for the most part, which diet or nutrition plan should they choose? The real answer is, do you like the way you look? Do you feel the way you want to feel? And if the answer to one or both of those is no, then you have to stop doing what you’re doing.

Amy Pearlman:

And if you’re doing intermittent fasting and not getting the results, then that’s not working for you. That’s the answer. That’s the answer. If you, if you feel like you can maintain an exercise and nutrition plan for three weeks and then after three weeks you get bored, then that’s not the right answer. And it’s just getting back to the basics of, this is what we know about tobacco and about exercise and about meat and dairy and all these other things. And at the end of the day, you decide what works for you. But it’s the basics of health so that people can understand, when do I need to worry? And when can I wait?

Amy Pearlman:

And you can’t make that distinction unless you understand the fundamentals of how your body works and that shouldn’t just be taught in college anatomy class or physiology. That needs to be taught in third grade and fourth grade and fifth grade and sixth, seventh, eighth and every single year as people have differences in their body. And you know what? Again, in the 50s and 51 and 52, why? Because that person who’s 52, their body is different from their body when they were seven. And so that education has to be reinforced over and over again, as people make it through their lifespan.

Alexis Clark:

Yeah, and I think that’s an important factor is that maybe, maybe the flaw isn’t just our healthcare system, maybe it’s in our education system and how do we improve that? The last question I have for both of you is what is one thing you thought you knew, but we’re later wrong about?

Amy Pearlman:

I thought growing up as a woman, well, as me, woe is being female. It’s really challenging. And what I’ve realized now that I see mostly men who were assigned male as sex assigned at male at birth and who identify as being male now, although I treat people all along the gender spectrum, is everyone is struggling irrespective of gender. And woe is all of us sometimes. And gender certainly plays a role, but it’s the people that you think have it all. And again, going back to the athletes, the pictures of health, they are struggling too.

Laura Olds:

Yeah, I would bounce off that, I completely agree. I thought growing up that, woe is me. I have to handle a period. I have to handle labor, all of these things, which rightfully so, but there’s a lot of issues that men have that they don’t talk about or even transgender folks. And I feel blessed that I have the access to get what I want and I don’t run into many of the issues that they run into. And I do a lot of preventative care and there’s people that go to the doctor only when they have something wrong. And that I’ve learned that I’m wrong about that. It’s not so woe is me as she said. But also something that she had touched on earlier in one of her answers is I did, when I was a scheduler, I did think why is Amy Pearlman running so far behind? What is she doing back there?

Laura Olds:

I was so wrong with thinking that and same with a lot of other providers that have run behind and seeing it firsthand, the reasons why and that every provider is different, is something that schoolwork can’t really teach you. And I’ve just had a blast working with her and I continue to prove myself around all the time. I could have many answers to that question.

Alexis Clark:

Yeah, well I just wanted to thank you both for coming on the show today. I’ve learned a lot. I’m sure everyone listening has learned a lot. Thank you both.

Laura Olds:

Thank you.

Amy Pearlman:

Thank you.

Steve Sonnier:

That’s it for our episode this week. Big thanks to Dr. Amy Pearlman and Laura Olds for coming on with us today. This episode was hosted, written, edited and produced by Alexis Clark. You can find more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook. Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your colleagues. Our team can be reached at cph-gradambassador@uiowa.edu. This episode is brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. Keep on keeping on out there.