Shadow Me Next!

The Care We Need Requires More Than Medicine | Dr. Monique Nugent, MD

• Ashley Love • Season 1 • Episode 50

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What if the most important part of your hospital stay happens after you leave? We sit down with a seasoned hospitalist who treats complex conditions on the floor and still argues that health is mostly made at home, at work, and in the community. From refeeding syndrome and new-onset renal failure to the familiar rhythms of CHF and COPD, she shows how the real challenge isn’t just diagnosing accurately, it’s designing a plan that survives insurance hurdles, pharmacy costs, transportation gaps, and the realities of daily life.

We'll step inside the team-based engine of inpatient care: bedside nurses who catch subtle changes, therapists who prevent setbacks with the right equipment and diet choices, and case managers who translate a great medical plan into something you can actually access. We talk plainly about burnout, the limits of what a prescription can fix, and why a policy lens helped convert her frustration into a Harvard degree.

Her career path wasn’t straight. She moved from neuroscience to psychiatry to internal medicine, rejected the ICU after listening to her body’s signals, and found a home in hospital medicine. That honesty becomes practical guidance for students: keep moving forward, define today’s answer, and trust resilience over perfection. We also spotlight her book, Prescription For Admission, a patient-first guide to navigating hospital stays, asking better questions, and preparing for a safe return home.

Finally, we tackle the chaos of health advice on social media. Learn how to decide who deserves your trust, what evidence literacy looks like, and how to align sources with your values without falling for trends. If you care about safer discharges, smarter care plans, and credible information in a noisy world, this conversation will change how you think about the hospital and about health itself. 

To connect with Dr. Monique Nugent: 

LinkedIn: moniquenugent-mdmph/

Instagram: the_happiest_hospitalist

TikTok: Mnugent-happiesthospitalist

Amazon: Prescription for Admission

Podcast: Prescription for Admission

Virtual shadowing is an important tool to use when planning your medical career. At Shadow Me Next! we want to provide you with the resources you need to find your role in healthcare and secure your place in medicine.

Check out our pre-health resources. Great for pre-med, pre-PA, pre-nursing, pre-therapy students or anyone else with an upcoming interview!
Mock Interviews: shadowmenext.com/mock-interviews
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Free Downloads: shadowmenext.com/free-downloads

Want to be a guest on Shadow Me Next!? Send Ashley Love a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/175073392605879105bc831fc

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. 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. There are moments in medicine that stay with you, not because of the science, but because of what they teach you about people. Dr. Monique Nugent is a hospitalist who has built her entire career around those moments. She reminds us that medicine doesn't just happen inside hospital walls, it happens in the space between policy and people, between what we can prescribe and what our patients actually have access to. We talk about how her frustration with those gaps led her to pursue a master's degree in public health at Harvard. She also opens up about her nonlinear path into medicine, the detours that shaped her, and what it really means to do despite, despite fear, despite frustration, and despite the negative opinion of others. This is an episode about resilience, about redefining success, and about finding your place. Please keep in mind that the content of this podcast is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered as professional medical advice. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. This is Shadow Me Next with Dr. Monique Nugent. Dr. Nugent, thank you so much for joining me on Shadow Me Next today. I we've already been chatting as we do, and this is just you're an amazing person. I I know your patients just adore you.

Dr. Monique Nugent:

I I hope. I think the nature of what I do, I know I have unhappy customers as well.

Ashley:

You know, that would be a great conversation to have because when you have an unhappy customer at my office, they um they they walk out 20 minutes later. You know, we have 20 minute appointments, they're there, then they leave. Unfortunately, your customers, so to speak, your patients are there a bit longer, right? You are a hospitalist and um your patients stick with you for a bit. Tell us a little bit about what you do, what your day looks like on the regular.

Dr. Monique Nugent:

Yeah, so I am a hospitalist. I love, love what I do. Um, but it's not a field that a lot of people know about until they interact with us in a hospital. So I'm a board certified internist, but I only see patients who are hospitalized. Um, and so I practice the specialties called hospital medicine. Um, people call it hospitalist medicine, and I'm always like, do you call it cardiologist medicine? No, it's cardiology, right? So I the specialty is hospital medicine. Um, and it's it's great because I get to see so many different things. Um, I remember when I first graduated residency and I was talking to a friend who had just graduated surgery residency, and you know, we're together, we're new in attendings, and he was like, man, you know, this is great. This is what I want to do. Um, you know, and it's good because I'm I'm seeing things that I'm used to. Like I have a Lap Cole today. And I said, I have the exact opposite. I have a refeeding syndrome on my list. I've never treated a person with anorexia who needed to be refed. Um, I have brand new renal failure that no one knows why. I, you know, I have yeah, things that I'm used to, like COPD and CHF, but my list was full of things that I hadn't seen, but I had the tools and the skill set to work through it. And I continue to see things that I haven't seen before, uh, or iterations of it, you know, presentations that I haven't seen before, uh, versions of how people uh interact with their diagnoses. And I love what I do because I continue to have the skill set to work through it, but also help my patients and their families work through it. But yeah, the average hospital say in this country is about four to five days. Um protracted hospital stays can be due to people think just medically, but there's a lot of social reasons. People are hospitalized for like an extended period of time. Right now, in my hospital, we have a very lovely gentleman with dementia who essentially is living there because uh he doesn't have in the financial means to be placed somewhere else. His family can't care for him. And there are like little to no inpatient psychiatric dementia beds run by the state. So they're trying to figure out the place to send him, and it's been weeks and weeks and weeks that the gentleman's been living there, you know. Um, but on average, you know, really active medical interventions are about four to five days or the amount of time that I'm seeing my patients.

Ashley:

Thank you for describing that. You've worked very hard in your career to become a fantastic physician, and you actually have your master's in public health as well from Harvard University. Is you're describing these incredible treatments that you offer and diseases that you diagnose and really mysteries that you solve, but you're also describing um some things that maybe we wouldn't think we would be dealing with as a physician, as a clinician. Yeah. Is that is that frustrating to you? Or is that do you just kind of accept that as part of your role with serving and helping people?

Dr. Monique Nugent:

So the reason I went to do my non-clinical fellowship at Harvard, get my MPH, learn about healthcare policy and management was because I was getting frustrated as a med student, as a resident, as a young attending, and I didn't have the language. And I was speaking to someone and I was like, you know, these things that are happening to these people outside the hospital, and she said, Well, those are called social determinants of health. And I was like, no one has said those three words to me in that order. Tell me more. Um, and that's where I started to really learn that my frustrations were warranted because there are, if I say your hospital has five days, right? There are still 360 days of the year. You're not under my care. You see patients for 20 minutes. I'm not gonna do the math to say how many more minutes are left in the year, you know, but essentially the things that happen outside of your office that happen outside of the walls of the hospital really are the things that determine a patient's health, how well patients will do. And when I started realizing that my frustrations were warranted, I, you know, I remember being on the phone with an insurance agency as a second-year resident, trying to convince them that to hospitalize a patient for Lovinox, which is a blood thinner, it's an injection blood thinner. And I'm old, it used to be really expensive, so it's not that expensive now, right? Like I'm on the phone in the emergency department. I'm like, this person doesn't need to be hospitalized. We can just give them Lovinox at home and do and they wouldn't do it. They were forcing this person to be hospitalized, which was taking them out of um their life. And they they were telling me, I'll have to leave because if I don't work, I don't have money. You know, um, and I it was just like, wow, it is. It's all this big machine that we've built that we give, we think we give power to is not it. Right? The hospital, the clinic, that's not where health occurs. It's not where health is maintained. It's outside of the walls and learning how we can support patients and ourselves in the long run by changing the way we think about healthcare, by changing the way we understand how legislature interacts with healthcare, how you know, policy everywhere from national to local to hospital-based policies, you know, interact with your healthcare um and your ability to care for yourself and your loved ones as you know time goes on. Uh, it really, I will say it hits everybody. I haven't met a clinician worth their salt who hasn't picked up on this, right? Who hasn't been like, I can't prescribe you a better life, I can't prescribe you better insurance. This is the situation, and I'm frustrated because I can't prescribe you consistent food, like consistent safe housing, clean water.

Ashley:

It's so challenging and it does, it does contribute to burnout. But I'm so grateful to hear that you took that, what very well could have contributed to your burnout and you're stepping away from medicine entirely. And you said, you know what, let me let me seek more education on this, and let me see if perhaps I can contribute to this solution for your patients. I'd love to hear your non-clinical fellowship actually contributes to your care. But before we talk about that, let's go back. Um, you mentioned being on the phone with insurance companies and it just it just the something inside of me died a little bit yesterday. But as a again, as a as a physician, especially as a hospitalist, I would imagine you work with a team of people and these social detriments of health and and working with clinical social workers, things like that. Can you describe the team of people that are surrounding you every day when you go into work?

Dr. Monique Nugent:

Yeah. So um hospital-based care is very team-oriented. Uh outside of your physician, your therapist, your physical therapist, um, your speech therapist, your occupational therapist, big part of the team. They really do help, again, determine how we can set you up for success after you're hospitalized. Do you need to go to a rehab? Do you need like a shower chair to be safe in your home? You know, um, do you need different, a different type of texture to eat now that you've had a stroke? You know, um, how can you communicate? Right. So these therapists, these are are really key to making sure that we're we're keeping patients safe, we're advancing their care. Uh, clearly the bedside nurse and her team of nursing assistants. Uh and and people just think like, oh, well, you know, they're they're nurses, they're always there, but but really they're always in my ear as well, telling me all the things that are happening. Um, and it doesn't just have to be like, oh, you know, he's bleeding, oh, this wound. It's like when his sister shows up, you know, it there's a lot of tension in the room and he gets very anxious. And, you know, like, do we know exactly the what's going on there? You know, like, oh, he says he has a home, but actually his brother showed up and was like, no, he got kicked out of his halfway house. So you have to talk to the, you know, the social workers. So they're keeping an ear out um and letting me know kind of everything, the whole picture that goes on. Uh, and then there's my favorite people who I dedicated an episode to, which is case management. Um, some people call them case workers. In some hospitals, they may be a mix of social workers as well. Um, so I kind of put them together. And their job really is to understand what your medical needs are, what the social needs are, and where you can get all of those things met through a combination of insurance resources, community resources, um, and personal finance resources. And so I can cook up any plan, I can come up with anything medically. But if you don't have access to that when you leave here, if you're not going to be able to see that specialist, you know, if you can't access that medication, then I'm just over here, you know, satisfying my own curiosity and feeling like I'm doing a good job. But really, the case managers keep me in line and they're like, his insurance won't cover that. Like, or like that cardiologist is outside of her network. We've got to be we can get people the things that they need to be successful after a hospital stay.

Ashley:

And the healthcare team, you know, it just reminds me of the rather silly phrase, it takes a village. It really does take a village to raise kids, it takes a village in medicine. And caseworkers really are uh the heroes of the story a lot of times. You know, we need them, we need them so much. Dr. Nugent, how long have you been in medicine? How many years?

Dr. Monique Nugent:

Oh gosh, 16 years.

Ashley:

16 years, 16, 17 years, yeah. Absolutely incredible. So I'm gonna ask you to stretch your mind way back to 16, 17 years ago. When you really first embarked on this journey, is this is this what you expected? Is this what you wanted when you first realized, hey, I want to go into medic? Did you even want to go into medicine in the first place? Or did you were you kind of just did you fall into it?

Dr. Monique Nugent:

I had a lot of um, I don't know what you would call them in the on the road, but like detours where I got off and then I got back on again. Um, so I went to college very much wanting to be pre-med and thinking this was the thing I was gonna do. I struggled a little bit my first year in college and then picked up speed and then um decided to drop all my pre-med requirements. I was not going to be a physician anymore. I um was really steeped in neuroscience research and I wanted to be a clinical psychologist and do research. So I was like, no, I'm not gonna take physics. Physics was the last of the pre-med requirements that I had. Um and you know, I'm sure my parents were will tell you now that, like, oh, it's part of the picture, but they were unpleased at that point in time. Uh and I haphazardly applied to a number of PhD programs and realized that I didn't get in when everyone else got interviews and I didn't even get like no thank you emails. Rude. I was like, well, I guess Penn State didn't want me. Like, I guess I'm not gonna give a PhD. Um and I I did a post uh baccalaureate research uh position at the NIH again, focused uh in neuroscience. I was at the NIMH, International Institute of Mental Health, doing um fMRI research, and this was really where I would thought I wanted to be, but got bitten by the medicine bug again. Um, and then picked up, got back on track after college. I took my my physics classes at a different institution, um, you know, and applied to medical school. And then, you know, went to med school and I started medical school. I was like, I'm gonna be a surgeon. I was like 100% gonna be a surgeon and realized really quickly that there was no way that I should be anybody's surgeon. Like when I got into the OR as a med student, a place that I thought would be amazing, I I was petrified. I was hot all the time. I was like, why is it so bright in here? And like you can't sit down, and it was stressful, and I was like, Oh, I don't need to be here. So um decided to do something else and tried out a bunch of things, and I actually started residency in psychiatry. I was a psychiatrist, psychiatry resident for a year at UC San Diego, where I love San Diego. I love psychiatry, and I still um have nothing but the utmost respect for psychiatrists, which is a totally different conversation, but quickly realized that I wasn't going to be the type of psychiatrist I envisioned myself being. Um, re-entered the match. Wow. Did internal medicine. And when I did internal medicine, I thought I was going to be an intensivist that I was like, I'm gonna do ICU work. And I love the ICU, and again, have nothing but the utmost respect for my colleagues in critical care. But every time I was on my ICU rotation, I lost weight. Wow. And I took that as a sign that it was just not meant for me. It was just very stressful. I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating. I thought I was enjoying the experience, but it, you know, my body was telling me something different. Um, and so I found my my love of the hospital, and I just kept doing hospital medicine, and it's been a great career. So I tell my like random on-off story because I want students to hear that it doesn't have to be linear. Like I work with students from Tufts School of Medicine. I spend all my time telling them you don't have to have the answer today, you just have to have today's answer. That's it.

Ashley:

That's it, you know.

Dr. Monique Nugent:

It doesn't have to be linear. You can get on, off, find different ways, make the journey your own. Listen to your body, your spirit, your, you know, listen to what really is happening in you when you are doing these things, and you'll find the place you need to be.

Ashley:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's it's so perfectly timed because number the number one question I get from student shadows and students that I speak with on college campuses is Ashley, am I behind? Here's what I've done XYZ A B C. I'm a sophomore in college. Am I behind? And I'm just so grateful for your honesty and your descriptions of why certain things didn't work out for you. Because it's not always, I mean, you didn't um you didn't get a a D on your test and surgery, and that's why you're not a surgeon. You it was an experiencing, you actually had to be there to experience the fact that this is not for me. So um, no, I think we would both tell these students, no, you're not behind, you're exactly where you need to be. Yeah, yeah, it's just a matter of exploration.

Dr. Monique Nugent:

There's there's something about the trajectory of going into medicine, science, and academia that makes you feel like you have to have it like all lined up, right? But then you meet people who have done all sorts of amazing things and you think, wow, that person's amazing, they've done all these amazing things, but in your head, you have to be on this line. Yes, right. So if you can acknowledge that, like, wow, someone has done amazing things, and that amazing thing was on the other side of the line, that amazing thing veered them off track a little bit. That amazing thing was in addition to. Why do you have to be on the street line? And I get it because when I was a med student and when I was in college, I had the same exact feeling. I had the same exact so I do spend a lot of time with my students and any student saying, like, as long as you have two things, one forward trajectory, as long as you're doing something. The second you stop doing something, then that's a different issue, right? But as long as you're moving forward, I don't care where you're moving forward, but as long as you're moving forward, you are good, right? And as long as the second thing you have um is the the joy to be doing that, right? Like it's not gonna be always joyful. Like, don't think that like you're gonna wake up and be like, I love med school, this is the best. Like, no, in no way, there's gonna be times that you are just like, I can't do this, I can't I can't stand this, I'm in just not a great place. I don't want to be doing this thing. Um, get through that day, get a good night's sleep, right? Like a good night's sleep, and when you wake up, if you can do it again, then do it. It's the morning that you wake up and you're like, I really can't. Listen to yourself then, right? Because there's lots of reasons why maybe you can't. But as long as you're like, I got beat down yesterday, I got knocked down, but I took my shower, uh, you know, I had my oatmeal, I had my sleep, and I'm ready to try again, then do it. As long as you're moving forward, that's all you need. You don't have to have all the answers. You re I promise you, you really don't. I I'm 45 and I don't have any answers still, like ever.

Ashley:

Like no, you're just you're describing the beatdowns and the wake-ups and try again. I'm like, yeah, that's uh sounds like motherhood, first of all. And it sounds like working in medicine, second of all, and being a spouse and just life in general, that's life, you know.

unknown:

Yeah.

Ashley:

Oh, that was so perfect. While we're on the subject of offering good advice, we have a segment on the show called Quality Questions, which is where we talk about interview questions that we've heard in the past in hopes that it will help the person who is about to sit for their own pre-health interview, whether it's med school or PA school or nursing school or a speech language pathology program. Dr. Nugent, do you have an interview question that is just burned into your memory that you would like to share with us? Before we hear what Dr. Nugent has to say, keep in mind that there's more interview prep, such as mock interviews and personal statement review, over on shadowme next.com. There you'll find amazing resources to help you as you prepare to answer your own quality questions.

Dr. Monique Nugent:

My first um med school interview, I ended up, again, everyone's gonna be like, really? Ended up crying in the bathroom and calling my mother because um and the the interviewer asked me, why do you think you would succeed here? And I didn't have an answer for him. Um, and I was just like, Because I will try hard and I will work hard. And he said, You don't think everyone is gonna do that? And I was like, I didn't have an answer. I just sat there in silence after he said, You don't think everyone's gonna do that? You know, um, and today, you know, years later, I think I would have told him, I think I well, I ended up not going to that medical school, you know, but um the reason I succeeded in medical school was because I came back the next day and because I did it despite being scared, I did it despite being mad, I did it despite being, I'm getting choked up, being feeling insulted. I did it despite, right? And not to spite people, but despite of that, despite of all the things, I still did it. And if that can be you, like that you you can you will do it too. I also think it's kind of like an an a-hole question to say to somebody right? I was thinking the same thing. Like, you don't think everyone's gonna do that? I was like, he's right, everyone is gonna do that. You know, um, but yeah, I think I would tell him I would be successful because I'll do it despite anything else.

Ashley:

No, and it's I'm so glad. Thank you for sharing that story because um God, I would have loved to have heard these things before I had some of these interviews. I had brutal, brutal interviews and moments like that where you hear, okay, um, this is a question people ask. People are not always kind in interviews, and um, and people freeze, and you know what? Then they become really amazing physicians despite freezing in one interview question. You know, it's just and looking back, yes, we would love to give an elaborate answer as to why, but I think I think what makes things the best looking back as clinicians and why we talk to these students is because we are proud that we can answer those interview questions now, you know. I mean, the reflective nature of this of this show, and the reason I love quality questions is because these moments happen all the time. You know, we describe a hard interview and say, you know what? Now I have a really great answer for that, because I've been doing this for 10 years. I've been doing this for 17 years, and I'm proud of what I do, and I'm proud of how I got here. And um, and that journey is long and it's grueling, and like you said, you don't wake up with rainbows and butterflies coming out of your ears every day. But um, but we did it despite A, despite B. And um, and I it's just it makes me so glad to be a part of this community still. Thank you for sharing that quality question. It's absolutely amazing. Let's jump into um prescription for admission. And I want to talk about your book first. And actually, I would like to read a little, a little clip. It says, with the right knowledge, your hospitalization can be a positive experience, full of the comfort, communication, and compassion you deserve. And this is you, the patient, right? Dr. Nugent, tell me why this book was necessary. Why did you have to write this book?

Dr. Monique Nugent:

So I started writing this book during the pandemic. I was at the time the associate director for the division of hospital medicine at my hospital. And uh we had like 10,000 meetings a day, if you can imagine all the things we had to do to really pivot essentially every practice that we had in the hospital. And one of the things that happened was um we closed the doors, right? Family members could not come in as much as they were. And people think that like doctors and nurses don't want families around wrong. In the hospital, we love having family and support systems around our patients. There are so many things that families and support systems tell us our patients don't tell us. For instance, I've never met Nana ever in my life, and I may think Nana looks great and she's chatting it up with me. And someone else would be like, she's very confused because my dad actually lives in Minnesota. My dad no longer lives down the street, you know, things like that. Um, and so family members also want to talk to us. And I was like, I'm gonna write a book teaching people how to navigate the hospital during COVID. And as I sat down to write the book, what I found was I wasn't saying anything particularly new. And it wasn't anything particularly COVID-based, it was all hospital-based. You know, I've practiced in academic centers, VAs, I'm now at a community hospital. I also trained a little bit at a community hospital. Like I have been in hospitals on the West Coast, on the East Coast, almost every iteration of type of hospital, other than pediatric hospitals that you know I've practiced in. And it's always the same problems over and over and over. So actually in the book, you won't find the word COVID like at all. Wow. Because it ended up being more guide and manual for hospitalizations in general. And the reason that I really think people need it is because um we're all gonna end up in the hospital. Like nobody ever wants to talk about it. Um, because no one likes talking about being sick, getting hurt, having a heart attack, finding out they had a cancer, right? But the hospital is like the DMB of healthcare, right? At some point in time, you will end up there. Even if it is to have a baby, at some point in time, you will end up in the hospital. And how you navigate that will determine the next thing that happens, right? Hospital states rarely make things easier, they make things different. And you have to get to the version of different that works well for you. And that's really what I want people to get out of the book.

Ashley:

That's fabulous. This book is available on Amazon. Um, and it's such a great resource, not just for patients and their families, but for I think for young clinicians, for students looking to medicine in the first place. I work in dermatology. I I don't work in a hospital, but a lot of my patients have just had hospital stays. And you know what? They come out sometimes really thrilled with the new direction that they're moving in, like you said, their different plan. Sometimes they come out traumatized. And just to have a better understanding of their experience for me, I'm so grateful for this book and what you have. And not just this book, an incredible, incredible Instagram account, which of course, after speaking with you, the handle makes sense. It is the happiest hospitalist with underscores. And uh, and the resources here are incredible, Dr. Nugent. Thank you so much. You talk about things like why do patients really get admitted? And uh, are you managing your meds safely? Well, my God, I had a patient the other day, they had about 20 meds on their list of medications. And um, these are things that that maybe patients are afraid to ask, or maybe people people don't know, or clinicians need better tools in their belt for how to discuss these things. So um, this is this is an incredible resource. Both, both of these, you're also on TikTok. Um talking about Instagram, and I actually, since you speak with students so often, I would love to chat with you about this. Let's talk a little bit about social media and medical content consumption right now. As a physician who's been doing this for a really long time, you've seen you've seen the growth of social media, you've seen really this new generation of of students who are consuming this content. What's your what's your advice to them when it comes to looking at things on social media?

Dr. Monique Nugent:

Yeah. I will admit that I'm kind of realizing I'm an old fuddy daddy sometimes when I with my appearance. Opinions about social media. Because I've had several people say to me, well, it's really the medical institution's fault that people look to social media for health advice. And I get it. I do feel that there's a lot of mistrust in the system, which earned over time. And hopefully we're working to, you know, earn back trust. But like the thing that is really strange to me is that it's not a place where you have to know things. You really don't have to know anything. You just have to be there. You just have to be on. Um, and because of that, we've seen really dangerous advice given out. Um, we've seen people, you know, everything from trends, you know, when kids were eating Tide Pods of like cups and like cups, spoons of cinnamon and stuff, like years and years and years ago, right? Those trends are really dangerous, to some of the health advice that people put out that can be quite detrimental. Um and so I always tell people it's fine to think that that is doing your research, but then take it and continue to do more research. Do more research on that person and figure out why you should be listening to that person. You know, people's values on why they should listen to people are very different from other people's values, right? Some people value my master's degree from Harvard, my my uh medical degree from Loma Linda, my leadership positions. People, some people value that and say that that is why I should trust her because she's done the work. Other people look at me and would say, You're an insider, and that that is why I don't trust you. Right. Precisely. So, so you have to figure out your value system to figure out why you should be listening to that person, but make sure that you know why you are listening to that person, right? Make sure you know why you are seeking the information from that person. And I mean, like, I get sucked into it too, right? Like you see these like people on social media who have great physiques, and they're like, I I'm like, I get sucked into the workout ones. They're like, do this type of squat and like stand on your head, and boom, and then my husband finds me in the basement trying to do these moves that are just gonna end in injury, you know. And he's like, What are you doing? I'm like, this lady on Instagram said, I get it, I get it, I get why we get pulled into it, you know. Um, but I I would always say, like, make sure you know why you're listening to that person and why you trust that person. People's values are all over the place, but as long as it's aligned with your values, that's gonna be important. And so I value what I consider to be high yield information that's evidence-backed. And so, therefore, I'm looking for people who have access to that evidence, understand how to synthesize that evidence and can then feed it back to me in a high-yield way, right? That those are the things that I value. And so you have to figure out why you value things and why you're listening to that person.

Ashley:

That is the greatest advice that I have ever heard about social media and medicine. Thank you for sharing that. It's so true. You know, a lot of these things, a lot of these ideas that we are hearing maybe initially sound really, really good. But like you said, you need to you need to find out where those ideas came from. And if it's a person, you need to know a little bit about that person. Um, and and it's not just titles, like you said, it's it's more than that. It's their experience, it's their leadership, it's what is driving them. Um what is driving them? It's not it's not hard to find, you know. You know, it's not hard to find that information out. It just takes a little bit of effort, um, effort, which is key. Dr. Nujan, this has been absolutely incredible. Such an amazing time. I will tag how to um how to get in touch with you in the show notes below. But um, thank you. Thank you for what you have done, not just for patients, but for students as well. Um, the happiest hospitalist. It the title, the title suits you. It is absolutely amazing.

Dr. Monique Nugent:

Thank you. It's thank you. This is really, I was very excited to talk to you. I'm excited to talk to students, you guys who are listening, like it sounds cheesy, but you're the future, right? You get to choose what this institution of medicine looks like as we go on. And um, I'm excited to see how they continue to shape medicine so that medicine can really live up to the practice and goals of itself.

Ashley:

Absolutely. Dr. Nugent, thank you so much. Thank you.

Dr. Monique Nugent:

Ashley, this has been great.

Ashley:

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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