It, Where and How with Dr. Katrina Armstrong

Katrina Armstrong, MD, is the Jackson Professor of Clinical medicine at Harvard Medical School, Chair of the Department of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief of the Massachusetts General Hospital. She is an internationally recognized investigator in medical decision making and quality of care in cancer prevention and outcomes. An award-winning teacher and a practicing primary care physician, Dr. Armstrong has served on multiple advisory panels for academic and federal organizations and has been elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the Institute of Medicine. Prior to coming to Mass General, Dr. Armstrong was the Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine, Associate Director of the Abramson Cancer Center, and Co-Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania. It, where and how: How do these three words intersect? Today, Dr. Katrina Armstrong shares her life story and experiences as she found her passion, defined the direction of her career, and reached out to mentors every step of the way. She talks about finding our “it”: the thing that lights us up. Something that gets us so excited that we feel like sharing it with everyone--even our taxi driver! And then using that to define "where" we want to go in our careers, a decision that each one of us has to take individually. Now we need to turn to our mentors for guidance. They will share the "how": the tools and experience we need to move towards our "where" and fulfill our "it"! Pearls of Wisdom: 1. The key to balance is knowing we aren’t going to be perfect at it. There is magic in accepting our limitations. Because when we learn how to forgive ourselves for being imperfect, it becomes infinitely easier to forgive those around us too. 2. The goal of the patient encounter is to find some way to connect with that patient in the first five minutes. We need to remember that they are often terrified of their illnesses, of being in the hospital it’s up to us to ease that for them as soon as we meet them. 3. You know you’ve found your “it” when you feel like you have to share it with everyone: Even your taxi driver. That’s the litmus test for finding your true passion in medicine. 4. Mentees should set the ‘where’ and mentors should set the ‘how’. Mentors help us figure out how to get to where we want to go. But where we want to go depends entirely on us.