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From Heartbeats to Handshakes: A Physician's Journey Through 30 Years of Medicine | Dr. Kipp Van Camp

• Ashley Love • Season 1 • Episode 34

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What happens when medicine loses its humanity? Dr. Kipp's powerful new book "Heartbeats and Handshakes" offers a rare and intimate look at what it truly means to be a physician - from the terrifying first code blue as a medical student to the wisdom gained through 30 years of clinical practice.

Dr. Kipp takes us behind closed doors to reveal the profound challenge doctors face: maintaining genuine compassion while rapidly moving between patients in crisis. His journey from conventional medicine to questioning the system began when his father received an Alzheimer's diagnosis from a physician who typed notes without making eye contact. "We're like - you don't even care. We're just the Alzheimer's patient in room four," he recalls with still-palpable disappointment.

Through rich storytelling that spans decades, Dr. Kipp tracks his evolution through multiple specialties - family medicine, radiology, interventional procedures, pain management, and regenerative medicine. He witnessed healthcare's technological revolution firsthand, from the early days of CT scanning to today's instantaneous imaging. Yet despite these advances, he worries about medicine's future: "AI could replace doctors so fast. It can't replace the proceduralist, but it could replace the diagnostician."

What can never be replaced, Dr. Kipp argues, is the healing power of human connection - the handshake, the reassuring touch, the shared vulnerability between provider and patient. "When you write, you don't know if anyone's going to get what you're trying to say," he reflects on his book's impact. But when his own son identified exactly the message he hoped to convey, Dr. Kipp knew he'd succeeded in capturing medicine's essence: "That's what's so exciting - communicating these hard concepts is best done by storytelling."

Ready to rediscover the heart of healthcare? Listen now and remember why medicine will always need the human touch that no algorithm can replicate.

Check out his book: Heartbeats and Handshakes

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Ashley:

Hello and welcome to Shadow Me Next, a podcast where I take you into and behind the scenes of the medical world to provide you with a deeper understanding of the human side of medicine. I'm Ashley, a physician assistant, medical editor, clinical preceptor and the creator of Shadow Me Next. It is my pleasure to introduce you to incredible members of the healthcare field and uncover their unique stories, the joys and challenges they face and what drives them in their careers. It's access you want and stories you need, whether you're a pre-health student or simply curious about the healthcare field. I invite you to join me as we take a conversational and personal look into the lives and minds of leaders in medicine.

Ashley:

I don't want you to miss a single one of these conversations, so make sure that you subscribe to this podcast, which will automatically notify you when new episodes are dropped, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook at shadow me next, where we will review highlights from this conversation and where I'll give you sneak previews of our upcoming guests. Thank you, guests. And do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company. Dr Kipp, thank you so much for joining us on Shadow Me Next. We've already spent some time talking and I am just so impressed not just with your track record in medicine, but in the ways that you are still continuing to give back to medicine as a whole. So thank you for doing that and thank you so much for joining us on the show today.

Dr. Kipp:

Happy to be here.

Ashley:

So, first and foremost, I want to talk to you about the book. It's brand new, just was released, called Heartbeats and Handshakes, and there is an incredible review that has already popped up. I asked you if you knew this person. You said no, which is incredible, but this is what this person said. This book actually changed the way I see doctors. It reminded me that behind the degrees and scrubs are people doing their best to carry others with steady hands and compassionate hearts. That kind of quiet courage deserves more credit than it gets.

Dr. Kipp:

I'm flattered and I think it's fantastic that someone would put a review like that on Amazon. I don't know this guy, but he hit the nail on the head. I've said this a hundred times and I always have to be careful when I say this because it depends on the audience and you've got to know your audience. There's such a distrust of doctors today and maybe it's earned. Maybe it's earned and, honestly, I was as conventional in the medicine world as anybody until my father got sick in 2010. And dad was a veterinarian. He's since passed away, but when dad got sick, I said you know, conventional medicine has failed him. He got diagnosed with Alzheimer's. The doctors literally said well, I still recall that this is 15 years ago, so it's such a slap in the face to the medical profession. Dad's sitting on an exam table. My brother and I are there. My brother's a critical care nurse. I'm there. We're both medical, so we're representing dad and dad. The doctor is in the corner typing on a computer because of his electronic record. He's not even looking at us. We're like you don't even care. We're just the Alzheimer's patient in room four. That's all we are. You don't care about us.

Dr. Kipp:

And so I tried to show in this book that I've been writing for years. I tried to show the humanity of medicine and what it's like to be a doctor and how you become a doctor. I mean, the first chapter starts with the first code, blue I'm in. So I'm a med student, I'm a DO. I'm proud of that. So, doctor of osteopathy versus doctor of allopathy, and I do our didactics allopathy and I do our didactics. You know the first two years of medical school at our school back in 1986 through 1990. So I'm old. So back in 1988, we did two and a half years of didactics and then we started our clinicals. This is before cell phones, this is before computers, this is before instant technology. And I'm talking to my classmates that are older than me and they're saying you got to go do these rotations.

Dr. Kipp:

I wasn't married at the time. I had the freedom to go anywhere in the country, so I chose to go to Florida. I lined up three rotations I get down to Florida, I drive down there. Rotations. I get down to Florida, I drive down there. I get there and I've got my little short lab coat on which proves you're a med student, not a doctor, and literally within 24 hours of being there I'm on top of this patient doing CPR for the first time and I've never met the man. I still remember his name. It's imprinted in my brain just how ominous it is to be the doctor and to be in that situation.

Dr. Kipp:

And I was the lowly med student. Thank God I had a guy who was a very good intern at the time, who was guiding me and taking me and teaching me how to become a doctor. I've never forgotten that. I've always carried that with me and as I look at 30 years of medicine and how much it's changed and how we've forgotten the patient, I'm embarrassed. Actually, I'm embarrassed for my profession. And yet there's still some wonderful doctors and we get a bad rap and we've earned a lot of it. But it's a hard gig. It is not an easy job to be a doctor.

Ashley:

Well, dr Kipp, how do you think that begins Like? At what point is that seed planted, that seed of apathy?

Dr. Kipp:

I make the point. You go from one exam room to the next and that's how you lose the humanity of it. If you get so involved with each patient, you can't handle it. If you're honest with yourself, you can't handle it. It's too great of a responsibility. So when the new mother is about to deliver and there's a birth defect and you caught it on the ultrasound, and in the next room is the 50 year old executive who just had his heart attack, and in the next room is the 30 year old male who's an athlete, who just was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and then in the next room is a runny nose on a two-year-old and you have to sort through all that and deal with it. It's a huge responsibility and how you, every doctor deals with it differently. Unfortunately, we've corporatized medicine and now doctors as a whole work for a corporation and so they don't have to show their humanity. You know, put it in their shift, check out at the end of the day and go home.

Ashley:

I'm so grateful for your book for that exact reason, because you mentioned the moving from room to room and every patient is so different and sometimes you just are rapid fire. Big problems for these people, most of them their worst day. They're in there spending it with you. And then the juxtaposed, you know, like you mentioned a child with a runny nose. Well, obviously they're still worried. They're in your office, you know just because he doesn't have the heart attack.

Ashley:

Exactly, exactly. And it's hard to maintain that perspective sometimes and I think one of the ways that you have done this is by viewing each of these patients as stories and not as numbers or data points or billing codes or a spot on the algorithm. If you view them as stories, I do think it helps prevent burnout. I think it helps ward off that corporate medicine kind of mentality. It does protect that patient-patient relationship, patient-provider relationship just a little bit Gosh. 30 years you have seen a lot of changes in medicine, I would imagine.

Dr. Kipp:

They talk about the greatest advancements in healthcare have happened in the last 25 years, and I've lived, I've been right there. When I started, it was only the doctors that were my mentors had just heard about CAT scans when they started their career and then our first CAT scan that I used was a single slice CAT scan. It took about 30, 30 minutes to do a brain. Now you can do it in five seconds. This is done. You know, it's just crazy. Hold your breath and we scan the entire body. My son, my son is 20. I have two sons. My oldest son is 26.

Dr. Kipp:

And he just read the book and he's a. He's very smart, he's a gifted young man and he it's so fascinating to get his perspective. He literally just finished it and he was here. I got to spend some time with him and I said what is the most impactful story in this book that you just read? And he said I picture you. He said it's so fascinating because I didn't know you then as a med student. And he said you're standing in the. There's a scene at the beginning of the book where I'm the med student in the back of the room and I'm watching and I'm wide eyed and I. You could tell I'm like. I mean, if anyone could read my mind at the time.

Dr. Kipp:

I'm scared to death because I don't know what to do and even though I'd been through the classroom, I don't know anything. And I'm standing there and then fast forward, 36 months later, 48 months later, I'm the intern. So now there's a med student standing in the back of the room and I'm the guy managing the code, putting in the chest tube, doing all the stuff. And I look over and I see this and I make this mental note and comment on it in the chapter of. I recognize that look and I know exactly what that med student's thinking because I was there and he said that is so fascinating to get that perspective. And when you write you don't know if anyone's gonna. First off, is your writing good enough that you can take home these points you want to take home?

Dr. Kipp:

and I'm not sure you're right. And then you test it, you put it out there and see what happens. And then your own son comes and says exactly what you wanted to get across and you're like like, dang, I nailed it. Perfect, I got it. And that's what's so exciting and fun and that's why I do it.

Ashley:

It's storytelling at its finest and, in my opinion, communicating these hard concepts is best done by storytelling.

Dr. Kipp:

My family's been asking me for years when are you going to finish that? Your other books are fine, they're okay. I like this, I like that. When are you going to finish the one we all want to read?

Ashley:

Well, it's just such a great reminder that the things that are the most worth doing take time In your case, decades, you know, and laboring over some of these projects is part of the character of the project. Sometimes you really learn to love some of these things that part of the character of the project. Sometimes you really learn to love some of these things that do take a solid amount of time, you know, over the 30 years of practicing medicine I've done two residencies and a fellowship.

Dr. Kipp:

I have practiced as a family physician, a radiologist, an interventional radiologist, a pain doctor and now I'm a regenerative medicine doctor. Life takes you wherever you let it take you, if you're open-minded to that and you're willing to step out of your comfort zone. Because every time I made a change I stepped out of my comfort zone. But I look at the future of medicine and I don't know. It's scary. What's going to happen. Ai could replace doctors so fast. It can't replace the proceduralist, but it could replace the diagnostician.

Ashley:

Now Dr Kipp and I did not have an opportunity to discuss a quality question, but he brings up a really great point. At some point in one of your upcoming interviews, I expect you will be asked to comment on AI in healthcare. Now this question could be taken a variety of different ways, so I would recommend pondering this. Ai is here to stay, but what role does it play in medicine? Keep in mind that there's more interview prep, such as mock interviews and personal statement review over on shadowmenextcom. There, you'll find amazing resources to help you as you prepare to answer your own quality questions. Absolutely true. So, dr Kipp, tell me how you choose these patient stories give you the stories.

Dr. Kipp:

I don't have to create them. The truth is stranger than fiction. The people are phenomenal. We anonymize them because I don't want anyone to know who the real person is, but there's some phenomenal stories that you can't make up, that just happen because you're in tune with what's going on. And then the next is going back to a second residency and how hard that was. And you know to be 40 years old and now I'm the I'm the supposedly standing there with the 25 year old and they're they're. They and I are equals. And yet I've seen more in my 15 years in medicine than they've ever thought about, and that was fascinating.

Dr. Kipp:

Move up my wife to the other end of the country and then we moved back to the Midwest and then I practice and stumble across regenerative medicine. So I have another 50 stories to write, of which I have about 15 done. But this, I hope, is a box set one day and people will like it. I hope it becomes, I hope it catches legs. You never know. You write, you don't write. There are people who write because they want the bestseller and there are people who write because they have something to say. Well, I had something to say.

Ashley:

And that's why I wrote Well, it's the beautiful thing about stories they can perpetuate and inspire continuously. They're the original, evergreen, right? I mean they just keep on going. Let's talk briefly about your multiple roles in medicine. Obviously, these were spaced very far apart. What compelled you to go back at 40 to try something new and then another shift into regenerative medicine? Is it just your interest niching down? Is that something that could happen?

Dr. Kipp:

I think I'm a guy who gets bored, and I've kind of figured that out. You don't always know. If you're honest with yourself, you may recognize these character flaws in yourself or you may just kind of push them off to the side and never try to explore it and understand it. I've tried to understand what makes me tick. I get bored, and when I get bored I go looking for the next thing, and if you do something long enough, you kind of perfect it, you become good at it and then you move to your next challenge. And that's what I did. The next book is going to be my most exciting of all, because the people in this little town we lived in were so interesting. The local color was unbelievable. I literally reached the point by the third year we were there that I would tell Tracy, oh, and we had a home that she drove down and then came around behind to park in the garage, and then I came up from the basement and so there was a split level, so the front of the house was on the street level and then the garage was down below, and so I would say I can push the garage door, but it won't be open fast enough and I'm going to fly into the door as fast as I can. So go ahead and push the door for me, because someone's going to find me and catch me. It was a town of 1500 people and if I had a run, if I would have had the courage or the interest in running a clinic out of the front of the house, people would find me. I'm not kidding.

Dr. Kipp:

I have a story of a lady. I literally was in the grocery store. There's one, it's a one horse town. There's one stoplight. There was one grocery store. A lady stops me and says I've got this rash. And I said why don't you come in and see me? I'll be happy to see you. Well, it's a friday and I'm not going to make it till Monday and I really need to do something. Well, have you considered the emergency room? Yeah, but that's a waste and it's 30 miles away. I'm not doing that. Well, can, okay, let's step behind the produce counter. And then she hikes up her skirt and shows me her rash. So then I looked for the next thing. But that's really why I got out of family medicine.

Ashley:

Listen, working as a derm PA, I can attest that these things happen literally all the time. Ironically, working as a GYN PA, that didn't happen as often. Yeah, Dr Kipp, let's go back to talking about how the future of medicine is scary, and it is especially with AI, and how it could replace the diagnostician maybe not the proceduralist, but people are turning to AI, not just for data now, but for companionship and reassurance.

Dr. Kipp:

My brain goes straight to medicine and says okay, how's that going to fit into medicine? Are you going to have that hologram appear on your computer? Technology is going to become so affordable that it'll only cost you $200 to have the hologram show up and have the true expert in the field diagnosing whatever you have and explaining what you need to do about it. I mean, in some respects that sounds really great, but what do we need humans for at that point? What are we about? And then, if you're a creationist or you believe in a higher power or God, when does God say this was never my design. I knew I gave you a brain and the ability to create technology and to advance yourself as far as you can, but now you're going too far because it's scary, scary stuff.

Ashley:

It is scary stuff. I agree with you, and you nailed it when you said well, what do we need humans for? And I think reading your book will give us that answer.

Dr. Kipp:

I wanted people to see our humanity and to understand the relationship that I established with each patient that I meet. I came there to find out what's ailing them and how can I help them, if I can at all. I think we're going to lose the humanity of it with a computer, and that's scary, because the touch, the putting your hand on someone's shoulder, the shaking someone's hand, the interaction that we give as humans to another human, cannot be replaced and it's healing, it's actually helps people to recover and it takes away the fears and it helps us show our own vulnerabilities. And that's what life's about and that's what I try to point out in this book.

Ashley:

Well, it just reminds me so much of your title, which I've actually, after speaking with you, see in a new light. Originally Heartbeats and.

Dr. Kipp:

Handshakes. I love this so.

Ashley:

Heartbeats and Handshakes. When I first read it, it was the many patients that you've seen. It's a collection of stories, generally of patients. They each have heartbeats, they each give a handshake, typically unless it's 2020 and we're not touching people. But now I think I've come to realize that the heartbeats are the two of you in the room it's the physician and it's the patient, or it's the PA, it's the clinician, it's the nurse, it's the social worker, it's the case manager and it's the patient and it's those two heartbeats and then the handshake and that times two times four, times six, which is what equals a career in medicine. That's what is so meaningful.

Dr. Kipp:

What you just described to me is the collective soul that you know. They talk about the energy fields that we have and we're talking amongst a computer here and it's through a video connection and an audio connection, but I can see you, but yet it's not the same as if we were in the same room. It's still unique and it still can be powerful, but it's not as powerful as if you and I were in the same room, and I think it's because of the energy that we each carry and our energy fields actually cross over a little bit. But if you're in the same room, you can feel that and I think that that's part of the collective soul. That happens in an exam room with a doctor that cares.

Dr. Kipp:

I did take my niece to my alma mater and did a walk around. Look at the school interview with her, because she's considering medicine. And as you're walking along and you get to meet these young people, they're impressive, man, are they sharp? So it's not like we have a bunch of dump skulls. They're very sharp. I just worried about the human interaction. Are we so? You talked about instant gratification? Are we so fixated on the number of followers that we have that we lost sight of? Why are they following you in the first place? It's like Forrest Gump he starts running and next thing you know, there's a whole crowd of people running behind him. And then one day he stops and they're like now what? Well, we're done, I'm done running.

Ashley:

Dr Kipp, thank you so much for joining us today. While we're sitting here talking, I've already purchased your book. I'm thrilled to begin reading it. I think it is something that we desperately need to hear Anybody who's interested in medicine really because there will be hard days and understanding how you're going to get through those hard days is best done by talking to somebody who's done it for 30 years. I appreciate you sharing the stories and I appreciate you joining us on Shadow Me Next today. Thank you so very much for listening to this episode of Shadow Me Next. If you liked this episode or if you think it could be useful for a friend, please subscribe and invite them to join us next Monday, as always. If you have any questions, let me know on Facebook or Instagram Access. You want stories you need? You're always invited to Shadow Me Next.

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Ashley Love

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