The Navy Doctor: Amy Reese, MD, FACP

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Amy Reese is a native Ohioan and veteran of the United States Navy.  Following medical school at Northeastern Ohio Medical University, she completed her residency and fellowship in military training hospitals and was honored to serve in medical units in Kuwait during Operation Iraqi Freedom and in Kandahar, Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. 

The 2024 residency match is fast approaching.

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After moving back to Ohio, Amy served in the Navy Reserve until 2018.  Her experience watching her mother battle cancer inspired her to not only treat disease, but to provide compassionate care for the whole patient and family in their cancer journey.  Amy’s mission is to deliver expert care as close to home as possible, which is why she is proud to serve the central northern Ohio communities.  In her free time, she enjoys skiing, running races, and camping with her family.

Dr. Reese’s Prescription for Success:
Number 1: Challenge yourself.

Number 2: Accept support and be supportive in return.

Number 3: Count your Blessings.

Connect with Dr. Reese

Firelands Regional Medical Center: Dr. Amy Reese
Magruder Hospital: Dr. Amy Reese

Notable quotes from Dr. Reese’s interview:

Oncology and Trauma Care – a lot of it is just not overreacting.

What needs to be done? Get the job done. Accomplish the mission.

 I like the small town medicine fact of: you know everybody you work with. We have a fabulous team.

I’ve always felt really supported by the group I’m working with.

Access the Show Transcript Here

Transcript

[0:01] Before we get into today’s interview, I’ve got a very important message for those of you about to enter the residency match in the spring of 2024.
MD Coaches is excited to be offering Highlighting Your Unique Value.
This is a special four-week group coaching experience, specifically designed to help you identify and present your best self during match interviews.
All participants receive one individual coaching session and four group coaching sessions. The first cohort begins Sunday September 17 at 7 p.m. Eastern. A second cohort begins on Sunday October 10 at 7 p.m. Eastern. Cost is $475. There is a special discount for American Society of Physician Members. So get more details and register on the web at mdcoaches.store.

[1:03] I like community medicine. In fact, it’s funny when I talk to the specialists, they say, you know, it’s kind of hard to like, have to know a little bit about everything.
And, you know, I mean, you do, you have to read, you have to kind of keep up on things, but that’s kind of what keeps it exciting about medicine.
Like everybody tells me that oncology is depressing, but I tell them, but it’s so new and there’s so many things that we can do for people that we weren’t able to do 20 years ago when I started my trainings.
Paging Dr. Cook, paging Dr. Cook.
Dr. Cook, you’re wanted in the OR. Dr. Cook, you’re wanted in the O.R.

[1:47] Music.

[2:12] Hello everyone and welcome to Prescription for Success. I’m Dr. Randy Cook, your host for the podcast, which is a production of MD Coaches, providing leadership and executive coaching for physicians by physicians. To overcome burnout, transition your career, develop as a leader or whatever your goal might be, visit MD Coaches on the web at mymdcoaches.com because you’re not in this alone. And don’t forget that CME credit is available when you listen with us. Just look for CMFI in the show notes to learn how. My guest today is a veteran U.S. Navy officer now retired from active duty. Currently, she serves as the medical director for the Seidman Cancer Center at Firelands Regional Medical Center in Sandusky, Ohio. So let’s hear my conversation with Dr. Amy Dr. Amy Reese.

[3:14] So I’m looking forward to a really fascinating conversation today with Dr. Amy Reese, who is speaking with us from Sandusky, Ohio.
Amy, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today, and welcome to Prescription for Success. My pleasure. I’m really excited.
Well, as is always the case, I have gotten myself excited by looking through your CV a CV and bio and other documents.
And you have a really fascinating history to your medical practice.
It’s a little bit off the routine, the standard, if you wish, and I’m looking forward to talking about it. As is always the case, I like to start with the beginning.
So I gather that you did your growing up in Ohio and I’m wondering, was it near Sandusky, or where did you grow up?
So I grew up in a little town, Prospect, Ohio, which is about an hour north of Columbus.
And we were in a very traditional Mayberry type neighborhood.
There was about a thousand people in the town. And we pretty much had a very open block of about three streets over and all the kids would play together and end up in all the parents’ houses and the grandparents’ houses.
And so we were just very service-oriented.
I remember one of the earliest things that…

[4:43] I could remember as a child, of course I was in Girl Scouts because that was the typical thing you do in a small town. So I sold a lot of cookies door to door and I had an elderly lady that lived across the street from me. She had some memory issues. Her husband had recently died and I found out from my dad that he promised her husband that he would try to help keep her in her home as long as we could. So a lot of my job was going over to tidy up her house and spend some time with her and bring my dog over. So, you know, I always look back at that experience and I really value the fact that we were able to kind of contribute to helping out other people in the neighborhood. So you really had some truly early experience with, I guess, what we might I call end-of-life care?

[5:38] Yeah, she was, well, and following that, my own grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
So I had a really soft spot for people that were really facing these challenges where they couldn’t really do the things that they had used to do.
And so the other thing that I would say is that my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was in high school.
And that really focused me towards looking at oncology. I mean, I remember I wanted to be a physician since I was four.

[6:12] I announced it to everybody. And I was gonna ask you that, were there medical types in your family, influencers in the family, or was it just something that came to you?
There was not a single person in medicine in my entire family.
It was just something that came to me. I mean, I think it was just inspiration.
And people would ask me, well, nursing, right? Because you’re a girl.
And I said, no. I said, I kind of want to be in charge. So that led to medicine.
And that was a little bit of a radical idea at that point, I should think.
Yeah, but I would say that I was surrounded by a lot of strong females in my own class.
And I remember there were two other girls that were in my high school class that ever since we were in first or second grade, we were always competing for like number one, two, three.
And so we were always somewhat competitive. So I think that competitive drive really helped me to kind of reach for the things that.

[7:16] You know, maybe I wouldn’t have otherwise thought of. And so that kind of led to, my applying to this six-year BSMD program. So when it came time to graduate from high school.

[7:30] You began looking at, I’m thinking was a relatively unusual, these things are more common nowadays, but at that time in your development, I’m thinking that these six-year schools that encompassed a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate in the same package were relatively rare. So tell us how you found that and how you made the decision to go there. So interestingly, the main reason that I chose this program was that it was probably going to be less expensive Not a bad choice.
Because I would only have to pay for two years year-round of undergrad and then med school, which actually worked out really well because, you know, aside from scholarships and things, I had very minimal loans and then I applied to the military for med school, which I was able to get what they call the Health Profession Scholarship Program.
And so that was basically a free ride. So for a middle class kid from a little town, it was very nice to know that I was not going to be saddled with the debt that a lot of people have now.
Yeah, I bet. So this program was, as I understand it, and I hope you’ll straighten me out on any misperceptions that I have. The undergrad part had a connection with Kent State.

[9:00] But the medical college was an entirely new invention that I gather that the founders decided how they were going to do this integration where you do your undergraduate work, doctorate work in a slightly more extended, well, it was actually a compressed period of time because you do it in six years, right?
So just tell us how that works. Yeah, so the way this was set up, we were actually the 14th graduating class.
And from the oral history that I hear about this is that the state of Ohio only had so.

[9:39] Many endowments, grants, whatever, legislatively, that they could create medical schools.
And Kent, Akron, and Youngstown all wanted their own medical school.
So this was a compromise to have one medical school that are affiliated with the three sites. I’m not quite sure what led to the six year, but it was this internal confidence that I just had that I could do that. I felt very well prepared. I felt that this was my mission in life and that if I didn’t get into this program, that I would do a traditional four year, four year, but I just thought, why not?
And looking back on it, are you just absolutely delighted that that’s what you did?
So I wouldn’t change it for myself. I know that a lot of these programs have closed because it does create a lot of stress if you’re not a very, very driven person.
And I have to be honest, there were periods during the time where I was doing this very intensive accelerated program because we were going through the summer.
So you’re not really taking a lot of time off. You’re taking maybe, you know, a week at a time.
But there was one period where, first of all, I did…

[11:03] Seek a lot of counseling both in undergrad and during med school and not really formal counseling not like Medication therapy, but I did utilize a lot of support systems because I thought wanted to keep myself grounded, And there was one point where I really had a rough time and I requested a leave of absence for a month And I was able to graduate on time, but I just took my own own psychological pulse, you know, and I thought, my head is not in the game right now. And I can’t really do this and be there for my patients and be there for my fellow classmates and really get the best experience out of this, because I had had some personal things going on. Nothing really dramatic, but I just felt like I wasn’t there. And I remember, my father was somewhat angry with me for taking this leave of absence because he was afraid that I would not go back, that I was giving up, you know.
So it was really hard to kind of stick with my own sense of what I needed for myself.
But I do feel that I’ve always been very intuitive to my emotions and what I can handle.
And I just felt like it was the best thing for me.

[12:20] And that was really the only time that I had any periods of stress that I really felt like I couldn’t attack things.
So even in my later experiences, I really haven’t had issues because I was able to kind of work those things out early when I was in my early 20s.

[12:39] Well it sounds like you had a level of inner understanding and maturity that a lot of people don’t have at that age.
Let’s move along and get you in the Navy. You’ve already told us that part of that was the financial incentive of getting your bills paid.
So what was it like becoming a naval officer?
So first of all, just from my background, when I was that kid in Prospect, Ohio, I was the slowest kid in gym class. I was not an athlete at all.
I was in the marching band and I was in the academic clubs, but I was definitely not that great at sports.
So when I was contemplating the Navy service, I kind of adhered to the rule, and I tell a lot of people this, you know, I’m not broken, I’m not crazy and I’m not pregnant, so I should, be able to join the military.
So a lot of it is just, you know.

[13:49] There’s an internal discipline that you actually can hone a little better in the military.
So if you’re really good at following directions and following orders, you tend to be a good person in the military.
And so once I joined, I interviewed for my internship.

[14:08] So my internship, I wanted to go to San Diego and I got my first choice.
So I spent my internship in San Diego and we had to interview for residency.
And I did not get the residency at the first crack. So I went out for two years as a general medical officer, which in my case was a clinic in Corpus Christi.
And so I did a lot of doctor clinic things, but I actually wasn’t on a ship.
I just took care of naval, you know, naval members.
I bet there was some good education in that. It was. It was very good education and it was a lot of teamwork.
You got to learn about how the Navy works and then I was able to go back to San Diego.
I did my residency and then again after residency, I had two years of my payback because I got four years of education paid for.
So my goal was going to be do two years of internal medicine and get out and potentially do hematology oncology, you know, through a civilian program. And I ended up having my son in internal medicine residency. So I had a young baby and we went through, I.

[15:25] Went through a marriage breakup while I was doing my internal medicine tour after residency.
It was a horrible time to get a fellowship, but I did it anyway.
And fortunately, about six months before I went to my fellowship, which was in Washington, DC, where I have no family and had no support system, I met my now husband that I’ve been married to for 21 years.
And he was able to, we were geographically separated for about 6 months, but he was able to get out of the military and he was able to move to the East Coast and we got married and kind of started the family while I was in fellowship.
But that was a very hard period of time. I mean, that was a struggle, but it was the right thing to do.
And so I ended up staying in the Navy, doing my fellowship, staying on for another five years of active duty, and then doing reserve time, which we’ll kind of get to later, I I guess.

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[17:54] Music.

[18:05] Hi, I’m Rhonda Crowe, founder and CEO for MDCoaches. Here on Rx for Success, we interview a lot of great medical professionals on how they grew their careers, how they overcame challenges, and how they handle day-to-day work. I really hope you’re getting a lot of great information. But if you’re looking for an answer to a specific problem, management or administration challenge, or if you’re feeling just a bit burnt out, like maybe you chose the wrong career, well, then there’s a faster way to get the help you need.
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[20:10] And now let’s get back to today’s interview. Do you think that, you know, in sharing your story with other physicians like we do from time to time. Do you think your experience as a resident during those training years was for the most part fairly similar to what non-military people were doing or was it vastly different?
It’s really hard to say because I’ve never done a non-military training. I know that I always tell people that I kind of felt like a free-range doctor because I felt like we We weren’t explicitly supervised.
We were a bit more independent.
Not that we weren’t getting our procedures signed off or things like that, but I just listened to other people’s experiences and I just don’t feel like I always had the hovering or double checking or, you know, I mean, I think I had an appropriate amount, but I felt like I could develop my confidence a lot and I got a lot of exposure to doing a lot of procedures.
The other thing that’s a little different in my specialty in hematology oncology is.

[21:25] We tended to see a lot of young patients because we saw active duty people.
So we saw people that had cancers that young people have, which are not as common in adult oncology.
So it kind of gives you a little different experience. But I’m assuming that, you know, they’re military hospitals, but they are teaching hospitals at the same time. So I’m gathering that the…
Sort of Passage of knowledge to the from the person who is just your senior down to yourself and from yourself to the next person, Below you is fairly similar to what you would experience in any civilian hospital. Is that about right?
Probably the only difference when I was in fellowship, we were still split between the Army and the Navy We were a combined program, but we were at two different facilities because they hadn’t combined Walter Reed Army Hospital and Bethesda Navy Hospital.
So there was a lot of driving around and you would have kind of different staff at different times.
So it wasn’t the same cohesive group, which was kind of interesting and kind of frightening.
And we also did some off rotations. So I got to do a month at Georgetown, a month at Howard.
I did some transplant over at NIH. So I got a lot of different experiences that I think a lot of other fellows don’t get.

[22:50] So, you know, I think it was very interesting. At times it was extremely stressful, but like I said, I kind of like the fact that I got a lot of variety and got to see a lot of things that maybe the typical person didn’t see.
Yeah, I bet you did.
And speaking of things that a lot of people don’t get to see, I really wanna hear some of the details about your overseas experience. I know that you did two separate deployments into war zones.
And you can take those in any order that you like, but I’d like to hear a little about both Kuwait and Kandahar.
Can you tell us how that came about and what your duties were when you got there and what was it like?
So, first of all, when I was still active duty, I was a staff hematologist oncologist in San Diego.
I was notified that I was going to be going to, um…

[23:47] Kuwait, which Kuwait is kind of Iraq light, you know, there’s not active fighting there.

[23:54] They actually have a pool at the gym on base, you know, so a lot of people called it Camp Cupcake.
Most of the military people know that, but, you know, what we were there to do is, first of all, you know, I’m not a trauma surgeon.
I was internal medicine trained. So I’m essentially there to be an internal medicine doctor.
So at the time I was there in 2007, we were staying in a dormitory in a building but next to the building where we slept was the tent hospital.
So the hospital was all made of tents and the surgeries were done in kind of these little containers like shipping containers that were converted into an OR and so a lot of the ventilators that we had to use were kind of like typical transport ventilators.
Weren’t like the typical hardened ventilators that you would use in an ICU. Not that we had that many people that were on ventilators, but a lot of what we saw were either just injuries on base. So, you know, you kind of had a typical ER. Occasionally, we would get things like, you know, somebody who has an inhalation injury. There were sometimes people that had chronic diseases that were still kind of sent to theater, that you’re kind of like, why would they send somebody with a seizure disorder to theater? But, you know, we could manage those people.

[25:17] And then I had this collateral duty as the disaster coordinator or whatever. And so I was kind of the person that would do all the nuclear chemical exposure drills and things like that, where we would have to put on the gas masks and all the equipment and kind of make sure that everybody did all the training for that. But in terms of actual threat to my life, I never really felt that poorly in Kuwait. Kandahar, where we were, was, I was a reservist then.
So I had actually been in my practice and had to notify my civilian practice that I had to leave for close to a year. So that was, that was challenging. And when I did my contract. I actually wrote into my contract that, you know, I’ve been drilling reservist and at some point I may be called to, you know, go away and there’s laws about this that I should, continue to have my seniority and my pay when I come back and things like that.
So, I went to Kandahar. I did some training in the states before I went and then pretty much the group of people that I was with were all people that I pretty much never met before.
So you form this team and we do a lot of these, you know.

[26:39] Sudden, you know, you’ll get a notification kind of like on MASH when everybody runs to the tents and this was an actual facility but we would have to probably run, you know, 10 minutes across base in the middle of the night if they had a trauma and then everybody kind of takes their positions and you just take care of people as best you can.
You know, I was kind of acting as an ER doc at the time of traumas but most of our job was then after they did these emergent surgeries and everything, we were coordinating their medevacs.
We were making sure they got their antibiotics, their anticoagulants, things like that.
So a lot of it was just post-op care and disposition from my standpoint.
So I had one other internal medicine doctor and we had one critical care and then everybody else was pretty much ER docs and surgeons and anesthesiologists.

[27:33] So they didn’t need a lot of us, but we were there to kind of make sure the work got done.
And you felt fully competent to do what you had to do.
Oh yeah.
And I always told people, oncology and trauma care, a lot of it is just not overreacting.
It’s what needs to be done, get the job done, accomplish the mission.
And so I kind of have this skill of compartmentalizing where I can take the situation at hand and just get it done and then kind of go on with life after that.
And I know that other people kind of have an issue with that, but like I said, it’s something where I can kind of take my own pulse.
That’s the right attitude.

[28:15] Sounds like you handled it very well. I had a good friend early in my practice.
I was in a multi-specialty group. He was a gastroenterologist and he had gotten drafted toward the end of his first year in gastroenterology.
Fellowship and he went to Vietnam, actually to a hospital ship off the shore of Vietnam.
When he walked in, they asked him, what do you know how to do?
He said, I’ve got one year of gastroenterology behind me. They said, well, okay, now you’re an orthopedic surgeon.
That sounded a little intimidating to me and I’m sure that they didn’t have him in there, putting on internal fixators and things of that nature.
With your experience, it sounds like you had everything that you needed to do to feel confident that you were actually serving a purpose and really being useful to the effort.
Is that right?

[29:13] It is, but I think that a lot of just me describing my experience, I think the biggest part of this experience that I took home is that it is the teamwork.
Need the people around you that you can kind of bounce things off of, and when you’re stressed out, that you feel like you’re being supported. And we did a lot of scheduled things, like leadership talks and, you know, how to be a leader, how to talk to people that maybe you need to correct along the way. And I think if you’re always kind of looking at that ability to improve your own standing with the group rather than just focusing on your own task, I think you’re less likely to get overwhelmed. Sort of a feeling that we’re all in the same boat and we better get along. Yeah. It’s a good way to do it. Let’s move into this next transition. It sounds like you were kind of ready to get out of the military at some point And tell us how you made that.

[30:18] Transition was just a matter of you know the date came up on the calendar and you had something lined up or was there searching around what was the story well so there were.
Quite a few parallel stories so one was that i.
Was really looking towards moving up in the Navy and kind of taking on more responsibilities.
And I didn’t really feel that the people I was working with at that time, and I don’t want to say too much because maybe they’ll be listening, but.

[30:51] I didn’t feel like I was getting valued to the extent that I felt given the effort I put into the organization.
So I had talked to a couple people And I basically put in my letter and thought, well, you know, I could go into the reserves. I could still keep my rank.
I could still be involved, but this was in about 2008. Um, the other thing is I was living in Southern California in 2008. And as you know, there was this big financial crisis that was kind of looming and I was able to.

[31:24] Get out of Southern California before the market dropped out because I was kind of paying attention.
That’s a good time to be paying attention.
So that’s number two. Number three is that my father had had heart surgery and I kind of wanted to be closer to family because Sandusky is about an hour and a half from where I grew up.
So it was convenient to do that. And probably the fourth reason, which is probably the primary reason, is that my middle son, having some issues with academic achievement, and we found out later that he was on the autism spectrum. I mean, he’s brilliant, but he just had a lot of difficulty with homework and achievement academically, and we just felt like he wasn’t really getting anywhere in the school system.
So, we felt like if he was in kind of a more supportive environment, we had more family around, that it was going to be better for him. So this was again a very well thought out, you know, pros and cons, two-column decision making. Very methodical.
That’s very interesting. You know, I talk to a lot of people on this show and we hear all kinds of stories. Many times people are just sort of put in a spot where they have to.

[32:52] Think on their feet. Other people have the luxury of doing some planning as you did.
So let’s talk about that transition into civilian life. Now you had been in the military for how How long at that point?
Roughly? Yeah, about 15 years. Okay. years.
So everyone told me, oh, that’s crazy. You should have just stayed in five more years and gotten your retirement.
But, you know, like I said, you can get retirement through the reserves.
It’s just you get it later.
And it was fine with me.
And, you know, financially, I’m doing OK. So did you find an experience of culture shock at all?
I mean, things are done differently in the military, let’s face it.
And now you’re moving into a private enterprise hospital that you were affiliated with, or the situation was there. Why don’t you just fill us in?

[33:48] So it’s a bit of a hybrid. So I actually interviewed with this program, which it’s affiliated with University Hospitals in Cleveland, which is an academic hospital.
But they were looking at opening a community center in Sandusky, which is over an hour away from the main hospital. So they hired me and they hired another physician who was shortly out of training. And we pretty much just opened this shop and just started seeing patients. And there’s a long history to why this was built, why we were there, but essentially we were just walking around the community, shaking hands with people, meeting primary care docs, which I really like because I really like the small town medicine fact of, you know, you know everybody you work with.
We had a fabulous surgical team. We have fabulous consultants.
We’re all kind of on a friendly first name basis. We all have each other’s phone numbers programmed into our phones.
So it was a really nice transition. And I really don’t think I had much of a culture shock because I’d always been in this position of going to places where I didn’t know anybody and just making it work.
And I have to say, my nursing staff, who may be listening to this at some point as well.

[35:14] Have been fabulous and, you know, I always feel like you can’t really go to work and stay there for a long time unless you feel like they’re family.
And so, like any families, we might have our little squabbles here and there, but I always felt really well supported with the group that I’m working with.
Well, that’s a good situation to be in. I know lots of people that have decided to.

[35:41] Go into a new area, and one of the things that they hear is, well, I don’t know how you’re going to make a living because we’ve already got enough of whatever your specialty is. And I gather that that was not at all the case when you went to Sandusky. Oh, and it’s still not the case, I’ll tell you, we can always use more oncologists, but I will say that I could go a lot of places and probably make more money.
I could probably make a name for myself and publish more academically, but this just felt right for me. It feels close enough to home. I have enough connections.
I could never do oncology in my hometown because I just would recognize too many people that or my patients, but this is kind of close enough.
You know, I’m close enough that I can visit family and kind of be available, but also that I just have a little bit of professional distance from the people that I see.

[36:44] And the other thing that I find interesting about this, and it is definitely something that I think would appeal to me by virtue of the fact that you’re not in the heart of a highly specialized university setting, you get to do a lot of things.
You don’t have to be the specialist in T-cell lymphoma and don’t talk to me about anything else.
And I presume that you really like that. Oh, I really like it.
I like community medicine. In fact, it’s funny when I talk to the specialists, they say, you know, it’s kind of hard to like, have to know a little bit about everything.

[37:25] You know, I mean, you do, you have to read, you have to kind of keep up on things, but, that’s kind of what keeps it exciting about medicine.
Like everybody tells me that oncology is depressing, but I tell them, but it’s so new and there’s so many things that we can do for people that we weren’t able to do 20 years ago when I started my training.
So, you know, I mean, that kid in a candy store kind of attitude towards, like even Even when it’s a really long clinic day, you know, sometimes I can just kind of look back and say, wow, I started treating this patient in like 2011 and she’s still hanging out here.
So what do you do for fun up there?
Oh, I do all kinds of things.
Lake Erie must offer some opportunities. I do.
I’m not a very good runner. Like I said, I’m not an athlete, but over the last like four or five years, I’ve kind of picked up into distance running. I’ve done one full marathon and I’m actually working on my second full marathon. I’m working on New York City Marathon, which is, you know, you have to like schedule your training, but I just find like it keeps me.

[38:30] Motivated to do something. Like I am so goal driven that I have to have a goal that I can check a box and so I’m able to do that. The other thing I like to do is I know there aren’t many hills here but we have a ski club and my husband just finished his term as president of the ski club so we do group trips together and we go out west, we go, we’ve gone up to Canada, We go here locally, New York and Michigan, to some of the ski locations there, but we have a lot of fun doing that and my kids have grown up with it, so it’s a good family time that we can have together. Sounds like a good place to be, and it is. I can tell that it’s geographically located in such an area that it has the potential to have that small town feel, I’m imagining, and yet you’re not far from some really expansive metropolitan area, so you sound like you got it all.
I think so. Yeah, I mean, for the most part, everybody gets into their kind of, oh, I’m working so hard, oh, this is like really tough, but you know, usually I can kind of plan things out.
You know, I give myself little treats along the way, like, oh, we’re going to go see this.

[39:58] Show at Playhouse Square, or we’ve got this benefit that we’re going to do, like we’re getting ready to do a golf outing that is a benefit.
So I usually will take a half day off and go golf with my husband and, you know, we raise money for the cancer center.
So, you know, it’s just like kind of giving yourself little treats to look forward to.
And just remembering that what you’re doing is meaningful for the people that you see every day.

[40:26] Dr. McNeil Well, it sounds like that you have done a very good job of leading a very balanced life, and I congratulate you for that.
I have enjoyed this conversation. It’s been a lot of fun.
But what we’re going to do at this point, Dr. Amy Reese, is I’m going to step out of the way and close my mic and audience.
Dr. Amy Reese is going to give us her personal prescriptions for success.

[40:54] Alright, so my prescription number one is always look for goals that scare you a little.
So whether that’s going to a BSMD program in six years or whether that’s trying to do your first marathon, I think that always kind of stimulates your vigor.
Accept the help from your support squad and give back when you can.
So I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am today if I didn’t have the support of my family.

[41:30] If I didn’t have the support of my nursing staff who just takes wonderful care of my patients and all the people who have taught me along the way.
And so I really try to look for those opportunities to give back to people in my system and again my family.
To take really awesome vacations. And the third thing, especially in oncology, is to remember that your worst day doesn’t compare to that of your patient. And I know that a lot of days I’ll just wake up and think, I just have a full clinic. I don’t really feel like going in today. This is really tough. And then I think about the people that I’m seeing and I think about their family members that are bringing them in and they need to have somebody to help direct them in the right way, you know, the things that are going to help them feel better.
And you know, I just have to keep myself grounded that, you know, my bad days will end and sometimes theirs don’t. So that would be my prescription that I would give.

[42:34] Well, I like that list. I’ve written down, number one, challenge yourself.
Number two, accept support and be supportive in return.
And number three, count your blessings.
I think you can’t go wrong with that. Dr. Amy Reese, this has been a lot of fun.
Before we go, I want to give you an opportunity to let our audience know where you can be found and contacted.
So I practice at Firelands Regional Medical Center in Sandusky, Ohio, and I have a second office that is at Magruder Hospital in Port Clinton, Ohio.
So we’re about halfway in between Toledo and.
And we’ll put all that information in our show notes so that people can look you up if they would like to.
This has been a lot of fun and I have really enjoyed the conversation.
Dr. Amy Reese, thank you for being with us on Prescription for Success.
Thank you, my pleasure. Thank you so much for listening with us today.

[43:31] Music.

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