Inside the CMO Role at a Pediatric Telehealth Startup with Dr. Lyndsey Garbi

In this episode of the Startup Physicians Podcast, Dr. Alison Curfman talks with Dr. Lyndsey Garbi, neonatologist, pediatrician, and co-founder/CMO of Blueberry Pediatrics. Lyndsey shares how she went from new attending to startup founder, why she became the “professional naysayer” to protect pediatric safety, and how Blueberry built a scalable, high-quality virtual care model for kids.

Alison and Lyndsey explore what children actually need from care, why telehealth can enhance safety when designed well, and how creativity becomes an antidote to burnout for physicians. They also break down what CMO roles look like inside startups and offer practical paths for doctors who want to get involved in digital health or leadership.

Whether you’re a pediatrician, a parent, or a physician curious about the startup world, this conversation will open your eyes to what’s possible beyond traditional practice.

00:00 — Welcome & Reconnecting
01:48 — Lyndsey’s Path to Pediatrics & Startups
03:37 — Staying Clinical While Founding
05:05 — Founding Blueberry Pediatrics
07:30 — Building Safe Pediatric Telehealth
08:56 — Challenging Traditional Medical Dogma
11:05 — What Families Really Need in Pediatric Care
12:23 — Telehealth Safety & Continuity
14:08 — “Attending… Now What?”
15:34 — Blueberry’s Model & Quality Measures
19:11 — What a CMO Does in a Startup
22:57 — Pathways Into Startup Roles for Physicians
26:01 — Academia vs. Industry Growth
29:04 — Creativity as an Antidote to Burnout
30:59 — Advice to Pediatricians: Ask for What You Need
32:37 — Closing & Where to Find Lyndsey

website: www.blueberrypediatrics.com

@blueberrypediatrics on socials

Transcript

Alison Curfman (00:01.066)
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Startup Physicians podcast. This is your host, Dr. Alison Curfman, and I'm here with Dr. Lyndsey Garbi, also a fellow pediatric colleague who I've been following your journey for quite some time, Lyndsey. Thank you for joining me today.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (00:20.418)
Thank you for having me.

Alison Curfman (00:22.39)
So I am even trying to think back to when we first connected, and I very much think it was when I was incubating Imagine, before Imagine had even launched, this probably in 2022 that we first connected, and I knew we were both building pediatric solutions. So I'd love if you could share a little bit about your clinical background and how you got involved in this work and some of the things you've been building.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (00:34.296)
Mm-hmm.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (00:50.7)
Yeah, absolutely. Likewise, though, I have been following your career since the beginning. And I have to say, so I don't forget later, that that first discussion with you was just so validating because, yes, COVID had happened, but it wasn't this big push for telehealth. Or maybe it had started, but people weren't as convinced for pediatrics in the beginning that this was going to be a really effective tool. And so.

Alison Curfman (01:17.781)
Mm-hmm.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (01:19.668)
hearing it from someone else who was like really deep in it and was on the same team as my group was and had so many like great ideas and was really running with them and showing that the model works and it does really incredible things for people who really benefit from it, especially the high-risk population. So back at you, but I will go back to where this started for me.

Alison Curfman (01:42.453)
haha

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (01:48.322)
and the space that I'm in and I'll tell you a little bit about what I do there. But my role is Chief Medical Officer and I co-founded Blueberry Pediatrics. I'm also a mom of three. I'm a board-certified pediatrician and neonatologist. And all of those things really help to lend to my expertise and my growth within the area. as... And when you start up a company, your role changes multiple times. I mean, you do everything from...

I know you bootstrap everything, you know, I'm like, I'm trying to think of like an idea of something I did that was absolutely ridiculous. There you go.

Alison Curfman (02:24.21)
in charge of picking real estate for the Imagine office because nobody else was available that week. So I picked our office in Houston.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (02:31.316)
There you go. Like you've become a real estate agent and even though your background, exactly, you're MD trained. So I've done like everything across the gamut and the role has changed tremendously over time which I'm happy to go into each stage of what that means.

Alison Curfman (02:34.526)
Yeah, yeah, totally within my realm.

Alison Curfman (02:50.472)
Yeah, and I think when we connected, we were both like very much in the startup stage. And I too, from our first connections, really felt like I had a lot of camaraderie because we were both trying to do something with telehealth and PEDs with different populations. And also, I think one of the big questions that we both talked about back then was like practicing clinically. And I know that's a core value that you and I both share.

It was very important to me that I stayed a doctor. was like, I want to still see patients. I am not abandoning my medical training and degree to take this CMO role. How did you approach clinical practice throughout this whole journey?

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (03:37.462)
Yeah, I think a lot of it's very practical, but I very much agree with the values of having that on the ground experience always. And it's the pathway, like it's what we chose in our life to do from when we were, like for me it was when I was little. I wanted to be a pediatrician, I wanted to work with children. And though that pathway and the choices change obviously is with age, experience, the wisdom comes out that comes with all of that. To me, I...

I still very much cherish patient care and interacting with parents as a neonatologist with babies that are just precious. So though the amount of clinical time drops as responsibilities for startup comes on, that being able to still interact and have that part of my life is very important to me.

Alison Curfman (04:28.788)
I agree. And in some of it, ebbs and flows, there's been times that I've had to maybe do a little less clinical work. And then there's other times I've had the opportunity to take on some more. I like you. I genuinely like taking care of kids. I know that my impact in the ER is, it is meaningful and it is more of a one-to-one impact. I also enjoy having a startup career where I feel like I can have this one-to-many impact by designing new systems.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (04:53.229)
Right.

Alison Curfman (04:58.25)
How did you first get into this opportunity? Was BlueberryPeds your first startup?

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (04:58.402)
Yes.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (05:05.804)
Yeah, this was my first and so far only. They really demand a lot. I said I had three children. This is like my fourth baby pretty much. But I connected with the other co-founders and they were kind of drumming up ideas and then wanted to be in the pediatric space. And we just really went back and forth on what would work. And I think my job at that point was telling them all the things that did not work. Because when you come from an adult world of medicine,

It is an extremely different perspective than when you walk into pediatrics. And I always say this and like maybe it's just, I hope it's not taken the wrong way, but like you don't mess with kids. You don't mess with adults either. You don't want anything to go wrong in an adult world, life and medical decision-making, but like kids, like you can't screw up anything because the detriments are just too humongous to bear and just should not happen. So being a naysayer in the beginning,

Alison Curfman (05:45.013)
Yeah.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (06:02.498)
was probably, think what my co-founders at the time were like, okay, like she's going to be critical. She's going to tell us what, you know, the truth upfront and we're going to make a product and a service that is super viable and is going to do what's best for children with no cutting corners. And I was going to hold them accountable to it. So that created the really excellent and to, and honestly, I'm so lucky because that's maintained through the years where we have a very healthy working relationship, which

I'm sure you can attest to the balance between business and the clinical side gets strained and difficult at times.

Alison Curfman (06:36.638)
Yeah. And not all people have had the experience that you and I have had where our partners very deeply valued the clinical perspective. And they also agreed, like, we cannot possibly put any safety at risk. We have to have the highest, most high quality clinical model. And then realizing where you can like,

give a little like I joke that like our goal as the physician is to really guard the quality and safety of the product and health equity, making sure that all the things we stand for as a physician are present in the product that we're building. And if it's something that's not related to quality and safety, maybe it's like user experience or marketing message acres that like maybe we could like give a little bit on things that aren't like the core.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (07:30.786)
Yeah.

Alison Curfman (07:33.366)
safety component. And that's part of working on a multidisciplinary team in startups. But I have watched your model grow and have incredible clinical quality throughout. And I think that it's really cool when you start something and then you see it grow and the core of it is maintained as the company grows. Because some companies, the product really morphs over time.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (07:39.682)
Bright.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (07:56.3)
Yes.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (08:02.506)
yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. I think to what you're saying also, like your mind expands as to what the possibilities are for what you could do in your space. And like what's okay and what's not okay also changes. And that's okay, that's fine, that's fair. And I think when we compare, like all the things that I've learned in being on this side of the world and not just being in straight.

medicine and like following that pathway traditionally. It's just opened my eyes to so much of what we can do with our field. Also like, I forgot, I'm gonna say the word, like the dogmatism, like I don't want to be dogmatic about things that were ingrained in me when we were training and trying to figure out what they mean to me on a different level and from a different perspective as well. So definitely opened my eyes up to be on this side of things.

Alison Curfman (08:47.306)
Yes.

Alison Curfman (08:56.374)
I think I probably told you this story a long time ago, but I remember giving a talk at the American Academy of Pediatrics meeting. It was probably in like 2014 about telehealth. And back then it was like, I mean, in my mind, I was like, if we're designing tools to be able to have more information on our patients and find ways to use this in a high quality manner, like, wouldn't that be wonderful? I mean, people were lined up in the aisle to yell at me to be like,

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (09:25.438)
Alison Curfman (09:26.262)
There is no way, I mean, again, 2014, nobody was doing this. There is no way that you can ever give high quality care over telehealth. You cannot feel a child's abdomen. You cannot touch them. It is not okay. You cannot maintain standard of care. And I really challenged that because it was like, okay, let's give you a scenario. Your sister texts you,

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (09:30.295)
Yeah.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (09:38.243)
Yeah.

Alison Curfman (09:56.2)
a picture of like your nephew and maybe they give you a picture of like a laceration and want to know if it needs stitches. Would you say to her, I cannot assess this because I cannot feel my nephew's abdomen? No, like, I mean, why do we maintain a lot of the standards of the ways we do things in medicine? And quite frankly, a lot of them are rooted in billing and payment requirements. And so like,

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (10:07.074)
Yeah.

Right.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (10:22.252)
That's very true. I don't think we realize that, like we don't know that when we're training. And so like the that's so ingrained in us that like head to toe, you can't miss a thing. But it's probably for billing purposes and the person who's training us maybe doesn't even know that either.

Alison Curfman (10:26.313)
No!

Alison Curfman (10:37.802)
Well, and then I feel like what you and I both had the opportunity to do when we were building different models for pedes is to kind of take it aside and be like, what would a kid really need to really get high quality care? What they need? whether it's, I mean, what are the alternatives? Like not seeking care, going to urgent care that might not be

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (11:04.92)
Hmm.

Alison Curfman (11:05.333)
qualified for PEDs, like think about the alternatives and try and identify how can we provide the most accessible high quality care for kids using new technology and tools. So.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (11:17.314)
Yes. And like when you say what they need, what they need is not that full exam and the abdomen examined. What they need is for their mom to be able to stay home with their other two kids because there's nobody else there, to not drive three hours because I mean, we take for granted, like not everyone has access to a pediatrician 15 minutes away in their town. There's something like, I had this stat, 15 million kids living in rural America where they don't have easy access to pediatric care.

So what they need is to be able to boop, boop, boop. Can you tell me what I need to do next? What's the next best? Right, absolutely.

Alison Curfman (11:55.338)
with safety guardrails built in. is your model what you would want for someone who is like having an extreme asthma attack, can't breathe, and is about to crash? Well, that is not the ideal case for telehealth, but you can build in safety and resources to get these kids to the right level of care.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (12:22.926)
Absolutely.

Alison Curfman (12:23.734)
I think that people were a little bit aghast when we started building Imagine. They're like, wait, you're going to take care of kids on ventilators in rural Texas via telehealth? It's like, wow, that sounds dangerous. When you say it that way, it does sound dangerous, but until you realize that the majority of the model that we give is like, hey, mom, how are you doing? Did you get all your meds filled? Do you have questions about your care plan?

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (12:50.638)
which is what they need. It's the preventive proactive care that gets in early that makes sure they're never running out of that drug that when they get that asthma attack they're not escalating to an ER. Yes, that's what they need and that's what it's so easy to provide by a tell.

Alison Curfman (12:52.704)
They need education.

Alison Curfman (13:07.134)
And it's easy to jump to like emergency, what about emergency situation? Well, we build for that in the models. We build safety.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (13:11.448)
Yeah.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (13:15.15)
I'll double down on that even and say, we don't disappear or go away. Like the urgent care doctor down the street doesn't know where that kid is gonna go. They go home and they are into the abyss. There's no continuity, there's nothing. We don't go away. Like we're there. You want to assess an allergic reaction, send us a picture, send us a video at minute one, minute 15, minute 20, hour and 30. And we can keep assessing because we could see them constantly. So I think it's almost...

It's a very safe way to do medicine when you're doing it the right way.

Alison Curfman (13:49.536)
Yeah, so you told me you connected with these co-founders, but you didn't exactly say, like, were you practicing, were you in fellowship at the time, how did you find these people?

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (13:58.318)
Oh, I know I just became a full-on attending in the real world of practicing medicine.

Alison Curfman (14:04.692)
And then, did you know you wanted to do a startup? Did you have an idea or did you just meet these people?

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (14:08.78)
You know what? There's something that happens when you hit being in attending that you're like, I work so hard to get here. I'm so proud of myself. I'm like, and this is it? Like, what's next? There is no training. There's no, you're not answering to the same sort of system. You're not in the system anymore. There is the escalation of where you go with your career. Everything just kind of like halts. And you're like, wait, what? So I.

Alison Curfman (14:35.402)
What else do I do?

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (14:36.55)
Yeah, like this is where I worked so hard getting, I'm here, now what? So I think like that's my personality. Like I wanna be challenged, I wanna see the next thing, I wanna be involved. I don't know, like I FOMO on all the things I could be missing out on developing and how I could be impacting kids on a greater scale. So this came across, thank God I was not looking for it, thank God it came to me. One of the co-founders is someone I went to medical school with and it was like just such a perfect match.

But I have to say I'm very lucky and I think it goes both ways though. Like if I wasn't ready or wasn't made for this sort of thing, like I would have passed it over.

Alison Curfman (15:12.83)
Yeah, yeah. And so you were really in the weeds at the very beginning and you said you were the naysayer of like, nope, can't do that, can't do that, can't do that. Where did you land as far as, we've kind of alluded to the model, but where did you land as far as like what your model does?

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (15:24.973)
Yeah.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (15:34.156)
Yeah, so Blueberry Pediatrics takes care of kids. It provides instant access to pediatricians 24-7-365 so parents can text, they can use audio calls, they can do video calls. We send home a kit, I actually have one here, that contains an onoscope, a pulse oximeter and a thermometer. And this enables us to make a lot more diagnoses from home very safely because we can actually see the tympanic membrane when we need to, the eardrum.

or we can look into their throat and we can prescribe a strep test and actually get a strep test done. So really maintaining the high-quality evidence-based care that we believe in. So those guardrails are there. We match HEDIS measures that are looked at by insurance companies. So they want to know for those diagnosing strep, you looking to see, are you testing them? Are you actually seeing if it's there or not, not just throwing on antibiotics? We put in safety requirements. Our doctors, we audit.

we have things that are automated in order to be able to make sure we are checking in on these measures constantly. And so, and the continuity of care of trying to have like a small practice group that's focusing on an area in America, because we're almost across all 50 states at this point, to make sure that our EMR is very functional so that we can have that visible continuity of care and that it's an easy, wonderful, fast, pleasant experience

for patients and for the doctors because their experience doctoring is very important to us as well.

Alison Curfman (17:05.878)
So I provide the equivalent of Blueberry Pediatrics to my basically all sorts of random people in my network and neighbors and family members and people from my investment firm that are like, hey, can you look at this picture? like I literally have been known to have people pull into my driveway while I bring my otoscope outside and look in their child's ear for them.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (17:15.81)
Yeah, yes. Yep.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (17:22.817)
Exactly.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (17:31.724)
Yep. Yep.

Alison Curfman (17:32.886)
I'm a good friend to have, but it's nice that you figured out how to do this at scale.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (17:36.758)
Right. So it's funny because when people text me or friends or whatever, I'm more than happy to help. Like I am a mom. Like I get it. You need an answer and you trust someone. You have them available. You're going to use them a lot of times too. I'm like, okay, do X, Y, and Z. And also blueberry can help you prescribe a prescription. They can give you an antibiotic if you need it. You want to check back in? Yeah. Like there's actually, we have physicians who practice in urgent cares and ERs.

Alison Curfman (17:58.184)
Yeah, yeah, with a doctor, trusted pediatrician. Yeah.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (18:05.976)
They're going to tell you better than I am as a neonatologist, Beck, if your daughter needs sutures. So why don't you ask them?

Alison Curfman (18:11.446)
That's so funny. Yeah, so I mean, you've built a great model. And I think that it's very needed in genpedes. Like, I think that a lot of people listening probably have kids and probably have the experience of like, man, like things in pedes happen at like the most inconvenient times. I seriously, I just like really feel for people when I'm working late in the ER and they're like,

I know this is a really dumb reason to be in the ER, but literally nothing is open that can deal with this problem right now. And so I think, I love the model you've created and it obviously didn't start with these beautiful kits that you, now send out. And it probably was a lot more scrappy at the beginning, but,

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (18:43.894)
Right. Right.

Thank you.

Alison Curfman (18:59.328)
Tell me a little bit more about how your role has evolved over the past few years and what sorts of things you've actually done as a founder and a chief medical officer.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (19:11.564)
Yeah, so obviously that's evolved a lot over time. I'll tell you kind of what it is now and all the things that it entails. I'll probably forget something. But the CMO role actually was just described by the CMO Maven. Neil Shah, I I get that. He said there is a CMO role. There's, have you heard this by the way? It's so good. There's indoor cats and there's outdoor cats. And the CMO is kind of, you get it, right?

Alison Curfman (19:33.888)
Not yet.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (19:41.058)
There's so many roles that you could play as a CMO. So like the indoor cats, you're working on like clinical quality measures, setting up systems internally, figuring out like how to report adverse events, all these very nitty gritty clinical or maybe making partnerships. that's probably a little more outdoor cat, but the outdoor cats like thought leadership, branding, the social media aspect. And like there's CMOs that really strictly only do that even. So there's so many

types of CMO roles and we probably all play them a little differently. Like for me, I do both. So my outdoor cat role is I'm in sales meetings, I'm creating partnerships through my network, I am on social media, I'm trying to build up thought leadership as well because as an advocate for kids, like now I have a bit of a stage to get on and scream that we should be getting, we should be doing more for children.

That's like the Outdoor Cat. The indoor is I've structured a team. I am involved like in day-to-day about physician. Let's talk about compensation. Let's talk about what's a good thing that we're doing. like any type of new project. We have committees that doctors have formed and the ways that they want to contribute differently. we're trying to create new projects. What a...

Alison Curfman (21:02.888)
workflows and yeah.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (21:04.01)
Yeah, workflow, I'm forgetting the easy stuff. There's scheduling, there's licensing, there's new partners within licensing. There's so many things to be dealing with on a day to day. But so like the way I break it down, maybe best way to think about is who I work with within my org. So there's the product team. there's UX. And so figuring out patient flow, doctor flow, that's new partnerships, new programs you're going to build up. There's

operations, which is like the physician licensing, cost per visit, all scheduling, and then engineering is going to work probably between all of those. Data collection, do we want to publish on anything? How do we work on the back end to bring out data that we want to bring out? The list really goes on, but all of those things in a day's work, and it doesn't all come at once, but learning to delegate and finding other people to help with those roles is obviously extremely important.

Alison Curfman (21:48.608)
That's a lot of stuff.

Alison Curfman (21:59.05)
Yeah, so it sounds like a lot and I've done all of those things too. I think that you're right that there are different like flavors of CMOs and what sort of roles might be needed. And there's also a lot of roles within startups for like medical directors. Like I think that that is a really cool position that is a nice stepping stone for people that are wanting to maybe they have some

leadership skills or they've been building teams in a more traditional setting. But running a program or a team within a startup is a great way to get involved as a leader. it almost seems like a more accessible first route into the startup world. I mean, I think you and I both jumped straight into a CMO role because it was just like, kind of made it. like, made the company, the company didn't exist and now it does and I'm the doctor. So I guess I'm the CMO.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (22:29.272)
Yes.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (22:51.266)
Mm-hmm.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (22:55.415)
Right.

Alison Curfman (22:57.546)
But what would you suggest to people that are hearing this and are thinking like, wow, that sounds really interesting. It sounds like something I would like to do. What sort of pathways do you think exist for doctors to get more involved in this sort of work?

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (23:04.545)
Mm-hmm.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (23:12.982)
Yeah, so actually what you just said is really on par with what I've seen directly. I'll go into outside of what I'm doing directly, but working for a company like mine or yours where as a doctor, you're usually, I'll speak for Blueberry. One of the biggest things that we say is a perk of working for Blueberry, and I think attracts the people who want to work for us, is that we give you a seat at the table as a doctor.

We want your feedback, we'll act on your feedback. And if you want to be more involved, we are going to welcome that with open arms. And we're going to compensate somehow. We're not going to ask you to do free labor, free to get your thoughts for free. We really want to have doctors involved in the process of growing this company. And so just by being there and speaking up and having opinions, it's noticed. usually, hopefully, there's a way to progress through

there's some mobility to show that you've taken on these leadership roles. And then you could start seeing what else is out there with it, because then that's very much revered if other people are looking for doctors in this role. And you start to amass the skills to do the next position of leadership, then the next position of leadership. But it definitely takes initiative on the doctor's part. It's not going to just fall on someone's lap. It's a lot of work.

And there are more and more people wanting these type of roles. So you got to show up and figure out what you're interested in and passionate about. Because if you're not, it's not worth it. And you're not going to show up in the way you want.

Alison Curfman (24:48.822)
Great. Yeah. I tell people similar things that like the people that stand out are the ones that reach out, the ones that feel really excited about what they're doing and wanting to contribute to. Like if you had a doctor that joined your organization as a practicing pediatrician and maybe works part-time clinically for you, but then they have like a bunch of ideas and they want to bring them up and they have like thoughts on like programs you could develop like

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (24:58.891)
I like that.

Mm-hmm.

Alison Curfman (25:17.536)
that would stand out to you. You might not know all the part-time pediatricians that are providing care for you, but one that's reaching out and giving ideas, there are ways to develop new skill sets. And like you said, like growing those skill sets are transferable to other roles too, like in other organizations. I think that it's, I personally feel like it's a lot easier to jump.

up in leadership roles within more of the industry venture side of things than like traditional academics where it's like, if you work here, if you worked here for 45 years, you can then like be hailed as the top of the totem pole.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (25:52.219)
don't get me started on that.

Yup.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (26:01.002)
Yeah. Well, there is just a sharp contrast and I think this is one of the things I've really, really, like not just noticed, but just enjoyed on this side of things is that good work and thoughtfulness is appreciated, welcomed, and rewarded and incentivized because there's more to come. In traditional academic medicine, there's so little of that and like...

our pay structures don't necessarily incentivize you to step out of your very normal box of practice or scope of work to be innovative and take on leadership roles or take on committee roles. It's just like, here, do you want to do this for free? Because maybe it'll get you a conversation for three minutes with someone who could potentially impact your future. I don't see very obvious pathways for growth that are easily there with a lot of open positions for mobility within big academic institutions that are built on like,

Alison Curfman (26:34.688)
Mm-hmm.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (26:57.102)
You have to publish a million papers in order to progress.

Alison Curfman (26:59.22)
Yeah. Cause you and I both, like when we were both first connecting and we were both building these companies, we were not really all that far out of training. said you were, you had just become an attending. think I had been in attending for, I don't know, a handful of years. And, I think that sometimes, earlier career physicians, there, there are a lot of opportunities where, you,

you have a valid feedback and a valid voice. Like sometimes in a more traditional environment, it's like very hierarchical and it's like, you're maybe not as welcome to like bring up a lot of ideas.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (27:39.99)
Yeah, and I think like also geographically there's just maybe not many places that you want to go once you're settled with a family. It makes it much very hard when there's like just people above you also waiting for those roles to fill. It's just very challenging. It's just a different world.

Alison Curfman (27:54.592)
Yeah, especially in pediatrics of specialties like you and I both are. Like I remember thinking back when I had a lot of limiting mindsets about my career, I remember thinking like, wow, there are three hospitals in my city that hire my specialty. Like I have so many options. can't believe like for the whole rest of my career, I have three career options. That's really amazing compared to like

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (28:23.298)
Yeah.

Alison Curfman (28:23.414)
A lot of places only have one children's hospital. I didn't realize my options were actually infinite. I don't have to work full-time at a children's hospital. But yeah, I think that it can be really hard when you're like trained in that environment.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (28:32.141)
Yeah.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (28:40.618)
yeah, I find that many people, most, are not looking outside of that until they're just so burned and then it's so hard to start again or fresh anew. Not that it should stop anyone, everyone should do that if they want to, but yeah, it's, I think the burnout comes on strong and you're like, just, you're like, how do I start fresh now?

Alison Curfman (29:04.0)
Do you feel like working in a more creative space is an antidote to burnout?

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (29:12.154)
100%. Yes, it is so fun. I mean, not every day is like totally thrilling. I'm like on the edge of my seat, but very often we're doing such cool stuff or I'm in a room with such impressive people and I'm so motivated and inspired and I just, have that at my fingertips. And you know what? I want to reach out and talk to someone who's like tangential to my field and hear about what they're doing. A lot of people just want to, are very willing to get on the phone and talk about it it's...

Hearing about that gives you other ideas and you have to be creative. I always feel like medical school, training, fellowship, just like shuts down the right side of your creativity and it's like, I can open that back up. I can create from nothing. which we don't do from when we're five years old. I watch my kids scribbling around making drawings. I feel like I can create again like you are doing, scribbling with your crayons.

Alison Curfman (30:06.526)
I could not agree more. think that that is actually one of the things that draws people the most to ask me, how do I get involved in this is when I talk about unlocking creativity. Because I think people just breathe this visible sigh of, my gosh, I have not been creative in my career. Because if you're managing a kid with septic shock, you don't really want to get creative. You want to follow a protocol.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (30:31.734)
No. You should... Right.

Alison Curfman (30:36.682)
I think we have so many skills to offer. I've loved seeing what you've built and how it's morphed and grown. And I think there's obviously a lot of parallels to what I've built and how it's grown. Do you have any last thoughts for people that might be listening and are very captivated by the sort of concepts that you're describing?

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (30:47.372)
Absolutely.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (30:59.682)
Yeah, I've noticed and hopefully this drew pediatricians because I'll speak to the pediatrician mindset when it comes from what I've seen. I think, and I'm going to overgeneralize on this, so forgive me, but as a group, I find, and especially the people that I work with regularly, mean, pediatricians are amazing. Thank goodness I work with pediatricians. They're good people. They're good hearted. They do the right thing. They're also like a...

a little hesitant to ask for things. And what I've learned is that when you have to ask, you have to make your demands, not obnoxiously, but kindly with proof, with something to validate them. Ask for what you want and need. And you could be told no, and that's fine, but you may be ask because if you don't do that, you don't get anything, you don't get anywhere, whether it's salary or extra non-clinical time, administrative.

another role, more responsibility, make the ask. You already have the know, like see what you can get out of it.

Alison Curfman (32:03.126)
Yeah, that's such great advice. for those of you who are listening, especially if you're a parent, highly recommend checking out Blueberry Pediatrics on their website or social media. And then for those of you who have been inspired by Lyndsey's story, if you'd like to reach out to her, we will put your LinkedIn in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me. I've really enjoyed, like I said,

our parallel career paths and watching you grow over the years. And I just really appreciate you spending the time today.

Lyndsey Garbi, MD (32:37.07)
Same here, anytime. Thank you so much for having me.

Alison Curfman (32:40.68)
All right, see you all next time.