Interview with Dr. David Geier
In today's episode, Dr. David Geier explains how to market yourself using a combination of social media posts and public speaking. David is an orthopedic sports medicine specialist who recently added integrative medicine to his clinical practice.
Dr. Geier first appeared on our podcast in August 2018, in Episode 49, as a groundbreaking orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist. Since then, he's continued to innovate and has recently embarked on new clinical endeavors.
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Surgical Career Evolution: Beyond Social Media
In the world of medicine, staying connected with patients and colleagues through social media has become increasingly important. Dr. David Geier, a seasoned medical professional, has masterfully harnessed the power of social media to enhance his medical practice. These are the strategies he employed to leverage social media effectively.
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Content Creation and Engagement with AI
One of Dr. Geier's standout strategies is content creation. He recognized that a consistent flow of engaging content is vital to reach and retain an online audience. To streamline this process, he embraced AI tools, such as Copy.ai, to generate ideas for blog posts and content. By doing so, he ensured a regular output of valuable information for his followers. -
Making Medical Information Accessible
He emphasizes the importance of making medical information accessible to a broader audience. Understanding that complex medical jargon can alienate the average person, he opts for clarity and simplicity. His content resonates with his target audience on social media. -
Sharing Medical Advances and Insights
Dr. Geier doesn't stop at content creation. He uses social media to discuss advancements in the medical field. By sharing these insights, he positions himself as an informed and forward-thinking medical professional in the eyes of his audience. -
Observing Trends
In addition to sharing his insights, David actively observes and acts on trends in medicine and social media. He observed the growth of integrative and functional medicine, as well as the growth in AI. This led to his making major strategic decisions about his practice and in his marketing efforts.
Shift to Preventive Medicine & Non-Surgical Care
David shared valuable insights on transitioning from a traditional medical practice to his focus on preventive medicine and non-surgical approaches. He emphasized the importance of staying well-informed about the latest research and treatments, as well as maintaining a strong commitment to patient care.
Embrace innovation and leverage technology, such as AI, for tasks like content creation. – David Geier, MD
Summary
To connect with David, visit his website at drdavidgeier.com. You can reach out to him via the contact form on his site. You can also find him on various social media platforms under the handle “drdavidgeier,” including X, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, where he enthusiastically engages with fellow physicians venturing into podcasting and video creation.
NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode.
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Links for Today's Episode:
- How to Build a Platform and Create Authority with Dr. David Geier – 049
- Dr. David Geier's Website
- Dr. Geier's LinkedIn Page
- David's X (formerly Twitter) Account
- David's Facebook Page
- Better Than Ever: Dr. Geier's YouTube Channel
- From Here to There: Leveraging Virtual Medicine
- NewScr!pt
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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 321
How to Market Your Surgical and Nonsurgical Careers Like a Pro
- Interview with Dr. David Geier
John: Today's guest first appeared on the podcast here in August of 2018. That was episode 49. That was a long time ago, and he was quite a groundbreaker then in terms of he was using social media, he had a podcast. He was using other platforms basically to market himself and his business and his practice. But since then, he has continued to do new things, break new ground and even sort of shifted his clinical activity a little bit. I definitely wanted to get today's guest back to the podcast. So with that, Dr. David Geier, welcome to the podcast.
Dr. David Geier: Oh, thanks for having me. I cannot believe it's been that long. I did remember that it was before COVID, but I just did not remember it being five years ago. That's scary how quickly time seems to pass.
John: Well, usually when people say that, it's because they're so busy, that it just goes by like that.
Dr. David Geier: Yeah, that's a good point. Absolutely.
John: Because I know you've been into doing a lot of different things. It's going to be great to hear about it. I don't want to reiterate everything that we said at the last, but give us a little thumbnail of back when you were in practice, why you jumped into social media and why your practice was really a little different from most other orthopedists in terms of connecting with patients. And then we'll get into the more recent stuff.
Dr. David Geier: Well, it was interesting way back in 2008 or so, I was running a sports medicine program at an academic medical center here in Charleston. And anybody that's worked in academics knows I'm trying to build a sports medicine program and I'm trying to work with marketing to get more exposure. We need dollars to get team relationships and various components to help us grow. But in academics, you have to go through all these different layers to then a lot of times get a "no."
But the person that worked that was spearheading musculoskeletal health and the musculoskeletal program at that program talked to me and said, "Hey I think you'd be great at social media." And this is back when really Twitter and Facebook were just starting. And she's like, "You should do a website and you should do Twitter and Facebook." And I had no idea like, "What in the world? I'm a surgeon. I cut on people, I stand on the sidelines at football games." And she's like, "No, I think you'd be great. I hear you talk to people about injuries."
And so, sort of clueless to the whole thing, I was like, "All right, I'll give it a try." Not knowing at all, one, how much time I was going to end up putting into it, but then how much I would enjoy sharing information, not just one-on-one with a patient, but one on a hundred, one on a thousand. Because it could be seen not just by tons of people, obviously, but at different points in time. They didn't have to watch it live. They could see it later. And so many people commented over the years and it ballooned into this thing because so many people went to see a doctor and they tell me, "I had no idea what he said. I didn't understand a word he said or why. That's the only option I had. And so your articles and your videos, or your podcasts like I used to do back then were so helpful."
And it sort of ballooned. You get this positive feedback and then you network with other physicians, in my world, athletic trainers and physical therapists. And it just became this community. And it just took off. It started as a way to grow that sports medicine program, but it very quickly peeled away from that a little bit and it turned into writing a regular newspaper column for the Charleston newspaper. It turned into very, very frequent TV interviews and radio interviews down here. And just so many different opportunities. Honestly, it took on a life of its own and became something that was taking me 20, 30 plus sometimes more hours a week and then I had to sort of navigate those challenges.
But I don't regret it for a minute. I feel proud that I was sort of on the leading edge of that. I will say that I've backed off a little bit. Not completely, we'll talk about that, but there are people that have taken that baton and run. But it was really, really cool that I got into it having literally no idea what I was getting myself into. But it turned into something that quite honestly, not only changed my career, but it changed my life.
John: Yeah. That's awesome. And I remember back in that episode, because I was listening back to it a little while ago, I think you had said at that point you had already done a thousand media presentations or jobs. I guess we're talking about vignettes and when people interview you or do something like that, right?
Dr. David Geier: Yeah. Well, it's probably over 3,500 now because now I'm the chief medical expert for two TV stations here. And I'm on every day, sometimes three, four times a day in recorded segments. But back then when it was one off things reporters would reach out to me. It was a lot of time. I don't regret it. I love communicating and doing interviews in Spokane, Washington and all these places. A lot of things I never would've guessed came of it. It's great. It still is great.
John: One of the questions I always get is, as a quote, whatever it is, as a dermatologist, as an orthopedist, can I really do that kind of thing? And I guess my question to you is, I don't think you're just talking about ortho, you're the resource for at least some of these places just for anything medical. Is that right?
Dr. David Geier: I don't get as much medical, even though I do get more of that now. And we're going to talk about my practice pivot here in a little bit. But I do get a little bit because people see me on TV and as my role as chief medical expert for those two TV stations, I'm talking about all kinds of medical topics. I probably do get more that way. But even online, I still focus primarily on orthopedics and sports medicine. But you're right, and I've heard this from other physicians that are active in social media. Once people become comfortable with you, whether it's watching your videos or reading your articles, it's just natural for them to say, "Hey, by the way, I've got X problem or X condition." And it does sometimes get away from what you do.
I've always found that interesting, that people reach out to physicians they don't even know. But they do know them in a way because they've spent time listening to a podcast, watching their videos, reading their articles. And I think there's something really valuable about that. I hear so many physicians talk about how much time they're going to put into it. But part of the reason so many of us went into medicine is to help people. This is just a different way to do that. It's not that one's better than the other. It's just a different way to reach people and help people.
John: Are you to the point now where so many people are reaching out to you or you're already committed to do these regular interviews or a short speech or something? Are you still promoting yourself in newer ways? Are you doing anything on social media or is that going in another direction? How's that going?
Dr. David Geier: No, that's a great question. Because I'm the king of "Try this, see if it works. If it works, keep doing it. If it doesn't work, bail." There's a whole lot of things that I have done for a little while and stopped. But then there's a lot of things I kept up with. One of my podcasts, the Dr. David Geier show, I think I got to like 420 episodes. Got it up to right close to COVID. And then I just decided "Hey, let's move on."
YouTube has been consistent for me since 2015 or something. I've got close to 100,000 followers. I've been very consistent there. But I've dabbled in a lot of things. I tried TikTok videos for a little while. I tried YouTube shorts and Instagram reels. I might go back to that at some point. It was a lot of work for something I wasn't feeling like I was getting that much out of.
I did try a podcast about a year and a half, two years ago. That was a live show that then I turned into a podcast. And that was a lot of fun to do, especially live. But it was a lot of work and I wasn't feeling like I was getting that. That's when I was trying to promote my new practice mode and it wasn't helping me there. So I sort of scaled that back. I might go back to that because I really like the live interaction that you can do now with live streaming and things.
There's a lot of different things that I've tried, but right now it's focusing YouTube mostly and then the traditional media that I do. I used to put on social media as well, but there gets to a point where if you create so much content, you sort of overwhelm viewers, overwhelm readers. So, I'm sort of cognizant of that too. And I'm on TV so much here locally that if I put that out on Twitter every day or x every day, I drive everybody crazy.
John: Now I know my listeners are going to have these questions, so I'm going to substitute for them. On any of the YouTube stuff, that's kind of your main thing now in terms of connecting with patients and clients and people in general teaching. Are you doing any monetization of YouTube, passive or active or anything like that?
Dr. David Geier: I do. And I will say I did resist that for a long time. I had a couple videos on my YouTube channel early, but I really started in earnest really going at it weekly, sometimes more than weekly in 2015. And I probably didn't start monetizing it until maybe 2019, 2020, somewhere in there. And I thought long and hard about it. I grew my channel to 20,000 or 30,000 before I started monetizing it.
And it wasn't as much to make money. I'm not going to lie. I don't get that much from it when you hear these other people that are making tens of thousand a month or more. It is nothing like that. But it was a way, as much as anything, just helped me. I put way more in expenses. You can't see, but I've got a whole TV studio here in this office with four key lights. I've got a hair light, I've got a pre-amp, a DSLR camera, a boom mic. All that stuff costs money. I have a virtual assistant that helps me edit the videos and put captions. All that stuff just costs money.
The amount I get from YouTube every month doesn't come close to covering any of that but it helps a little bit. And honestly, just for a short five second ad at the beginning of videos, even though it's not specific medical advice and I'm very specific about that in my YouTube videos, essentially they are getting advice in the sense, they're getting information about what an injury is. That's a little honestly better than just reading a WebMD article or Mayo Clinic article. I don't feel that bad about it. But again, I went a long time saying, "You know what? I don't want to do that. That's how I justified it. I'm not saying I'm right. That was just my thought process.
John: No, I think it makes sense. Let me ask you then, I shift gears to the speaking, because you're being interviewed, you're doing presentations and so forth. Do you do any paid speaking?
Dr. David Geier: I do keynote speaking. I do have a burnout talk, a physician burnout talk because I've been through that myself. But I don't do any like Pfizer. Well, Pfizer wouldn't be something for orthopedics. But Arthrex sends you out to talk about a surgical technique and implants and stuff. I don't do any of that kind of paid speaking, but I do keynote speeches on burnout or leadership or personal excellence. I'll get a few thousand dollars in travel paid for by some of those.
I don't do a lot of that. I was actually doing a lot right before COVID and then obviously COVID killed the speaking industry. That's starting to open back up but I do it more if it's the right opportunity, not necessarily to make money. Because it's hard to leave your practice and leave your family. Really, if it's a good opportunity with a good audience and an audience that would be receptive, especially to the burnout message, that's why I do it. The fee is more than anything just to sort of reimburse me for the cost and time of leaving my family and practice.
John: Well, you mentioned the burnout and talking about burnout. That kind of intrigued me. Now, I don't remember if your burnout occurred before we spoke last time or since, but tell me just a little bit about that and what do you talk about and what are you noticing now? Because this has been a big issue even before the pandemic. I think it exploded during the pandemic. I'd just like to get your perspective on that.
Dr. David Geier: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it was way before we did our podcast. This was back at 2012, 2013. Toward the end of my eight years at that academic medical center. I was working really hard at just trying to build a sports medicine program and run it. Doing all of that work I was talking about social media wise as well sort of on top of that. And then as a lot of us in medicine know, there were a lot of changes going on back then that weren't necessarily what I wanted as a physician. I had a stable OR team and we got this new OR manager that made all the surgeons lives hell. And there was just a lot going on.
So, it was external change compounded with me just running myself into the ground. And I hit this situation where I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating well, I wasn't spending time with my kids and I was just miserable. I was getting angry all the time and I couldn't really figure out why.
And I had that awful OR nurse manager. I won't tell the whole story, but sort of opened my eyes that I was the problem. Now to be fair, she was a lot of the problem and she ended up getting fired. But I realized that there was some truth to that, that I was responsible for a lot of this stuff that happened.
And so, I had to make changes to myself that took about 18 months, committing to getting more sleep and committing to saying "no" to a lot of things and committing to delegating stuff that I shouldn't be doing, committing to spending time with my kids no matter what. If that meant not attending faculty meetings so I could go to my kids' soccer game, so be it.
I ended up actually leaving that academic institution about a year later. But it took me a long time to get through that burnout. And to your point, we are seeing more and more even unrelated to COVID. As you are well aware, this started even before COVID. All the electronic medical records changes, the hospital ownership of practice and being pushed to see more patients in less time and having to do more and more of the tasks ourselves as physicians. That to be fair, anybody could do, you don't necessarily need a physician, but that's all time that's on physicians keeping them away from their families and away from hobbies and things.
So it is getting worse, but fortunately there is more of an attention on this now. Not just the physicians and them making their own changes, but I do get the sense that hospitals and these institutions care and are trying to make changes. But it's hard. You got bottom line financial interests and then you've got physician well-being interests and where that balance is, it's not going to be the same at any institution, but that's going to play a large role in what medicine looks like over the next 10 years. I really believe that may drive if it continues the way it's going people out of medicine or like an integrative practice, cash-based practice. Or we're going to get a handle on this and we're going to figure out ways to help physicians be quality physicians, but also have healthy lives.
John: Well, I'm kind of encouraged a little bit that you've noticed at least some more recognition of this. When I've asked other colleagues in the past, like, "Okay, tell me a couple of the hospitals that you're familiar with that have now taken burnout seriously." And it's like a big zero or they started a program and it was trying to teach resilience. And it's like, "Well, I'm already working 18 hours a day. Why being more resilient? How's that going to help?" Those kinds of things.
Dr. David Geier: Yeah. And every institution is different. There's no question. I have absolutely heard what you're talking about when I give speeches and these people come up to me and they're like, God, I left medicine because I experienced the exact. I tell my story and they're like, "I know exactly what you're feeling." And I hear from medical students saying, "I'm really worried this is going to happen to me."
But I do see evidence that it's starting to change. I hear of hospital systems where they spend the money to get scribes for physicians just to help them get out the door before it's dark outside. And there's a variety of different things. A lot more meet and greets. Because I think relationship between physicians, connections and communities and getting to know each other is so important. And I see a lot of hospital systems really working on that. And I think that's a good thing. There are some trying, but as you're saying, yes, there's a long, long way to go.
John: When you're asked to speak on that topic, is it usually a group of doctors? Is it usually a residency? Is it a hospital? What's your experience?
Dr. David Geier: I've never gotten asked by a residency. That's actually really good. It tends to be either medical organization. I did MGMA, the practice managers group not that long ago, which was really good because they're the ones that now will go and implement some of the suggestions I talked about. But a lot of times it's more medical societies. It'll be the Society of Neurology. I'm not going to say specific ones. Or it'll be a county medical society in some big city that can bring me in.
I like it when there's some way to access medical students and residents, but unfortunately, I don't get that opportunity much. But when I have had that opportunity, I think that's where it's really important because if you can sort of go into medicine saying, "Hey, I'm going to prioritize my wellbeing. I'm still going to take good care of patients, but I know what potentially can happen if I run myself into the ground and allow myself to be run into the ground. I think that that's better.
I think the challenge comes to those of us that have been in medicine for years and years or decades, and we've always done things a certain way and now we're being forced to change. I'm hoping the medical students that didn't have rigid patterns already, maybe they'll be able to adjust to the new world of medicine. And it is very new compared to what you and I probably trained under. I really hope the medical students is a different battle for them than what the people that started a while ago really dealt with.
John: Yeah, I hope so too. We're going to segue into what you're doing now a little bit more, what's different now about your practice and so forth. But I want to mention your website because I hate to wait till the end in case someone doesn't listen to the end. It's drdavidgeier.com.
Dr. David Geier: Yeah, drdavid. And then nobody gets the spelling wrong, but I own every domain name of any possible way you can misspell it so you'll end up on it. Dr. David Geier. D-R D-A-V-I-D G-E-I-E-R is how I spell it. And then all the social media is that same handle @drdavidgeier. It doesn't matter what the platform is, but yeah, I appreciate that.
John: Yeah. And if somebody wants to get motivated to do something, I'd say just look you up on YouTube and find you a channel, because it just shows you what you can do if you just spend a little time to organize and get in front of the camera.
Dr. David Geier: And it isn't hard. So many people are like "I could never speak on camera. I could never write." Just start. If you read my first articles, they were horrendous. My first few newspaper columns were God awful. Really bad. My first few YouTube videos, really, really bad. Not just from a tech standpoint, but I was terrible. But it's reps. I bet and this is no criticism of you, but I bet your first few podcasts are nothing like they are now.
John: Yeah.
Dr. David Geier: Just start and you don't have to do every day of the week, literally once a week. And you batch them, you do four at a time and you get a month's worth done all at once. Just start. I really believe, maybe not everybody, but so many physicians, once you start, you may find you actually like it and like communicating in this sort of online world. I think it's really gratifying.
John: Yeah, I think if you listen to my first few podcasts that would be kind of hard to listen to. But we learn over time and it becomes just natural after a while. And you'd be surprised how much you think you don't have anything to say, but it's really not if you learn certain tricks and how to brainstorm in that. You could probably sit down and come up with 20 topics yourself right now and sit down in front of a camera and do it just because people are asking you questions and you can answer those questions. And that's basically what we're doing.
Dr. David Geier: That absolutely is one of the best brainstorming ideas you can have. Literally keep a sheet of paper somewhere or a notebook when people ask you questions. Especially if you hear the same question two or three times in clinic, do a video or do an article on that because I promise people are Google searching for that or searching on YouTube for that. And that's easily the best source of content you could ever have is just what are your patients asking you.
John: Yeah, absolutely. Great advice. Now tell us what you're doing now that's different from what you started doing the first I don't know 10 years or so because it does have some new aspects to it. I'm really anxious to hear about that and I'll probably have to pick your brain about some clinical.
Dr. David Geier: I practiced for 16 years as what I call a traditional orthopedic surgeon. You have an orthopedic injury, very often you fix it surgically, put it back together, that kind of thing. And loved it. Sports medicine, it's mostly arthroscopic surgery. But just over two years ago I pivoted to basically get away from surgery into what I call anti-aging orthopedics. I joined a practice where I was actually a patient myself that was integrative medical practice. They do a lot of hormone replacement, a lot of things, preventative medicine and you just feel better, obviously live longer, but feel better as you live longer.
Actually, my doctor actually helped me through that burnout phase. I realized I was low in a bunch of different health markers, so we've really worked to get that fixed. But then I realized, "Man, there's a lot of things out here that are available that you just can't use in traditional medicine and traditional orthopedics because it's either considered experimental by the FDA or it is approved by the FDA, but you have to use it off-label."
And so, she talked to me and said, "Hey, would you like to come on as bone and joint health?" She and another doctor do, again, integrative medicine. It's sort of all different aspects of medicine, but for a lot of those patients who have arthritis, they have other joint pain and things like that.
And so, I was a little nervous about leaving traditional medicine and insurance-based medicine and surgery but I made the leap maybe a little early, but I don't regret it now. But getting away from surgery and trying to help people avoid surgery with some of these anti-aging and regenerative medicine techniques, we were talking about this before we started, I spent a year studying for my anti-aging and regenerative medicine boards. I had to take a written exam, do an oral exam, which was just awful because I don't remember cardiovascular medicine and all.
I had to learn all these different types of medicine all over again but it was well worth it. At least at the time I got that certification in September of last year 2022. I was only the second orthopedic surgeon in the country to have that board certification.
But it's been great. 40-ish percent of my patients fly in or travel in to see me here in Charleston, South Carolina. It's great. It's a big shift. I miss surgery a little bit, but I realize not that much. And I'm really grateful because I can hopefully help a decent percentage of people not need that surgery. Not just now, but hopefully down the road. So, it was a big change and that's been really the last two, two and a half years of my life.
John: Now the work that you're doing in that regard, does it still require a medical license? Are you doing injections? Are you doing other things like that?
Dr. David Geier: Yeah. No, it's all still a medical license. Now three board certifications. When people think of regenerative medicine, people typically think of stem cells. I don't really do stem cells, even though there are some orthopedic surgeons that do it. There's some things about stem cells that I think make it not terribly effective as a treatment here in the US at least for orthopedics.
But some of the things that we do, some non-physicians do osteopaths and things like that, they don't tend, at least as far as orthopedic conditions, really know what they're treating. Not all, but a lot. They just have their one preferred treatment. They use it over and over and over with people, and I'm not a big fan of that. But yeah, it's all very, very well researched. It's not just, "Hey, let's just try this and see if it works." It involves things like peptides and some regenerative treatments, maybe like exosomes or PRP modalities.
We have hyperbaric oxygen chambers in our practice. We have shockwave and a number of other different things, off-label medications to stop the damage in arthritis and things like that. And a lot of combination treatments. Not just one thing over and over, but different things based on the problems and the specific nature of the patient.
We have our own pharmacy that's regulated by the state pharmacy board and we use FDA approved compounding pharmacies for the raw ingredients that our pharmacy uses and things like that. I think it's great. I'm glad I didn't have to set it up. The doctor that started the practice started it 20 years ago, and so it's a well-oiled machine now. But there's a lot to it. I'm very fortunate that I was invited to be a part of it, but I do think that that's largely where we'll see if orthopedics heads there, but I think all of medicine or at least a lot of it is headed that way.
And the burnout thing was really interesting because so many of the integrative medicine physicians on meeting, that's largely why they left their insurance-based practices is burnout type issues. I'm curious to see if burnout drives a huge growth in integrative medicine, cash-based medicine, preventative medicine. I don't know. We'll see. That wasn't really the reason I did it, but that's what I'm hearing from other physicians that are getting into that world.
John: Yeah, it sounds like a little bit like the people I've talked to that have gone into functional medicine. And so, there's also some other things like that. It's where they can still be a physician and some of those things, truly, they're more of a consultant, but they get to use that physician brain and help clients, help patients.
I think a lot of the approaches that are being discovered and applied that aren't surgical and aren't traditional medicine have beneficial effects that we don't know and understand fully. And that means to me that they're going to be working for things that those other areas just didn't ever have a solution for, at least to date.
Dr. David Geier: It's exciting. Medicine, at least what is going on in the labs, it's progressing very quickly. The challenge a lot of times is that a lot of times the research is coming along faster than the regulatory bodies can examine that evidence. And so, there's a lot of things that seem to work very well that the FDA through no fault of their own just hasn't gotten around to sort of dealing with. And so, you hear the patients, the general public say, "Hey, we're so far behind Europe."
And it's good and bad in some ways. Obviously you want to make everything safe for people, but it is also leading to this growth of the integrative and functional medicine physicians who I really do think generally try to keep an eye on the research and don't push the envelope too far. But unfortunately, I think then you do have people that, "Hey, I can make cash for this and make a lot of money, maybe non-physicians that do push it too far." And so, it is really an interesting space. It'll really be interesting to see how this plays out over the next decade or so.
John: Yeah, I'm interested to see what happens and I'm going to keep looking for guests to come on and tell me more about it in the future. That was a good introduction for us. Do you have a few more minutes? I have one more thing I want to ask you about.
Dr. David Geier: Yeah, absolutely.
John: Because something I read, or maybe it was our conversation, you mentioned AI. I don't know too many physicians have integrated even into writing an article, much less anything else. But I think you have used certain types of AI tools for some of what you do.
Dr. David Geier: Yeah, I actually played around with the tool. I was sort of an early adopter and there's a million AI tools, everybody knows Chat GPT, but of one that I have no relationship other than I pay money to use it. And there's probably better ones now, but I used one called Copy.ai. And to be fair, I haven't gone so far as to say, "All right, I'm going to let it write a video script for me, or I'm going to let it write a blog post." I know they can do that. I've tried it out just to see what it creates.
Where I've found AI to be helpful, we were talking, this is going to sound completely cheesy, but it works. You were talking about great ways to brainstorm and we were talking about writing down questions patients ask, but literally you can search, you can make, depending on how you organize the tool and it's search function and how you set it up, "Give me 10 topic ideas for blog posts about pseudogout" or something like that that'll spit out common symptoms. Things that you honestly could do. But you could brainstorm 50 topics in a heartbeat.
I do know physicians, I was for a short period of time in this mentorship of cash-based physicians in various parts of the country and various specialties. And the guy that ran it was a big proponent of using AI and some of the people in that group tried it, and they write all of their blog posts using AI and they'll just change grammar words and things like that.
It is that good when you remember that you're writing in Layman's terms. You do not want to write, I would argue in very, very detailed scientific terms, because the average person will read your blog post and have no idea what you're talking about. And AI does a pretty good job of translating it into English, but you have to be using these tools. And that's why I don't know that Chat GPT, the times I tried it was terribly helpful. But Copy.ai and I know there's others, it can generate a bullet point, like an outline for a topic, and then within each bullet point a few points within that and you cross out the ones you don't want and you rearrange the ones and then it'll generate a script or a blog post and then you can edit that. And it's surprisingly good.
But at the end of the day, you as a physician sort of need to keep an eye on it, read it, make sure that it's technically right, and that it makes sense to the reader or viewer or listener. But it is amazing what's out there. I'm not going to say that it replaces us, but it can do a lot of the heavy lifting. And when we're talking about creating content, I've been amazed. I don't know how I'll necessarily use AI going into my actual practice, but at least from a every now and then I need to come up with something, yeah, I think it can be helpful.
John: Yeah. I think for people that are thinking about a blog, a podcast, an online course, anything that requires creating content, particularly if it's repetitive. I haven't had a lot of experience with it, but I know that one of my team sometimes uses. I can tell it's an AI thing because I read it and I go, "Okay." But all I do is I just chop up the sentences and I put it in my own exactly voice and that saved me 80, 90% of the time. It's another "no excuse" for not doing this stuff. You don't have the time? It'll take you two minutes to just edit this thing.
Dr. David Geier: Yeah. It really is impressive. You could have it write a 500 word article and you can tell because it may repeat a point, maybe different words, but it's basically saying the same thing or it seems out of order because I don't know how well it thinks through a human train of thought, but it's surprisingly good. If you said "Generate a 500 word blog post on pseudogout", literally 10 seconds and there it is. And then you just go behind it. I don't want to necessarily encourage you to defer the whole content creation to AI, but it is a good start. If you've got writer's block and you are like, "What am I going to write about?" that's another way to at least get started.
John: Yeah. I think we're just scratching the surface. I heard something on the radio or somewhere where somebody told some type of AI to write a 500 page screenplay and five minutes later they had it. And they said it wasn't bad. It was a really good screenplay. Okay, this is crazy.
Dr. David Geier: Well, I think it'll be interesting, and I am not an expert on EMRs electronic medical records at all, but I do wonder when AI is starting to be used for EMRs. I think there's a lot of potential with that in terms of improving our lives. Obviously the information has got to be accurate and all that, but I think there is potential that AI could be really useful. And I say that as an outsider to these systems, but I actually think it could be very helpful, just what I've seen in the social media content world. I've got to believe there's a way to make it useful for physicians in just documenting clinic visits and hospital visits and things like that.
John: Yeah. I hadn't thought about it, but now that you mention it, it just seems like with the right tweaks and the right protections, it could be one of the solutions to this dreadful EMR that we have to work on.
Dr. David Geier: And there's money to be made in it, which makes me think it's already being worked on. Because everybody knows the EMR issue is a huge issue. And the EMR companies, there's a lot of money for them to be made if people pivot to them because it's easy to use. So, it's coming for sure.
John: Okay. Just tell us again how to get in touch with you, how to follow you, the best places.
Dr. David Geier: Yeah. The best place is my website, drdavidgeier.com. There's a contact form I'd love to hear from you if you are listening to this podcast. Even if it's just to say, "Hey, I want to start doing content." I'd love to just know other people that are content providers. So reach out. I get comments and questions from all over the world, so I love interacting.
The links to my social media are on my website, but everywhere, every platform, it's drdavidgeier, whether that's X, which I actually love consuming. I don't post it that much there, but I love consuming. YouTube I'm obviously on. Instagram and Facebook, definitely reach out. I love, love, love, love to meet physicians that are starting to get into podcasting and video creation. I just love it. I wish we could all do it, quite honestly.
John: Hey, I really appreciate the comments today and everything you've shared with us. And with that, I'll just thank you and say goodbye.
Dr. David Geier: Oh, absolutely. I really, really enjoyed it and I hope we can do it in another four or five years. I'll be curious where medicine is and where you and I are at that point.
John: All right. Bye-bye.
Dr. David Geier: Take care.
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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 321
How to Market Your Surgical and Nonsurgical Careers Like a Pro
- Interview with Dr. David Geier
John: Today's guest first appeared on the podcast here in August of 2018. That was episode 49. That was a long time ago, and he was quite a groundbreaker then in terms of he was using social media, he had a podcast. He was using other platforms basically to market himself and his business and his practice. But since then, he has continued to do new things, break new ground and even sort of shifted his clinical activity a little bit. I definitely wanted to get today's guest back to the podcast. So with that, Dr. David Geier, welcome to the podcast.
Dr. David Geier: Oh, thanks for having me. I cannot believe it's been that long. I did remember that it was before COVID, but I just did not remember it being five years ago. That's scary how quickly time seems to pass.
John: Well, usually when people say that, it's because they're so busy, that it just goes by like that.
Dr. David Geier: Yeah, that's a good point. Absolutely.
John: Because I know you've been into doing a lot of different things. It's going to be great to hear about it. I don't want to reiterate everything that we said at the last, but give us a little thumbnail of back when you were in practice, why you jumped into social media and why your practice was really a little different from most other orthopedists in terms of connecting with patients. And then we'll get into the more recent stuff.
Dr. David Geier: Well, it was interesting way back in 2008 or so, I was running a sports medicine program at an academic medical center here in Charleston. And anybody that's worked in academics knows I'm trying to build a sports medicine program and I'm trying to work with marketing to get more exposure. We need dollars to get team relationships and various components to help us grow. But in academics, you have to go through all these different layers to then a lot of times get a "no."
But the person that worked that was spearheading musculoskeletal health and the musculoskeletal program at that program talked to me and said, "Hey I think you'd be great at social media." And this is back when really Twitter and Facebook were just starting. And she's like, "You should do a website and you should do Twitter and Facebook." And I had no idea like, "What in the world? I'm a surgeon. I cut on people, I stand on the sidelines at football games." And she's like, "No, I think you'd be great. I hear you talk to people about injuries."
And so, sort of clueless to the whole thing, I was like, "All right, I'll give it a try." Not knowing at all, one, how much time I was going to end up putting into it, but then how much I would enjoy sharing information, not just one-on-one with a patient, but one on a hundred, one on a thousand. Because it could be seen not just by tons of people, obviously, but at different points in time. They didn't have to watch it live. They could see it later. And so many people commented over the years and it ballooned into this thing because so many people went to see a doctor and they tell me, "I had no idea what he said. I didn't understand a word he said or why. That's the only option I had. And so your articles and your videos, or your podcasts like I used to do back then were so helpful."
And it sort of ballooned. You get this positive feedback and then you network with other physicians, in my world, athletic trainers and physical therapists. And it just became this community. And it just took off. It started as a way to grow that sports medicine program, but it very quickly peeled away from that a little bit and it turned into writing a regular newspaper column for the Charleston newspaper. It turned into very, very frequent TV interviews and radio interviews down here. And just so many different opportunities. Honestly, it took on a life of its own and became something that was taking me 20, 30 plus sometimes more hours a week and then I had to sort of navigate those challenges.
But I don't regret it for a minute. I feel proud that I was sort of on the leading edge of that. I will say that I've backed off a little bit. Not completely, we'll talk about that, but there are people that have taken that baton and run. But it was really, really cool that I got into it having literally no idea what I was getting myself into. But it turned into something that quite honestly, not only changed my career, but it changed my life.
John: Yeah. That's awesome. And I remember back in that episode, because I was listening back to it a little while ago, I think you had said at that point you had already done a thousand media presentations or jobs. I guess we're talking about vignettes and when people interview you or do something like that, right?
Dr. David Geier: Yeah. Well, it's probably over 3,500 now because now I'm the chief medical expert for two TV stations here. And I'm on every day, sometimes three, four times a day in recorded segments. But back then when it was one off things reporters would reach out to me. It was a lot of time. I don't regret it. I love communicating and doing interviews in Spokane, Washington and all these places. A lot of things I never would've guessed came of it. It's great. It still is great.
John: One of the questions I always get is, as a quote, whatever it is, as a dermatologist, as an orthopedist, can I really do that kind of thing? And I guess my question to you is, I don't think you're just talking about ortho, you're the resource for at least some of these places just for anything medical. Is that right?
Dr. David Geier: I don't get as much medical, even though I do get more of that now. And we're going to talk about my practice pivot here in a little bit. But I do get a little bit because people see me on TV and as my role as chief medical expert for those two TV stations, I'm talking about all kinds of medical topics. I probably do get more that way. But even online, I still focus primarily on orthopedics and sports medicine. But you're right, and I've heard this from other physicians that are active in social media. Once people become comfortable with you, whether it's watching your videos or reading your articles, it's just natural for them to say, "Hey, by the way, I've got X problem or X condition." And it does sometimes get away from what you do.
I've always found that interesting, that people reach out to physicians they don't even know. But they do know them in a way because they've spent time listening to a podcast, watching their videos, reading their articles. And I think there's something really valuable about that. I hear so many physicians talk about how much time they're going to put into it. But part of the reason so many of us went into medicine is to help people. This is just a different way to do that. It's not that one's better than the other. It's just a different way to reach people and help people.
John: Are you to the point now where so many people are reaching out to you or you're already committed to do these regular interviews or a short speech or something? Are you still promoting yourself in newer ways? Are you doing anything on social media or is that going in another direction? How's that going?
Dr. David Geier: No, that's a great question. Because I'm the king of "Try this, see if it works. If it works, keep doing it. If it doesn't work, bail." There's a whole lot of things that I have done for a little while and stopped. But then there's a lot of things I kept up with. One of my podcasts, the Dr. David Geier show, I think I got to like 420 episodes. Got it up to right close to COVID. And then I just decided "Hey, let's move on."
YouTube has been consistent for me since 2015 or something. I've got close to 100,000 followers. I've been very consistent there. But I've dabbled in a lot of things. I tried TikTok videos for a little while. I tried YouTube shorts and Instagram reels. I might go back to that at some point. It was a lot of work for something I wasn't feeling like I was getting that much out of.
I did try a podcast about a year and a half, two years ago. That was a live show that then I turned into a podcast. And that was a lot of fun to do, especially live. But it was a lot of work and I wasn't feeling like I was getting that. That's when I was trying to promote my new practice mode and it wasn't helping me there. So I sort of scaled that back. I might go back to that because I really like the live interaction that you can do now with live streaming and things.
There's a lot of different things that I've tried, but right now it's focusing YouTube mostly and then the traditional media that I do. I used to put on social media as well, but there gets to a point where if you create so much content, you sort of overwhelm viewers, overwhelm readers. So, I'm sort of cognizant of that too. And I'm on TV so much here locally that if I put that out on Twitter every day or x every day, I drive everybody crazy.
John: Now I know my listeners are going to have these questions, so I'm going to substitute for them. On any of the YouTube stuff, that's kind of your main thing now in terms of connecting with patients and clients and people in general teaching. Are you doing any monetization of YouTube, passive or active or anything like that?
Dr. David Geier: I do. And I will say I did resist that for a long time. I had a couple videos on my YouTube channel early, but I really started in earnest really going at it weekly, sometimes more than weekly in 2015. And I probably didn't start monetizing it until maybe 2019, 2020, somewhere in there. And I thought long and hard about it. I grew my channel to 20,000 or 30,000 before I started monetizing it.
And it wasn't as much to make money. I'm not going to lie. I don't get that much from it when you hear these other people that are making tens of thousand a month or more. It is nothing like that. But it was a way, as much as anything, just helped me. I put way more in expenses. You can't see, but I've got a whole TV studio here in this office with four key lights. I've got a hair light, I've got a pre-amp, a DSLR camera, a boom mic. All that stuff costs money. I have a virtual assistant that helps me edit the videos and put captions. All that stuff just costs money.
The amount I get from YouTube every month doesn't come close to covering any of that but it helps a little bit. And honestly, just for a short five second ad at the beginning of videos, even though it's not specific medical advice and I'm very specific about that in my YouTube videos, essentially they are getting advice in the sense, they're getting information about what an injury is. That's a little honestly better than just reading a WebMD article or Mayo Clinic article. I don't feel that bad about it. But again, I went a long time saying, "You know what? I don't want to do that. That's how I justified it. I'm not saying I'm right. That was just my thought process.
John: No, I think it makes sense. Let me ask you then, I shift gears to the speaking, because you're being interviewed, you're doing presentations and so forth. Do you do any paid speaking?
Dr. David Geier: I do keynote speaking. I do have a burnout talk, a physician burnout talk because I've been through that myself. But I don't do any like Pfizer. Well, Pfizer wouldn't be something for orthopedics. But Arthrex sends you out to talk about a surgical technique and implants and stuff. I don't do any of that kind of paid speaking, but I do keynote speeches on burnout or leadership or personal excellence. I'll get a few thousand dollars in travel paid for by some of those.
I don't do a lot of that. I was actually doing a lot right before COVID and then obviously COVID killed the speaking industry. That's starting to open back up but I do it more if it's the right opportunity, not necessarily to make money. Because it's hard to leave your practice and leave your family. Really, if it's a good opportunity with a good audience and an audience that would be receptive, especially to the burnout message, that's why I do it. The fee is more than anything just to sort of reimburse me for the cost and time of leaving my family and practice.
John: Well, you mentioned the burnout and talking about burnout. That kind of intrigued me. Now, I don't remember if your burnout occurred before we spoke last time or since, but tell me just a little bit about that and what do you talk about and what are you noticing now? Because this has been a big issue even before the pandemic. I think it exploded during the pandemic. I'd just like to get your perspective on that.
Dr. David Geier: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it was way before we did our podcast. This was back at 2012, 2013. Toward the end of my eight years at that academic medical center. I was working really hard at just trying to build a sports medicine program and run it. Doing all of that work I was talking about social media wise as well sort of on top of that. And then as a lot of us in medicine know, there were a lot of changes going on back then that weren't necessarily what I wanted as a physician. I had a stable OR team and we got this new OR manager that made all the surgeons lives hell. And there was just a lot going on.
So, it was external change compounded with me just running myself into the ground. And I hit this situation where I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating well, I wasn't spending time with my kids and I was just miserable. I was getting angry all the time and I couldn't really figure out why.
And I had that awful OR nurse manager. I won't tell the whole story, but sort of opened my eyes that I was the problem. Now to be fair, she was a lot of the problem and she ended up getting fired. But I realized that there was some truth to that, that I was responsible for a lot of this stuff that happened.
And so, I had to make changes to myself that took about 18 months, committing to getting more sleep and committing to saying "no" to a lot of things and committing to delegating stuff that I shouldn't be doing, committing to spending time with my kids no matter what. If that meant not attending faculty meetings so I could go to my kids' soccer game, so be it.
I ended up actually leaving that academic institution about a year later. But it took me a long time to get through that burnout. And to your point, we are seeing more and more even unrelated to COVID. As you are well aware, this started even before COVID. All the electronic medical records changes, the hospital ownership of practice and being pushed to see more patients in less time and having to do more and more of the tasks ourselves as physicians. That to be fair, anybody could do, you don't necessarily need a physician, but that's all time that's on physicians keeping them away from their families and away from hobbies and things.
So it is getting worse, but fortunately there is more of an attention on this now. Not just the physicians and them making their own changes, but I do get the sense that hospitals and these institutions care and are trying to make changes. But it's hard. You got bottom line financial interests and then you've got physician well-being interests and where that balance is, it's not going to be the same at any institution, but that's going to play a large role in what medicine looks like over the next 10 years. I really believe that may drive if it continues the way it's going people out of medicine or like an integrative practice, cash-based practice. Or we're going to get a handle on this and we're going to figure out ways to help physicians be quality physicians, but also have healthy lives.
John: Well, I'm kind of encouraged a little bit that you've noticed at least some more recognition of this. When I've asked other colleagues in the past, like, "Okay, tell me a couple of the hospitals that you're familiar with that have now taken burnout seriously." And it's like a big zero or they started a program and it was trying to teach resilience. And it's like, "Well, I'm already working 18 hours a day. Why being more resilient? How's that going to help?" Those kinds of things.
Dr. David Geier: Yeah. And every institution is different. There's no question. I have absolutely heard what you're talking about when I give speeches and these people come up to me and they're like, God, I left medicine because I experienced the exact. I tell my story and they're like, "I know exactly what you're feeling." And I hear from medical students saying, "I'm really worried this is going to happen to me."
But I do see evidence that it's starting to change. I hear of hospital systems where they spend the money to get scribes for physicians just to help them get out the door before it's dark outside. And there's a variety of different things. A lot more meet and greets. Because I think relationship between physicians, connections and communities and getting to know each other is so important. And I see a lot of hospital systems really working on that. And I think that's a good thing. There are some trying, but as you're saying, yes, there's a long, long way to go.
John: When you're asked to speak on that topic, is it usually a group of doctors? Is it usually a residency? Is it a hospital? What's your experience?
Dr. David Geier: I've never gotten asked by a residency. That's actually really good. It tends to be either medical organization. I did MGMA, the practice managers group not that long ago, which was really good because they're the ones that now will go and implement some of the suggestions I talked about. But a lot of times it's more medical societies. It'll be the Society of Neurology. I'm not going to say specific ones. Or it'll be a county medical society in some big city that can bring me in.
I like it when there's some way to access medical students and residents, but unfortunately, I don't get that opportunity much. But when I have had that opportunity, I think that's where it's really important because if you can sort of go into medicine saying, "Hey, I'm going to prioritize my wellbeing. I'm still going to take good care of patients, but I know what potentially can happen if I run myself into the ground and allow myself to be run into the ground. I think that that's better.
I think the challenge comes to those of us that have been in medicine for years and years or decades, and we've always done things a certain way and now we're being forced to change. I'm hoping the medical students that didn't have rigid patterns already, maybe they'll be able to adjust to the new world of medicine. And it is very new compared to what you and I probably trained under. I really hope the medical students is a different battle for them than what the people that started a while ago really dealt with.
John: Yeah, I hope so too. We're going to segue into what you're doing now a little bit more, what's different now about your practice and so forth. But I want to mention your website because I hate to wait till the end in case someone doesn't listen to the end. It's drdavidgeier.com.
Dr. David Geier: Yeah, drdavid. And then nobody gets the spelling wrong, but I own every domain name of any possible way you can misspell it so you'll end up on it. Dr. David Geier. D-R D-A-V-I-D G-E-I-E-R is how I spell it. And then all the social media is that same handle @drdavidgeier. It doesn't matter what the platform is, but yeah, I appreciate that.
John: Yeah. And if somebody wants to get motivated to do something, I'd say just look you up on YouTube and find you a channel, because it just shows you what you can do if you just spend a little time to organize and get in front of the camera.
Dr. David Geier: And it isn't hard. So many people are like "I could never speak on camera. I could never write." Just start. If you read my first articles, they were horrendous. My first few newspaper columns were God awful. Really bad. My first few YouTube videos, really, really bad. Not just from a tech standpoint, but I was terrible. But it's reps. I bet and this is no criticism of you, but I bet your first few podcasts are nothing like they are now.
John: Yeah.
Dr. David Geier: Just start and you don't have to do every day of the week, literally once a week. And you batch them, you do four at a time and you get a month's worth done all at once. Just start. I really believe, maybe not everybody, but so many physicians, once you start, you may find you actually like it and like communicating in this sort of online world. I think it's really gratifying.
John: Yeah, I think if you listen to my first few podcasts that would be kind of hard to listen to. But we learn over time and it becomes just natural after a while. And you'd be surprised how much you think you don't have anything to say, but it's really not if you learn certain tricks and how to brainstorm in that. You could probably sit down and come up with 20 topics yourself right now and sit down in front of a camera and do it just because people are asking you questions and you can answer those questions. And that's basically what we're doing.
Dr. David Geier: That absolutely is one of the best brainstorming ideas you can have. Literally keep a sheet of paper somewhere or a notebook when people ask you questions. Especially if you hear the same question two or three times in clinic, do a video or do an article on that because I promise people are Google searching for that or searching on YouTube for that. And that's easily the best source of content you could ever have is just what are your patients asking you.
John: Yeah, absolutely. Great advice. Now tell us what you're doing now that's different from what you started doing the first I don't know 10 years or so because it does have some new aspects to it. I'm really anxious to hear about that and I'll probably have to pick your brain about some clinical.
Dr. David Geier: I practiced for 16 years as what I call a traditional orthopedic surgeon. You have an orthopedic injury, very often you fix it surgically, put it back together, that kind of thing. And loved it. Sports medicine, it's mostly arthroscopic surgery. But just over two years ago I pivoted to basically get away from surgery into what I call anti-aging orthopedics. I joined a practice where I was actually a patient myself that was integrative medical practice. They do a lot of hormone replacement, a lot of things, preventative medicine and you just feel better, obviously live longer, but feel better as you live longer.
Actually, my doctor actually helped me through that burnout phase. I realized I was low in a bunch of different health markers, so we've really worked to get that fixed. But then I realized, "Man, there's a lot of things out here that are available that you just can't use in traditional medicine and traditional orthopedics because it's either considered experimental by the FDA or it is approved by the FDA, but you have to use it off-label."
And so, she talked to me and said, "Hey, would you like to come on as bone and joint health?" She and another doctor do, again, integrative medicine. It's sort of all different aspects of medicine, but for a lot of those patients who have arthritis, they have other joint pain and things like that.
And so, I was a little nervous about leaving traditional medicine and insurance-based medicine and surgery but I made the leap maybe a little early, but I don't regret it now. But getting away from surgery and trying to help people avoid surgery with some of these anti-aging and regenerative medicine techniques, we were talking about this before we started, I spent a year studying for my anti-aging and regenerative medicine boards. I had to take a written exam, do an oral exam, which was just awful because I don't remember cardiovascular medicine and all.
I had to learn all these different types of medicine all over again but it was well worth it. At least at the time I got that certification in September of last year 2022. I was only the second orthopedic surgeon in the country to have that board certification.
But it's been great. 40-ish percent of my patients fly in or travel in to see me here in Charleston, South Carolina. It's great. It's a big shift. I miss surgery a little bit, but I realize not that much. And I'm really grateful because I can hopefully help a decent percentage of people not need that surgery. Not just now, but hopefully down the road. So, it was a big change and that's been really the last two, two and a half years of my life.
John: Now the work that you're doing in that regard, does it still require a medical license? Are you doing injections? Are you doing other things like that?
Dr. David Geier: Yeah. No, it's all still a medical license. Now three board certifications. When people think of regenerative medicine, people typically think of stem cells. I don't really do stem cells, even though there are some orthopedic surgeons that do it. There's some things about stem cells that I think make it not terribly effective as a treatment here in the US at least for orthopedics.
But some of the things that we do, some non-physicians do osteopaths and things like that, they don't tend, at least as far as orthopedic conditions, really know what they're treating. Not all, but a lot. They just have their one preferred treatment. They use it over and over and over with people, and I'm not a big fan of that. But yeah, it's all very, very well researched. It's not just, "Hey, let's just try this and see if it works." It involves things like peptides and some regenerative treatments, maybe like exosomes or PRP modalities.
We have hyperbaric oxygen chambers in our practice. We have shockwave and a number of other different things, off-label medications to stop the damage in arthritis and things like that. And a lot of combination treatments. Not just one thing over and over, but different things based on the problems and the specific nature of the patient.
We have our own pharmacy that's regulated by the state pharmacy board and we use FDA approved compounding pharmacies for the raw ingredients that our pharmacy uses and things like that. I think it's great. I'm glad I didn't have to set it up. The doctor that started the practice started it 20 years ago, and so it's a well-oiled machine now. But there's a lot to it. I'm very fortunate that I was invited to be a part of it, but I do think that that's largely where we'll see if orthopedics heads there, but I think all of medicine or at least a lot of it is headed that way.
And the burnout thing was really interesting because so many of the integrative medicine physicians on meeting, that's largely why they left their insurance-based practices is burnout type issues. I'm curious to see if burnout drives a huge growth in integrative medicine, cash-based medicine, preventative medicine. I don't know. We'll see. That wasn't really the reason I did it, but that's what I'm hearing from other physicians that are getting into that world.
John: Yeah, it sounds like a little bit like the people I've talked to that have gone into functional medicine. And so, there's also some other things like that. It's where they can still be a physician and some of those things, truly, they're more of a consultant, but they get to use that physician brain and help clients, help patients.
I think a lot of the approaches that are being discovered and applied that aren't surgical and aren't traditional medicine have beneficial effects that we don't know and understand fully. And that means to me that they're going to be working for things that those other areas just didn't ever have a solution for, at least to date.
Dr. David Geier: It's exciting. Medicine, at least what is going on in the labs, it's progressing very quickly. The challenge a lot of times is that a lot of times the research is coming along faster than the regulatory bodies can examine that evidence. And so, there's a lot of things that seem to work very well that the FDA through no fault of their own just hasn't gotten around to sort of dealing with. And so, you hear the patients, the general public say, "Hey, we're so far behind Europe."
And it's good and bad in some ways. Obviously you want to make everything safe for people, but it is also leading to this growth of the integrative and functional medicine physicians who I really do think generally try to keep an eye on the research and don't push the envelope too far. But unfortunately, I think then you do have people that, "Hey, I can make cash for this and make a lot of money, maybe non-physicians that do push it too far." And so, it is really an interesting space. It'll really be interesting to see how this plays out over the next decade or so.
John: Yeah, I'm interested to see what happens and I'm going to keep looking for guests to come on and tell me more about it in the future. That was a good introduction for us. Do you have a few more minutes? I have one more thing I want to ask you about.
Dr. David Geier: Yeah, absolutely.
John: Because something I read, or maybe it was our conversation, you mentioned AI. I don't know too many physicians have integrated even into writing an article, much less anything else. But I think you have used certain types of AI tools for some of what you do.
Dr. David Geier: Yeah, I actually played around with the tool. I was sort of an early adopter and there's a million AI tools, everybody knows Chat GPT, but of one that I have no relationship other than I pay money to use it. And there's probably better ones now, but I used one called Copy.ai. And to be fair, I haven't gone so far as to say, "All right, I'm going to let it write a video script for me, or I'm going to let it write a blog post." I know they can do that. I've tried it out just to see what it creates.
Where I've found AI to be helpful, we were talking, this is going to sound completely cheesy, but it works. You were talking about great ways to brainstorm and we were talking about writing down questions patients ask, but literally you can search, you can make, depending on how you organize the tool and it's search function and how you set it up, "Give me 10 topic ideas for blog posts about pseudogout" or something like that that'll spit out common symptoms. Things that you honestly could do. But you could brainstorm 50 topics in a heartbeat.
I do know physicians, I was for a short period of time in this mentorship of cash-based physicians in various parts of the country and various specialties. And the guy that ran it was a big proponent of using AI and some of the people in that group tried it, and they write all of their blog posts using AI and they'll just change grammar words and things like that.
It is that good when you remember that you're writing in Layman's terms. You do not want to write, I would argue in very, very detailed scientific terms, because the average person will read your blog post and have no idea what you're talking about. And AI does a pretty good job of translating it into English, but you have to be using these tools. And that's why I don't know that Chat GPT, the times I tried it was terribly helpful. But Copy.ai and I know there's others, it can generate a bullet point, like an outline for a topic, and then within each bullet point a few points within that and you cross out the ones you don't want and you rearrange the ones and then it'll generate a script or a blog post and then you can edit that. And it's surprisingly good.
But at the end of the day, you as a physician sort of need to keep an eye on it, read it, make sure that it's technically right, and that it makes sense to the reader or viewer or listener. But it is amazing what's out there. I'm not going to say that it replaces us, but it can do a lot of the heavy lifting. And when we're talking about creating content, I've been amazed. I don't know how I'll necessarily use AI going into my actual practice, but at least from a every now and then I need to come up with something, yeah, I think it can be helpful.
John: Yeah. I think for people that are thinking about a blog, a podcast, an online course, anything that requires creating content, particularly if it's repetitive. I haven't had a lot of experience with it, but I know that one of my team sometimes uses. I can tell it's an AI thing because I read it and I go, "Okay." But all I do is I just chop up the sentences and I put it in my own exactly voice and that saved me 80, 90% of the time. It's another "no excuse" for not doing this stuff. You don't have the time? It'll take you two minutes to just edit this thing.
Dr. David Geier: Yeah. It really is impressive. You could have it write a 500 word article and you can tell because it may repeat a point, maybe different words, but it's basically saying the same thing or it seems out of order because I don't know how well it thinks through a human train of thought, but it's surprisingly good. If you said "Generate a 500 word blog post on pseudogout", literally 10 seconds and there it is. And then you just go behind it. I don't want to necessarily encourage you to defer the whole content creation to AI, but it is a good start. If you've got writer's block and you are like, "What am I going to write about?" that's another way to at least get started.
John: Yeah. I think we're just scratching the surface. I heard something on the radio or somewhere where somebody told some type of AI to write a 500 page screenplay and five minutes later they had it. And they said it wasn't bad. It was a really good screenplay. Okay, this is crazy.
Dr. David Geier: Well, I think it'll be interesting, and I am not an expert on EMRs electronic medical records at all, but I do wonder when AI is starting to be used for EMRs. I think there's a lot of potential with that in terms of improving our lives. Obviously the information has got to be accurate and all that, but I think there is potential that AI could be really useful. And I say that as an outsider to these systems, but I actually think it could be very helpful, just what I've seen in the social media content world. I've got to believe there's a way to make it useful for physicians in just documenting clinic visits and hospital visits and things like that.
John: Yeah. I hadn't thought about it, but now that you mention it, it just seems like with the right tweaks and the right protections, it could be one of the solutions to this dreadful EMR that we have to work on.
Dr. David Geier: And there's money to be made in it, which makes me think it's already being worked on. Because everybody knows the EMR issue is a huge issue. And the EMR companies, there's a lot of money for them to be made if people pivot to them because it's easy to use. So, it's coming for sure.
John: Okay. Just tell us again how to get in touch with you, how to follow you, the best places.
Dr. David Geier: Yeah. The best place is my website, drdavidgeier.com. There's a contact form I'd love to hear from you if you are listening to this podcast. Even if it's just to say, "Hey, I want to start doing content." I'd love to just know other people that are content providers. So reach out. I get comments and questions from all over the world, so I love interacting.
The links to my social media are on my website, but everywhere, every platform, it's drdavidgeier, whether that's X, which I actually love consuming. I don't post it that much there, but I love consuming. YouTube I'm obviously on. Instagram and Facebook, definitely reach out. I love, love, love, love to meet physicians that are starting to get into podcasting and video creation. I just love it. I wish we could all do it, quite honestly.
John: Hey, I really appreciate the comments today and everything you've shared with us. And with that, I'll just thank you and say goodbye.
Dr. David Geier: Oh, absolutely. I really, really enjoyed it and I hope we can do it in another four or five years. I'll be curious where medicine is and where you and I are at that point.
John: All right. Bye-bye.
Dr. David Geier: Take care.
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