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Zachary Klaassen: Hi. My name is Zach Klaassen, Urologic Oncologist at the Georgia Cancer Center in Augusta, Georgia. I'm joined on UroToday by Dr. Jay Shah, who is a Urologic Oncologist at Stanford University. Jay, thanks so much for joining us today.

Jay Shah: Of course. My pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me, Zach.

Zachary Klaassen: Of course. We just finished up the inaugural GU Oncology Early Thought Leaders Conference put on by PCF and Consens. You were gracious enough to join us and give several awesome talks at the event. And so I just want—for somebody who's busy like yourself, successful, has a family, multiple meetings you go to every year—why was this important for you to come to this meeting?

Jay Shah: Well, yeah. You know, this meeting was different than most of the other meetings that you and I find ourselves at. This was a meeting focused very much on early career colleagues of ours. And unlike most of the other academic meetings, this wasn't just about the latest and greatest advances in science.

Of course, you can't get a group of hard-working, talented doctors together and not have some of that. But this was really focused on helping our younger colleagues become their best selves. How do you actually work on yourself? When I took a look at the agenda that you all were planning, I said, oh, this is perfect. This speaks to my core values.

It doesn't make sense for me to go from California to Philly in the middle of winter, but I'm going to do it because I care about the content, and I care about what I saw as the intention behind the conference.

Zachary Klaassen: That's great. I think we all have our personal highlights, and there may be funny moments. But maybe just share several of yours at the meeting.

Jay Shah: Yeah. One of the things that—the way that my career has evolved over time, I spent a lot of my early career presenting on bladder cancer. And a lot of work I did was on how to take better care of patients who have bladder cancer and then go through the various treatments that we offer them. And as I've progressed in my career, I've gotten much more interested in what a lot of people call the softer skills of communication and leadership, team building.

And I just love—A, I love learning about these things for myself, and I'm passionate about sharing them with other people. And I enjoy watching other emerging leaders learn how to do these things well. Because you can be the smartest person on the planet, you can have fantastic ideas, you can have noble intentions, but if you can't communicate with other people, if you can't get people to see the value of what you're trying to do, then it doesn't actually matter.

All that other stuff is wasted. You're not using yourself to your greatest potential. So for me, walking into this meeting—and usually, I feel like I'm an oddball, like I'm the only one that's thinking about these things. And it was great to see that so much of the meeting was structured exactly around these topics.

So it was cool to—I didn't come just to share what I know, which I did come to do, but I also felt like I learned a ton, sitting in on the small group, the breakout things in the afternoons. It was really nice to be in that element for the day and a half.

Zachary Klaassen: Yeah, that's well said. You gave a brilliant talk on managing burnout. And you and I could talk for 20 minutes on this—we won't—about how to manage burnout. But I think maybe just give a couple of your high-level take-home points from that really powerful talk.

Jay Shah: Yeah, sure. I mean, if I had to leave just a very high-level thought for people—we're all really smart, and we got to where we are because we work hard and we know how to succeed. And the message that I want to leave people with is that if you are in medicine, it is not a sprint. It is a marathon. And just as for anyone out there that's a runner, if you run a marathon, around mile 20, you're going to hit a wall.

Zachary Klaassen: That's right.

Jay Shah: You're not defective when you hit that wall. You didn't screw up. You don't have to see yourself as a failure. What you have to do is, as you're planning that marathon, think, OK, what am I going to do when I get to mile 20? And it's the same idea.

For a lot of my younger colleagues that I coach or that I'm talking to, I always say, don't fool yourself into thinking that you're going to get through 40, 50 years of a hard medical career without difficulties. Just know that they'll be there, and just manage around them and plan for them. And give yourself grace when it happens.

Because I think most of us—and I'm certainly part of it. I include myself in this—most of us go through thinking, I'll be fine, I'll be fine, I'll be fine. And then you wake up and say, oh, my god, what's going on? How did these things happen? Is something wrong with me?

And then we mainly just deal with it by ourselves. Internally, there's a lot of shame and guilt, and none of that needs to be there. It's part of the occupational hazard of going into medicine, is that your resilience will be tested. So start developing strategies that will set you up for success.

Zachary Klaassen: Yeah. And as I look back on that weekend, I think going to those kind of meetings are part of getting the hype up and getting the energy and realizing that there's a lot of people in the room—maybe they're 30 years in their career, maybe they're just starting—we're all battling the same things. And those events are actually very therapeutic for managing, quote, unquote, "burnout." Would you agree?

Jay Shah: Oh, absolutely. It makes you feel a little bit less unusual. Because everyone's hiding their own things. Everyone's thinking, everyone else has it together, I'm the only one that's struggling. And that's so not the case. And these things just—they remind us of our common humanity and the fact that everyone's trying to do their best job.

Zachary Klaassen: That's right. If somebody's out there listening to our conversation, they're thinking about applying to this event next year, what would your one or two messages be to—what they can get out of this event next year?

Jay Shah: Yeah. Like I said at the beginning, this is a different event than going to the AUA or GU ASCO or any other academic conference. I think, come to this event, and bring your most authentic self. Come not to flex, but come to learn. And come to hear what other people are doing and how they're managing the same common struggles that we all have.

Zachary Klaassen: No, that's beautifully said. Anything we didn't touch on you want to mention? Any take-home messages for our listeners?

Jay Shah: No. You know, I'm so thankful that I have had so many people reach out to me after this meeting. It was two weeks ago, three weeks ago? I've probably had 10 different people reach out to me by email or by text. I gave my cell phone number to a bunch of people.

And there have been people from the Royal Marsden in the UK. There have been people who trained in Greece, people from all over the country, even all over the world, who I can tell there's such a deep appetite for this. And for me, it was rejuvenating, as someone who's spending more and more time in this space, to see that, hey, you know what, I'm not just wasting my time.

I'm not wasting other people's time. There's a true, deep need in medicine, particularly at this point, where we are right now, for us to spend more time talking about this. So for anyone that's out there thinking, well, do I want to take a weekend away from work, from family? Do I want to travel or not?

I would say, yes, you should. You should do this, and you should make more time to actively focus on these very important parts of yourself.

Zachary Klaassen: Yep. Brilliantly said. You were fantastic that weekend. You were great again today. Thanks for joining us at the conference and for carving out a little bit of time to discuss it afterwards.

Jay Shah: Always happy to talk about these things, Zach. Thanks for having me.

Zachary Klaassen: Thanks, Jay.