[00:00:10] Speaker A: The Michael Hatfield re Max team presents real estate and more.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Bay Area real estate is different than in all of America. And why? What's up with homebuyers? What's on sellers minds? How is the market and much, much more.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Now here's your host, Michael Hatfield. Welcome to the real estate and Moore show. And I'm so appreciative that you're here today on our show, we have an amazing, amazing person. He's a Er doctor at a major US and California Bay Area hospital. Been a veteran of providing those services to anybody that walks in the door. And just an overall great guy. Good friend of mine, doctor Malcolm Johnson. I'd like to welcome you to real estate and more shows.
[00:00:58] Speaker C: Well, thank you, Michael. I appreciate the opportunity. I'm looking forward to having this conversation. Having a little bit of fun.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Sounds good to me. Well, you know, we've talked in the past off air, and we've decided that our backgrounds are a lot the same. When you undertook your career to become a physician, that was a daunting, daunting mountain to climb. I understand now that a lot of the doctors are ending up with the training being over with and starting with $300,000 owed for the training that they have to go through. First of all, just tell us about your background and talk for as long as you would like.
[00:01:37] Speaker C: So, yes, you're right, the training is very expensive now, but we'll dive into that in just a second. So I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin.
My mother was a teacher in the school district there, and she was a single parent.
I enrolled in the University of Wisconsin on a football scholarship after high school, received my degree in zoology, and then decided that I wanted to do something other than being in research. I did some research for National Institutes of Health on transplant immunology and decided that I did not want to be in a lab my entire life. So from that point on, I started my journey back into academia and getting prepared to apply to medical school.
From there, I applied to medical school and gained admission to the University of Wisconsin Madison, where I completed my medical school there. And then I went on to residency doing the first surgery, and then I swapped from surgery to emergency medicine. And we can talk about why I made that swap later on in the program.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Wow. Pretty interesting. It seems like our backgrounds are somewhat similar. And for me, when I first started out to become an airline pilot, it was really, really daunting to say, oh, my gosh, I've got to find a way to throughout this seven year minimum training period to come up with the amount of funds necessary for training and for a physician, I imagine it's maybe as bad or worse leaving when you're done, you know, obligations and so forth. Are you finding that also?
[00:03:09] Speaker C: I think back when I was in the process of enrolling and applying that it was expensive, given the error and the time, but I think it's even more expensive and more daunting now.
These graduate students come out with, at minimum, three to $400,000 in debt, and quite frankly, it's difficult for them to pay it off, depending on what practice they go into. Which leads us to why we're having such a huge healthcare crisis and recruiting future physicians. So when I was growing up, it was reasonable. Now I would say it's almost unreasonable.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that the guys that, and the girls, of course, that are looking to become airline pilots are facing the same type of daunting mountain. But at the same time, back when we did it, you know, it was hard to find that support. And one of the critical areas of support is emotional support. People around you, the people that you hang out with, are going to say, oh, Michael, you could never be an airline pilot. You're a kid from San Pablo and, you know, come from a modest and humble background and all that, but you can't come up with that. You can never become an airline pilot. And quite frankly, the odds were way against me at the time, especially having to figure out how to come up with, you know, 250 grand to do it. Did you find that, or did you find that you were going to do it no matter what?
[00:04:37] Speaker C: Well, amazingly, I think we have some of the same background and issues. There was always the, you know, you can never do this, and how are you going to be able to compete academically?
And I proved them wrong.
To pretty much everyone's surprise, I actually did gain admission to medical school and went on to be a successful physician. But, yeah, I had those same hurdles to jump over, and you just have to persevere.
You can ask some of my friends who I used to hang out with in college. I disappeared for three or four years, and they look back now and they say, wow, I wish that I would have had that focus to disappear for three or four years and focus on what I wanted to do subsequently. Now my lifestyle is good. I'm happy. I have kids, family, I have a house. I live in California. Unfortunately, a lot of my fellow friends are not doing so well. So it was a focus. And I think a lot of that came from the fact that my mother was a teacher we come from a history of teachers, so there was always that, that push, hey, you got to get education. You have to, you know, strive to be better.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: Yeah, well, look at you now. I mean, you got all your nurse team helping you out when people come in. And of course, they're going to assess everything before you do and let you know what you have and the level of urgency per room that the patient may be in. But back on that focus. Focus is something that is really, really important to youngsters. And some people never really get that focus. What do you want to do? Your question is. And they say, well, I don't know yet, I'm going to go do this and try to figure it out. And the next thing you know, you're asking them that at 50 years old and they still can't answer that question.
I don't know why, but in my home when I grew up, I was able to get a sharp focus. And it gave me the purpose to not be going out and raising cane with the rest of the kids. When I was younger, I was. I couldn't go out and drink and then get up the next day and go fly an airplane and training, no way. And I know it had to be the same way with you. It's very admirable.
[00:06:50] Speaker C: Yeah, I think so. Let's get it straight. I raised a lot of cane when I was growing up, that's for certain. But you're right. There has to be. There has to be a point, a turning point where you have to make a decision. And it's kind of grown up. Maturation. It's family influence to help you make those decisions. But, yeah, it was tough. But once again, you have to make a decision and persevere and be persistent, and things usually work out.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: My mother told me when I grew up, she said, you know, if you want to do it bad enough, you can find a way to do it. And it's so true. It's so true. You know, look at you now. I mean, you're just, you know, well respected in the community.
Everybody loves you, especially me. And I have to disclose, folks, I met Doctor Johnson under an unusual type situation. It was the middle of the night and I came in and I had the worst pain in my side that I could ever imagine. And it turned out that it was one of those big old kidney stones because I was drinking more coffee than water. So drink your water. But he fixed me up. And a day or so later, after they went in with a laser and blasted it out of there, we became great friends. And I feel real thankful for that. I'm sure glad you were there that night and they had the opportunity to make your friendship.
[00:08:17] Speaker C: And Michael, I got to give you credit. You didn't come in crying like most of the guys with kidney stones. You were tough. You were tough.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: They say that kidney stones are as painful as childbirth. Well, one thing is for certain, I will never know.
[00:08:31] Speaker C: That is true. That is true. If you do. We're writing a book.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Absolutely.
So your family was really behind you from an emotional standpoint right from the very beginning. But at some point, you had to make that decision to go to medicine, to make medicine happen for you. That's going to be your, your career in life. What did that? What was the pivotal change?
[00:08:57] Speaker C: Multifactorial.
I knew that my life as it was growing up poor, I wanted to make a change, difference.
We grew up very humble beginnings. I laugh with my buddies because some of them know what breakfast food is. I don't know what breakfast food. When I grew up, we didn't have breakfast food. We ate leftovers for breakfast. So I remember as a kid sleeping on the couch because we didn't have an extra bed.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: Please remember to go to our new YouTube handle my real talk show. That's my
[email protected]. And touch that subscribe button. You can also find past aired shows at our handle my realtalkshow on YouTube.com dot.
[00:09:40] Speaker C: These are things that were helped push me to perform and persevere and become successful.
It took me a little while as I was a teenager growing up because I was a typical teenager playing football. And then I realized that I could, that I had to start performing. So then football fell by the wayside somewhat, and then I started going back into academics.
Things that really influenced me were I have family members who are very successful, educated. I have uncle who was a physician who actually was a great role model. And then I got in a little bit of trouble and I had to do some restitution.
I did some volunteering for a physical therapy department. And because I was an athlete, I always felt as though, well, I do a lot of rehab, you know, for my injuries, maybe I want to do physical therapy. And a buddy of mine who was actually in medical school at the time, who was a big mentor of mine, a good mentor of mine, he said, look, if you're going to apply to physical therapy school, you should apply to medical school, because it was just about the same difficulty getting in at that time for admission. So given the history with my family and my uncle, who was a huge resource and gave me access to healthcare to show me what medicine was about and to influence me, I decided to apply to medical school. And here you are.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Wow. Back a few moments ago, you were talking about transplant immunization.
I came together in a social event and met a gentleman that was a transplant coordinator, a transplant coordinator with the University of Chicago. And as you know, I flew some of the first human hearts. So I was the one element of that transplant realm and that transplant regime. Amazing, amazing thing to do for people. And I see, you know, you're the kind of guy that likes to take something and turn around and make it better. And if you've made it better, then you've achieved what you want. You know, I see that with your friends. I see it with the people that you work with, the support staff that you have at the hospital. That's to be admired. So I know why now you went into medicine, but why eR? Why did you go with the ER? As in lieu of cardiology or x ray or something of that nature?
[00:12:08] Speaker C: So I initially, like you said, the transplant and surgery, really, I was enthralled with that. I was like, oh, I have to do this, and I'm an adrenaline junkie anyways, so surgery was, was my first line of, you know, this is what I want to do. I want to do surgery. Absolutely. But then when I got into surgery, and I like to have a lifestyle, I like to hang out, I like to have friends, surgery obviously was not going to afford me that opportunity. So I actually did a rotation in the emergency department, and once I did that rotation, I was like, oh, this is it. I get the adrenaline push. I get to see and take care of patients. I get to be a real doctor, and I still get to, I fulfill that adrenaline rush, but I also get that free time to be myself and to relax, have fun with friends and family.
And that's one of the reasons why I chose emergency medicine.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: Yeah, we have several friends that are also physicians, and cardiology seems to be the most intrusive, or it seems to be from what I can ascertain.
But it's nice to be able to have respect when you work. You know, I've talked on this show before about when I was an airline pilot and I had the uniform on. Nobody questioned what you were doing when you went into the flight deck or how you flew the flight.
In real estate, everybody talks to their little sister. They talk to their gardener. They have their opinion from the Internet, and you have to get them straight on how things really are, because quite often they're not. And it's good to have that respect to help you along the way. Real estate, I think people think you can, you know, be the person on the corner and do just as good a job, which is obviously not, not true. So I know most of our audience has been to the ER room. What are your primary likes about working with ER patients, Doctor Johnson?
[00:14:02] Speaker C: My primary like is that I get to see the patient in an acute setting with acute issues and I get to help solve them. I tell patients all the time, is I initially help you find out the problem. I may not be able to solve it, but I find someone who can. And if not, once I get you over that acute crisis, then we talk about what the next plan is for follow up, which is nice, but then when it's all said and done, at the end of the day, I get to go home and, and I don't get calls from patients about follow ups, things like that. That's already set up and done before I leave. So that's, that's the great thing about emergency medicine. You get that acuity. You get to see heart attacks, strokes, if you're in a trauma centered gunshot wounds, all type of traumatic blunt injuries, and you get to solve those and fix them right then and there, or find someone who can. And then at that point, you, you move on to the next patient while that one has been taken care of, and you. And it's constant, perpetual motion like that. I'm never, never, never bored at work. I don't know if you've ever had a job that's very boring, it's painful. So I don't have that problem at work, which is nice. And I think that's why I've had such longevity. I've been in the industry now for 1617 years. The burnout ranges about 20 years for most ER physicians.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: Yeah, that burnout thing is really something. Well, the airline job is a little bit like that. You know, it's busy, busy, busy. Then you make your departure and everything. Once you've flown the departure, if you're a long range flight, you're sitting there with a lot of boredom. But the interesting thing is that all of a sudden that whole thing can change. And when it does, you have to be in a mindset that you can deal with condition red or condition orange or what have you in eR. I can see where not only would you have condition orange or red because of some case that is in front of you, but the number of cases all at once. It's like, ah, you got everything at once. And that it's likely how it happens relatively often, I would say. Would you?
[00:16:10] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I guess my approach to emergency medicine is everything's conditioned, ready to proven otherwise.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: That's a good way.
[00:16:15] Speaker C: That's kind of have to deal with it. I mean, my job is to make sure there's nothing acute. I mean, in residency. Probably shouldn't say this in residence. We, our job is to make sure there's nothing that can kill you immediately.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:16:26] Speaker C: And that's what you want. You want to make sure that you're not going to die today. Of course, I can't predict the future, but.
But, and that's. So everything's read code red.
But then once you realize and you talk to the patient and you figure out what's going on, then you can decelerate or downgrade that red to a yellow or even a green, even go home. So that's what we do.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Absolutely. We had a nurse on here, did a phenomenal job. She runs a team, also from a major Bay Area hospital, and she shared how the teamwork actually works. So when an emergency patient comes into the ER room, then they are assessed immediately by the nurse staff, correct?
[00:17:09] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: And then they report to the doctor. Well, I've got a patient in room C or D or whatever room it is that is maybe having a heart attack, maybe not. And so now you've got that placed on a level of priority in your mind. The person next door has ingrown fingernail that is full of infection, and then you've got a snakebite victim at the other end of the facility. So which one do you handle first?
[00:17:38] Speaker C: So sometimes you can't handle them, you know, like that. You gotta hand them simultaneously. I think the ingrown toenail or the affected toenail or fingernail is low acuity on the list, but if they're septic, then they're higher acuity on the list. So you'd have to kind of juggle that and you have to multitask. I mean, I've had many patients that come in with heart attack and stroke, and then traumas come through, and you can, you got to be able to rely on your nursing staff to help you with that. And that's why I feel like I have a team approach. Some physicians don't feel that way, but I have a very team approach when it comes to taking care of patients, because I rely on my nursing staff to let me know, hey, this guy is sick, and they may or may not be correct, but I always assume that what they say is exactly what's going on. So I don't see the patient. The answer is when a doctor, Johnson, can you come see somebody? The answer is yes. And then I'll say, okay, they're stable, they're fine, and I can get back to doing what else is more acute. But, yeah, it's a team approach, and you have to triage that and you have to multitask. There's many times where you have to take care of two sick acute patients simultaneously. Hopefully they're in a room next to each other. Otherwise I get my steps in. But that's how you do it.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's good to get your steps in. You know, I keep going back to airline operations because a lot of it is, it's consistent, I mean, between the medical field as well as airline operations. You're a social guy. You make some type of a relationship with nurses and the people that you work with. It's necessary for you to perform as a good staff with airline business. Nancy was so upset at me. She's looking at that credit card this day every month. So what are you.
Well, I took the whole crew out to dinner in New York. No one had any money and I had a credit card.
[00:19:26] Speaker C: So away we go.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: And she kind of believed it. And then one day she was on my flight, and before passengers had boarded, they had, you know, all of the flight attendants, a pre departure briefing for a transcontinental flight, and all of the flight attendants, male, female, are all there. And I would go in with my first officer brief in the back of the airplane and talk about the parameters of the flight before you get there. You say, hey, Susie, how's, how's your baby? You know, didn't you just have a baby last time we flew? Or, hey, Joe, how's it going with your new friend? And all of these things mount up to a cohesive effort when it hits the fan for airline operations. And they know what they're dealing with. They know the person in the flight deck with you, I can see, well, that's Malcolm in there. You know, he's my friend and he's a guy that I can count on, and I know that I can tell him the way it is. And that is so important for a cohesive team to operate. At least I think so. Anyway, please remember to go to our new YouTube, handle my real talk show. That's my
[email protected]. And touch that subscribe button. You can also find past aired shows at our handle my real talk show on YouTube.com dot.
[00:20:50] Speaker C: Yeah, I agree.
The nursing staff, like I said, it's crucial to taking care of patients, particularly in the emergency department. It's quite different in some of the other fields of practice. But remember, in the emergency department, we're seeing you at your worst time, at your most extremely, you know, conditions of health, right. Or you're really sick. And we, the staff in the ED, we are in entrenches. We see everything that walks through the door. So doesn't matter if you lost your cat, doesn't matter if you're depressed, doesn't matter if you're having a heart attack, doesn't matter if you had a gunshot, wounded chest. We still see you and take care of you. And when you develop, when you see these type of patients day in and day out, you actually develop a relationship with the staff and you get to know them very well. And it's funny because my friends are always question, well, why do you hang out with your employee, you know, your employer, your fellow colleagues? Like that? And, yeah, and I'm like, because we're kind of a family unit and that's why we do that.
And they don't understand because they're like, we, I have employees and we don't do that. We have our Christmas party and that's it. So it's a different relationship in emergency department. So very much so. Just like an airline, especially in code red for you guys.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: You know, one time Nancy had had a little surgery and they put her in a room at the hospital and there was one nurse taking care of her, doing the vinyls, doing the history, going back over this, that and everything else. Put it all together and I'm standing there and then all of a sudden the team came in from the surgery room. It was really amazing because when they came in, there was a doctor, there was someone to push the gurney and another person, and they actually did a full blown airline handoff. It's like patient belonged to this lady in the room, she's handing it off to the team that's going to take her to surgery. It was like unbelievably similar to what we do in the airplane.
[00:22:44] Speaker C: Same thing, timeout, safety checks, all those types of things. Absolutely.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. It's just phenomenal. How many shifts do you work in a week, Doctor Johnson?
[00:22:54] Speaker C: In the emergency department, I work in a week. Let's go monthly. In a month, I work twelve to 14 to 15 shifts, depending on what the need is.
But yeah, about twelve to 14 and spot average for most ER docs.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: Are you on full 12 hours or.
[00:23:12] Speaker C: We work eight hour shifts. They usually expand into a little bit longer than that because you're trying to clean up and get patients to dispositioned. So it ends up being about 9 hours on average, usually.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: Now we're blowing into the springtime here. It's beautiful out there and I noticed a lot of squirrels are around, which means that there's going to be rattlesnakes coming out. Do you remember one time we were hanging out, just talking and I was saying that I almost stepped on one putting away my realtor sign. And Nancy, she says, I don't think I would turn around. I just happened to look down and sure enough that coiled a rattlesnake. And you said a guy. We were talking about the level of the venom of one that's a full adult rattlesnake as opposed to the other. And this guy got bit by a little bitty guy and that was really an interesting situation, if I remember you talking about that.
[00:24:08] Speaker C: Yeah, we had a gentleman, that same kind of situation. He was just reaching in for something, looked down and saw a baby rattlesnake and the baby rattlesnake bit him. Now what most folks don't know is that the baby rattlesnake has a problem controlling its venom. They haven't matured enough to be able to control it like an adult rattlesnake. So a lot of times you get a lot of venom in a small area and the result, you get worsening symptoms. And this guy got bit on the hand and his hand completely swollen up. I believe they had to take them surgery and open them up antivenom.
But he was. It was in bad shape. You can get really sick, you can lose a limb. There's no doubt about.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: You lose your life too. You can lose your life.
[00:24:50] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:24:51] Speaker C: So, yeah, so be careful with the rattlesnakes.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: Tis the season in the last year or so, have you a couple years, have you recommended anything differently as far as who comes into the ER room now as opposed to, you know, four or five years ago?
[00:25:07] Speaker C: Michael, that's a complicated question.
So yes, no, there's been a. Yeah, it's not a simple yes or no. So the emergency department has. We've had our issues with managing the volume of patients and it's unfortunate. It's a system that the healthcare system is set up on, primary care doctors and we don't have a lot of primary care doctors out there and there's numerous reasons for that. And probably, I think, another show for that. But as a result, we've had large volumes in the emergency department and the biggest struggle is who's sick, who's emergently sick, who's Code Red, who's yellow, who's green. Right. And trying to juggle that with the volume of patients that are walk ins versus EMS transports is quite challenging. And I think most hospitals across the country are dealing with this issue.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: Now, going back a long time, do you ever regret not going into football with the same enthusiasm that you did to medical school?
[00:26:09] Speaker C: When I was younger, yes. But as I've gotten older, no. No regrets whatsoever. I made the right decision. I got lucky. I mean, I didn't tell you beginning of this show, but one of the reasons why I ended up doing physical therapy, because I. I broke my leg in a motorcycle accident. And one of the reasons why I was interested in physical therapist because I broke my leg in a motorcycle accident.
And that accident probably did not allow me to achieve my athletic, the heights of athleticism that I would like to have achieved because of the injury. I never really recovered 100% from that. And as a result, that's how I ended up going back into academia, because I knew that pro career was not going to happen. So I had to figure out what to do. But, yeah, I have no regrets. I've made the correct decision. And that's probably why I'm not burnt out now is because I love what I do.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:27:00] Speaker C: And I think I'm pretty good at what I do.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: I bet you are. You sure helped me. So, doctor Malcolm Johnson, my friend, what would you like to say in closing? We're about out of time here. To all of the folks out there trying to stay on the good side.
[00:27:14] Speaker C: Of being healthy, I would say make sure you're eating healthy, obviously smoking, and keep your drinking down, obviously no drug use. And just try to have an overall healthy lifestyle and try to keep your mental health there as well. These days we're seeing a lot of mental health issues going on. This may be a culmination of COVID-19 in our lockdown situation we're in, but we're seeing a lot of mental health issues. So get some help from the mental health aspect as well as, you know, your health. I think that's the best way to make sure that you have a long lasting life.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: That's fantastic. Well, thank you for coming on the show.
[00:27:51] Speaker C: Thank you, Michael, for having me. Appreciate it.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: We owe a big thanks to this super nice guy, a good friend and respected ER doctor for taking his valuable time to come on the show and share with us. Thank you doctor Johnson. You've been listening to the real estate and more show and have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful day. Stand by for our next guest.
Please remember to go to our new YouTube handle my real talk show. That's
[email protected]. And touch that subscribe button. You can also find past aired shows at our handle my realtalkshow on YouTube.com.
[00:28:33] Speaker B: The views and opinions expressed are based on current economic and market conditions and are subject to change. Information on the show provided for illustrator purposes only and does not constitute professional or legal advice. Information from sources deemed reliable, but accuracy and completeness not guaranteed. Michael Hatfield and the Michael Hatfield re Max team have no liability for information discussed on the show. Consult with qualified professionals prior to taking action.
