Purnima S. Patel, MD, on how to wear the 'big crown' of solo practice

Editor's note: This is an automatically generated transcript of episode 9 of the Healio/WIO Our View Video Blog series, which has been slightly edited for clarity. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

Hi, I'm Purnima Patel. I am a Medical Retina Uveitis Specialist and a Cataract Surgeon in Atlanta, Georgia. I have my own solo practice, which I started about 2 and a half years ago after working in academics for 11 years. And I'm so excited to share my pearls with everyone and learn from our esteemed panelists.

Thank you, Purnima, for joining us on the Healio Vlog on Wellness. I wanted to ask you how you manage to juggle everything on your plate, and how you set healthy boundaries?

I will say that I’m not quite sure I have achieved healthy boundaries, but it is a journey. And a lot of the boundaries have come from necessity and sometimes outside forces. As much as I love them to be completely internal, they're often from my family or my friends or just circumstances at work where I just don't have enough minutes in the day. So, I have to be more efficient. I have to prioritize. And it's also vital to my wellness and my longevity in this career that I enjoy so much, and I want to continue to enjoy it. So, I think that this is just a path in order for me to achieve this utopian balance that we're all aspiring for.

Yeah, an achievable balance.

Well, Purnima, we know you do it all. I mean, you started your own solo practice. You are the current president of the Georgia Society of Ophthalmology. You'll be incoming president of Women in Ophthalmology. You're on the Board of Trustees for the AAO. And so, you have a lot that you have said yes to over the years. And I bet in terms of trying to set boundaries, there has to be maybe some graceful ways to say “no.” Do you have a couple of pearls for our audience around that?

Sure. You know, I think the classic saying that people will sometimes share on a podium is, "’No’ is a full sentence: End, stop, period," which I always found very challenging because I didn't feel like it was authentic to who I am. And the other difficulty is oftentimes you're getting asked to do something from someone whom you respect very deeply. So, it becomes extremely difficult to say no to that person because you're quite frankly, very honored that they asked you or they trusted you, or they needed you in a specific role. So, one thing that I've found that makes it easier to say “no” is to say, you know, acknowledge that you're very grateful for the opportunity and then decide whether it kills two birds or three birds for me. It doesn't make sense for me to be asked to go speak at a meeting, for example, and I'm not going for anything else, but only for that one speaking opportunity. So, finding something else that provides the balance for me. And if I can't find that, then offering up another person who you're trying to lift up, who you think will fit the category perfectly. Or sometimes even acknowledging that I am not the right fit, but they asked you because they know you and they trust you, and they also trust that you know someone else that can really handle the ask. And then secondly, if I am just the right person, but I can't do just the right job, especially when it's someone that you respect, you want to, you know, give your 110%. So, if I think I can only do 80%, then just saying, "My plate is very full, but here are some suggestions on other people whom I think would be great. Let me know if I can help you in the introduction process or in the recruitment process."

You know, Purnima, those are really wonderful suggestions. I think knowing when to say “no” and then suggesting alternative colleagues to help bring them maybe into the spotlight, or giving them an opportunity at the podium, or co-chairing, or something like that also helps the community at large. So, thank you for those. But my question to you is how did you juggle the transition from working in academics, and then opening your own private practice? And I know from running my own private practice, I don't anymore, I sold it, and I was never an academic. But you are not just a physician, you're a businesswoman, you are an HR specialist, a billing specialist, you have all these hats you wear, and it ends up being a big crown, because you have to be the empress of it all. So, how did you figure out how to work it all out and when to say “no” and when to say “yes?”

I think by reaching out and observing people just like you that have done it so well for a long time, and looking at your journey, your path, and realizing that there's some things that I can emulate and some things that don't necessarily resonate with, or are not authentic to who I am. One big thing, just truthfully, would be that all of this transition happened in COVID when the whole world was slowing down, and I wasn't traveling and I wasn't speaking at all these meetings, so I had a lot of time to work and plan and figure out how build a practice. I also was lucky because I had already been practicing for a decade and I could be a little bit slower and intentional in building the practice. So, I didn't go from zero to 30 patients in like a month. It took me 2 and a half years to really build up the volume. And you're still building. The other big thing that's helped me is reaching out to people. And I have been so incredibly touched by just calling up someone I didn't even know who was so generous with their time and their advice about just the silliest things. Sometimes you find yourself reaching out to someone in a panic about something very, very small. But just the generosity in our ophthalmology community has been amazing. The other big thing has been just a mindset readjustment; just taking the... Cynthia, as you know, there are hurdles that are coming your way each and every day, and just learning to give yourself some pause with that, and in that pause, learning to look for opportunities in whatever situation arises, and then pivoting. And you just have to do that every day. And it actually makes you better. It makes you more creative. I have become, you know, this word "resilient" is thrown around all the time. And for us, you know, this whole panel is probably tired of being resilient. But I do think that it's, you know, necessary to have that power in ourselves to change our mindset, so we don't always feel defeated or overwhelmed. And those feelings can still happen but recognizing them and knowing that you just have to move on because you are responsible, you are wearing the crown. And so, you are responsible for all your subjects, your patients, your staff, students, everybody that you're mentoring, etc. you're juggling all of these things at the same time.

It's a heavy job to carry the crown, but you're doing it so gracefully. So, thank you.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you so much for joining us on the Healio Vlog on Wellness, and we hope to see you again soon in our next episode.

Thank you so much. You were wonderful.