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Ed Gaudet:
Welcome to Risk Never Sleeps where we meet and get to know the people delivering patient care and protecting patient safety. I'm your host, Ed Gaudet.
Ed Gaudet:
Welcome to the Risk Never Sleeps podcast, in which we discuss the people behind the people protecting patient care. I'm Ed Gaudet. I'm the host of our program, and I'm pleased to be joined today by Dr. Sean Kelly. Welcome, Sean.
Sean Kelly:
Thanks, Ed. It's a pleasure to be here, on Risk Never Sleeps.
Ed Gaudet:
Oh, I see you brought your podcast voice with you today. Excellent. Excellent. Well, this will be fun. We've known each other for a few years now. We're going to get personal today, Sean. My listeners want to know about you, the person.
Sean Kelly:
Okay.
Ed Gaudet:
But let's start off with the boring stuff, okay? Tell us about yourself.
Sean Kelly:
You got it. I'm an ER doctor, first and foremost. I grew up in the world of healthcare, wild and wacky and crazy as that is. I have another a number of other interests, I think, that I started in my emergency medicine career, mostly interested in medical education, and that was really fun teaching at the bedside and working with students and residents. And the more I did that, the more I rose up through the ranks, through administration and teaching in the graduate medical education director at our hospital, which was really interesting, sitting on the hospital board and understanding a lot of the issues there with all the different programs and trainees and HR issues and legal issues and all that. But the higher up I went, the less I did actual teaching like many things, and became a little bit antsy there. So through that time my wife was looking at me and saying, Gee, Sean, you're just, you don't seem as happy right now is when you're actually down in the trenches and working and teaching. And I was still working and doing the teaching there, but I was like, you're right, so that led to some changes in the career path, taking some turns that were a bit unexpected, but the background really was teaching and caring for patients was sort of the foundation of it all.
Ed Gaudet:
And then, the ER, that you got right into the.
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, yeah. So that was all when I was practicing in emergency medicine and teaching at the bedside there and working at Beth Israel and Harvard doing the whole teaching and.
Ed Gaudet:
Yeah. And you've been at a number of different places throughout the country.
Sean Kelly:
Yeah.
Ed Gaudet:
Weren't you here in Nashville?
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, actually. So we're in Nashville now doing the podcast and at ViVE and I did train here in Nashville, Vanderbilt, a wonderful place to train, great trauma, great community, great academics, lots of friends from there still, had a great time here in Nashville.
Ed Gaudet:
And out in California. I remember visiting a hospital with you once, and we're getting close now.
Sean Kelly:
.... Alameda County in.
Ed Gaudet:
... General, as we're getting close, you're like, Yeah, this looks familiar.
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, that's in a tough part of town. And as you can imagine, some of the best ER training are in places where.
Ed Gaudet:
I bet, yeah.
Sean Kelly:
It's not always ideal place to walk alone at night. And I was actually doing a rotation out there and I think I might have shared part of this story with you in the past. But when I was doing rotations out there, I was visiting some of my friends who had apartments in San Francisco, and the right side of the dotcom, they were driving BMWs and living in apartments in San Francisco. And I was.
Ed Gaudet:
You weren't?
Sean Kelly:
No, I was staying with them on their couch. And I would take the bus and Bart over to Oakland where I would.
Ed Gaudet:
You get hazard pay for that?
Sean Kelly:
So, no, I wasn't getting paid at all. I was paying to do this because I was in med school.
Ed Gaudet:
That's right.
Sean Kelly:
I was going into debt, which I have just barely paid off recently. But I would go over there on Bart and then wait at the bus stop. And at night, because I was doing night shifts, actually, I didn't want to be the only skinny guy in scrubs waiting at the bus stop and being a target. So I would put sweats on over my scrubs and I would put my Walkman on, although it wasn't plugged in because I wanted to be able to hear and I'd put my hood up and I would bob around and shake like a little rock, like those little crazy. And nobody bothered me. And then I would jump on the bus and make my way up to Highland. But again, great training, great people, a lot of people still there and we work with them now. Absolutely fantastic place, hospital and deliver most excellent care.
Ed Gaudet:
And then Beth Israel, you were there for a while, too.
Sean Kelly:
Yeah. Yeah. So Beth Israel and as I said, was doing teaching and administration there. But that led to, I took a big left turn at that point. I took a trauma transfer call from a friend of mine out in Martha's Vineyard and decided to do some shifts out there. Big supply and demand problem out there for healthcare in the sense that the population would go from 20 or 30,000, over 200,000 in the summers we worked in the E.R. But people would constantly ask us, Can you be our doctor? Can you be our doctor?
Ed Gaudet:
Concierge doctor?
Sean Kelly:
At that point, they didn't care. They just wanted a doctor. And so we said, it doesn't work that way. The system isn't built that way. And this is before concierge medicine was a thing. We talked to the CEO of the hospital. We made some arrangements. We built a business and we started a home care business, which was concierge care. And you got to understand at that time we didn't picture ourselves as concierge doctors because the whole part of, the whole motivation to be an E.R. doctor is you care for everyone, whether it's VIPs or people who have, homeless and other issues. And so we like caring for all, but we did create a concierge business, the business model worked out great. It turns out people love to be cared for in their home. And since we were ER doctors, we could do point-of-care blood tests, we could give medicines, we could do procedures such as incisions and drainage, and lacerations. And so it became really popular. We had families and families, everyone from newborns all the way up to 90 and 100-year-olds care for them in their homes. And then we did lots of pro bono stuff on the side, became a really interesting business.
Ed Gaudet:
You're on the Vineyard. How bad could it be?
Sean Kelly:
Right. As it turns out, everyone else is on the vineyard having fun. And I was running around worrying that people were having medical issues.
Ed Gaudet:
Too much fun.
Sean Kelly:
It was a little, it was a little bit, yeah, there, too much fun. And it was a little bit stressful. But it was a really addicting business model. And part of that model was we had to be in 5 or 6 places at once, at all times. And this was back before technology had come of age, but we were very early adopters of tech. We started to use it as a means to the ends of delivering care, and if someone was wondering if they had a tick bite, that could be Lyme disease on one end of the island while I was seeing someone else potentially having a stroke on the other, getting a picture texted to me over a phone and at that time, it was a BlackBerry or a Palm Trio.
Ed Gaudet:
I remember the Palm Trio.
Sean Kelly:
And so we became early adopters of tech, very critical through the lens of a provider saying, hey, what tech is going to help me in my practice? And that became addicting for me because a lot of our patients actually were private equity and VC folks that were investing in tech. That led me to doing some informal consulting and then more formal consulting, and then I got led over to Imprivata, and that's where we met, where I met you.
Ed Gaudet:
Yeah.
Sean Kelly:
Where you were the Chief Marketing officer.
Ed Gaudet:
Yeah.
Sean Kelly:
And we went on the road and met a lot of customers and started to install technology.
Ed Gaudet:
Very fun. Start a little trouble. Exactly. So I love the vineyard experience, though. It's sort of like Baywatch meets Grey's Anatomy.
Sean Kelly:
Sure. If you want to.
Ed Gaudet:
Categorize your, looking guy, though.
Sean Kelly:
I don't know about that, but.
Ed Gaudet:
I would categorize it that way. Well, let's, let's go, let's talk about Harvard, because I remember being in Harvard Square with you and you introduced me to a fantastic. Can we talk about this? Because I know it's a secret, isn't it?
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, we can talk.
Ed Gaudet:
Okay. Tell the listeners about this experience.
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, I was part of the Harvard Lampoon. It's a wonderful place. They have a castle there in the middle of Harvard Square.
Ed Gaudet:
They do.
Sean Kelly:
A very long and storied history with ... writers and a lot of talented people coming out of there. And despite all that, I was part of it and had a lot of good friends there that have gone on and done wonderful things for the industry elsewhere and privileged to be part of that. And I think at one point, got to introduce you to some of them and show you around a little.
Ed Gaudet:
That was fun. That was fun. Right next to my bookstore, I used to go to the Grolier bookstore or poetry bookstore, so that was a cool experience. How did you get into healthcare in the first place?
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, my dad was a doctor. I was thinking about just about everything else first. I was thinking about being an architect. I like to draw.
Ed Gaudet:
I did not know that.
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I liked just about everything I was doing in college. Extracurricular activities included, but even academically, and eventually made my way back to medicine as one of the ultimate ways to challenge oneself and help others. And ultimately, that mission called to me the most was intellectual. And then being in the E.R. was procedural as well. It's practical. You solve problems. And especially in those days, it was gratifying and able to care for people and make an impact.
Ed Gaudet:
That's cool. What keeps you up at night these days? What do you think about, what are you?
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, I think look, I'm a dad and my wife and I have three awesome kids and I worry about the climate. I worry about the world we're in, the lack of civility and just animosity right now and the stress in our country. That's what keeps me up, honestly. Like, I feel like a lot of us are doing our part, whether it's in healthcare or technology or fighting a bit of an uphill battle just around the bigger forces. So just trying to dig into things I can control and worry a little less about things that are the bigger things or harder to control.
Ed Gaudet:
Well said. It's been a tough couple of years for folks with the pandemic. What are you most proud of recently, maybe over the past year or the last couple?
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, never waste a good crisis. Look, we're, I'm an emergency physician and we're no stranger to stuff the world getting turned up upside down. And in this case, the world actually did. In most cases, to put it this way, I'd like when someone when you tell someone they have cancer, they get hit by a car. Their world is turned upside down because of the massive reach and scope of that. But in other ways, everyone's going through it together. And so I'll tell you that in a strange way, when everyone's going through it together, it's almost I won't say it's easier, but it's easier for everyone to be able to relate to each other. Yeah, it's more empathetic. And as an E.R. doctor, we know the secret is this stuff happens all the time. Well, people get hit by cars all the time, literally and figuratively. We all got hit by a car at once through the pandemic. And it was sort of a slow-motion crash. But we were all going through it together. I don't want to lessen it. I think it was incredibly impactful. I was right there with others going in there to work and worrying about what did this actually mean, how is it going to turn out? But I think we're all proud in the healthcare industry of how we reacted. We got to do things in a couple of weeks that normally projects that would take months or years. And so we're proud of all that aspect of it.
Ed Gaudet:
Cool. If you weren't doing this job, what would you be doing?
Sean Kelly:
I'd be doing a lot of things I'm not good at, so I would speak a bunch of languages. I would be playing music.
Ed Gaudet:
Oh, what kind of music?
Sean Kelly:
I would be playing all sorts of eclectic music. You've been there for a couple.
Ed Gaudet:
.... Musically challenged.
Sean Kelly:
A couple of my karaoke performances, and they are not meant to be.
Ed Gaudet:
This is a rated G Program, so let's not take it there.
Sean Kelly:
It is terrible, but I would be doing some things like that I'm really not good at. I'm jealous of people that can.
Ed Gaudet:
Just takes a little courage and a little maybe sometimes a little liquid courage.
Sean Kelly:
I have a lot of courage and no talent.
Ed Gaudet:
What would you tell your 20-year-old self?
Sean Kelly:
Yeah. Let it go. Relax, right? Just don't worry about it so much.
Ed Gaudet:
I love that question. I get that similar response from people, and I expected a different response like buy Microsoft or.
Sean Kelly:
Buy plastics.
Ed Gaudet:
Buy plastics. Exactly. No, I love that answer, though. It's so thoughtful. Yeah. Okay. So I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you this question because this is the Risk Never Sleeps podcast.
Sean Kelly:
Of course.
Ed Gaudet:
Sean Kelly, Dr. Sean Kelly, what is the most riskiest thing you've ever done in your life?
Sean Kelly:
Being back here in Nashville reminded me. We used to go up, there's a lake nearby and there's like a gorge part of it, and we used to just jump off of it. So we would, and so my friend that was a fellow E.R. resident told me about it. And you got to understand the context of this is we were doing a day and a half long shifts. And even in the trauma ward where we would constantly be laughing at people that would come in and the silly, incredibly silly things they would do. And think about the joke of, hey, y'all, watch this, right? What's his last words? Hey, y'all, watch this, what's his friend's last words? I can do that. And all amazing, risky, and stupid things that people do. And so despite talking about that all day and being doctors that had to care for the aftermath of that, I heard that you could jump off a cliff into a lake. We got there. I opened the door, ran out, and sprinted right off the cliff and jumped into the water, didn't even look for it, didn't even look at it. Ended up great and it was super fun. And we did it again and again.
Ed Gaudet:
How far down was this?
Sean Kelly:
I don't know, 40, 60ft like it was. But you had no idea.
Ed Gaudet:
It could have been three.
Sean Kelly:
We had no idea. We were just told that people do.
Ed Gaudet:
Just run. Just run and jump.
Sean Kelly:
Well, I wasn't told that, but that's what we did. So I think that was too risky. And I would go back and tell my 20-year-old self not to do that.
Ed Gaudet:
Don't do that. Don't do that.
Sean Kelly:
Yeah, don't worry about things, but don't do that.
Ed Gaudet:
Okay, toughest lesson in life?
Sean Kelly:
Toughest lesson in life. I don't know. I think it's the dependency on other people. For me, I'm an extrovert, incredibly dependent on other people for getting energy and happiness. But you can't control all that. You can't make other people do things. So I guess the toughest lesson in life is to learn to work with what other people are and how they think. And if you're someone who's dependent on that, then you need to learn to live with the consequences of that.
Ed Gaudet:
You need to go back and tell your 20-year-old self to relax.
Sean Kelly:
Yep.
Ed Gaudet:
Excellent. All right, any last comments or insight for our listeners today?
Sean Kelly:
No, thanks a bunch, Ed, I appreciate you're inviting me in.
Ed Gaudet:
Good to see you, Sean.
Sean Kelly:
Thanks, man.
Ed Gaudet:
And thanks, everybody. And for those folks on the front lines protecting our patients, we salute you. And this is a Risk Never Sleeps Podcast.
Ed Gaudet:
Thanks for listening to Risk Never Sleeps. For the show notes, resources, and more information and how to transform the protection of patient safety, visit us at Censinet.com. That's C E N S I N E T.com. I'm your host, Ed Gaudet, and until next time, stay vigilant because Risk Never Sleeps.
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