From Residency to Script Writing for Grey’s Anatomy & The Resident

This week we continue to delve into the unique journeys of medical professionals

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Welcome to this week’s episode of promising young Surgeon. This week we continue to delve into the unique journeys of medical professionals and beyond with doctor Anthony Chin-Quee. He joins us to discuss his truly incredible and varied career. He’s an otolaryngologist turned television writer and esteemed memoir author. There’s so much we want to cover today, so we’ll dive right in.

Anthony Chin-Quee’s memoir, I can’t save you, was released recently

Allow me to introduce our guest. Anthony Chin-Quee is an otolaryngologist with degrees from Harvard University and Emory University School of Medicine. He has done multiple performances for the Moth, where he’s won their local story slam, placed as a runner up in the Detroit grand slam, and performed on their NYC, Chicago, and London main stages. He was a medical consultant for ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy and a member of the writing staff for Fox’s the Resident for two seasons, distilling complex medical and social issues into palatable and understandable mainstream storylines. His memoir, I can’t save you, is a candid account of the ways in which medical residency training shattered the mind of an empathetic, well intentioned doctor and the arduous task of piecing it back together again through painful and overdue self discovery. This was released in April 2023 to huge critical acclaim. Anthony currently resides in England with his wife and two children. He loves reading young adult fiction, started fostering kittens in the pandemic, and that’s what led to his relatively late in life realization that he is a cat person. Thanks so much for joining us today, Anthony. It’s great to have you here.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Yeah, great to be here. Thanks. It’s so weird hearing my life spelled, out for me like that. I feel so important. It’s very fancy. I don’t really feel like that on a day to day basis, so it’s cool.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Well, oh, totally. Like, once I start having a cool intro like yours, I’m gonna. I’m gonna tell my family. I’ll be like, announce it that way when I show up, like, when I arrive at the party, someone at the door give me one of those.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Exactly. I need that when I get to the. When I show up at the supermarket, just like, over the loudspeaker. Guys, let’s do this thing the right way.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: I love that it’s not too long. I think that would be a very reasonable ask from you, I think. Well, and I’d love to just ask, you

00:05:00

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: know, to follow up some of your fun facts.

Do you have a favorite dystopian trilogy in the YA fiction world

Do you have a current favorite dystopian trilogy in the YA fiction world?

Anthony Chin-Quee: Oh, man. A current favorite. I’ve been. I’ve been reading them for so long, but I think, I recently read that I really enjoyed the trilogy. Bye. Rebecca Kwong, who just. She wrote Yellowface. but before that, she wrote this whole, trilogy of, fantasy novels, kind of set in a fantasy, China and Japan. and it’s called God, shoot, I’m blanking on the name of it right now.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: That’s. No worries. I didn’t know she wrote something before. Yellowface.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Yeah, like, yellow face is like, like she. Poppy war. The poppy war. Yes. The poppy war is so good. it’s so. It’s so dope. so, yeah, I spent some time reading that recently.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Oh, my gosh. Well, I got to check that out because we have yellow face, and. And I certainly. What I love is kind of her angle of writing. You know, it’s a little bit where coming from the perspective of this person’s, the character is not a very good writer. And so if the writing isn’t really strong, you’d be like, I mean, the character, the realism, it’s so on point. And so I love tricks like that.

You write about yourself as a character in your book

And of course, we’re going to talk about your book today, and I’d love to hear your take on, development of yourself, the character. But what’s interesting is even if, you know, one of us writes about our lives and they come off like a little neurotic, well, the character is neurotic. So the writing, I guess, permissibly can be.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Yeah, I think, I mean, I’m, happy to dive into the craft of it, but, you hit it right on the head. You know, writing about yourself as a, writing yourself as a character, is a challenge and requires a lot of intentionality. that, you know, can be easy to dismiss or think you don’t have to use as you’re. As you’re writing. But it’s really. I think it’s really important. But I learned so much in the process, so I’d be happy to chat about it.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Yeah, absolutely.

Mhm. Well, you know, to allow everyone to get to know you

Well, you know, to allow everyone to get to know you and a little bit of your background and story. I would love to hear about some of the early life, the decision to choose medicine, and of course, then I love to jump into both of our experiences as children of immigrants who maybe had a more limited subset of careers to choose from.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Yeah, no, I think we’re probably going to see some similarities when I share the story. But, yes, I’m from Brooklyn, New York. I grew up there, until I went off to college. And yeah, my dad is, an immigrant from Jamaica. My mom was born in the states, but her whole family is from, Trinidad. So we’re part of the island community, a very strong community in New York especially. And it’s funny because I didn’t necessarily, I wasn’t necessarily pushed, into thinking about medicine from a young age. But I remember as a kid, that’s what I thought, I wanted to be, and as I’ve grown up, I’ve kind of realized that coming from my cultural background and I think from a lot of many immigrant cultural backgrounds, if you’re the smart kid, there’s a handful of professions you’re encouraged to go into or you’re made aware of as options, that you know, tend, to be, when your family kind of tells you about these sorts of futures, like be a doctor, be a lawyer, be an engineer, be this, that they’re usually, done with the hope that you will achieve this goal, type, ah, of profession that the world will always need, so you’ll never need to look for another job. Your future and your present will be steady and safe. Right. which I always, now that I’m an adult, I always think is really fascinating because you have these parents, who are immigrants. They did maybe the most brave and adventurous thing you can do is pick up your entire life and leave and start over someplace else where you think you can do something else. You know, I understand the sentiment of, you know, maybe not wanting your kids to have to struggle the way you did or deal with those, any issues that came along with it. But at the end of the day, you know, the genes are the same. You know, we’re the same adventurous people as our parents, and, you know, we have those same tendencies and we’re gonna wanna be adventurous, maybe in different ways. so that’s kind of a

00:10:00

Anthony Chin-Quee: perspective I kind of embraced as I’ve gotten older and has made it kind of okay. I love that, to give myself kind of permission to try new things.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: And, oh, I mean, that’s just so poignant and certainly a lot of it resonates with me. my mom escaped the cultural revolution in Shanghai, so she came to the US at 40 and had me a few years later. but I really love the quote.

I think there’s power in speaking about our cultures and our traditional

And one thing I was thinking of that came to mind as you were talking was your ancestors gave you more than just generational trauma, they also gave you generational strength and kind of, you know, to speak to some of this resilience and perhaps adaptability and desire for adventure or striking out of.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Yeah. And it’s so funny. I’ve been doing some work on kind, of investigating the cultural wealth of immigrant communities recently, and I, think there’s real power in speaking about our cultures and our traditional. Our traditions, our histories in that way. because we, a lot of the time, you know, coming to America, you know, we’re often taught, by other cultures or maybe the dominant culture to view where we come from as a culture of deficit, of a culture of, you know, things that are lacking, you know. and we’re always reminded of the things we don’t have, the things we need to take from the dominant culture to succeed. but, if we reframe that, you know, and. And I. And use our culture’s experiences, to our benefit and recognize the strength that comes with that and the resilience and the beauty and the, you know, all that stuff, you know, we can. We can do so much better than we give ourselves credit for. We want to give ourselves credit for.

Your father was a lawyer and your mother had a finance background

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Love, that reminder. And I believe just, you know, from your book and things like that, that you mentioned your father was a lawyer. Is that right?

Anthony Chin-Quee: I. Yeah.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: And mine. Mine was as well.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Oh, okay. Okay.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: So, I mean, again, the. The parallels are uncanny, but my dad was also a lawyer. My mom was a CFO for a company in Chicago. She had a finance background from Shanghai. And, you know, it actually sounds like perhaps my childhood, there was a little bit more heavy handedness than maybe in yours, which was more like subconscious, you know, one layer deep cues, because mine were like every single family, you know, again, they’re sitting me down as an only child. They’re like, every family needs one lawyer, one finance guy, and one doctor. And they’re, like, looking around, and then they’re like, okay, well, so you’re up, and again. Yeah, exactly. And the thing that we need to complete our family and the thing that you have to shoulder as somebody who’s an only child, they were like, best wishes, because that’s the trifecta.

Anthony Chin-Quee: That’s awesome. Yeah, I think, yeah, it sounds like yours was kind of more on the nose than mine, but I think for mine, you know, I think, and this is credit to my. My family, I think, they did their best to try to convince me of the amount of choice I had. I noticed this especially when, when I was, choosing colleges because I went to Harvard, but I didn’t want to go to Harvard. I grew up, ah, in New York, in the school system there. If you’re trying to get out of New York and go to good colleges, one of the main ways to do that, at least during my time there, was to get into the private school system, in New York, and so I was able to do that kind of in the middle school sort of age and then, ah, stay in the school. That kind of fed us, into pretty good colleges. And I thought I wanted to grow up and go to kind of a small liberal arts college, just kind of like my high school was and like Amherst or Wesleyan, like those sorts of things. but I applied to Harvard because my mom always wanted to see if I’d get it. and so I applied and I got in, and then they very much tried to convince me that I had a choice in whether I went. But even though ultimately, like, I decided it for myself, they were just like, cool because we had like a full court press waiting, and if you were gonna mess around with this, yeah, I.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Mean, there was somebody like with handcuffs, like in the next room over, like, you would have been stopped at the doorway, probably, which understandably, because it’s, one incredible opportunity, of course. And I’m sure that the education that you received at the undergraduate level, like, was beyond incredible. but it is so funny to think about that because, of course, if they said you have to go, then you, then we would immediately often bristle at that and say, well, no, I’m not doing it. But kind of the ability

00:15:00

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: to decide for yourself, allegedly. You just didn’t take it to the point where you had to find out.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Exactly. Yeah, no, I’m glad I was very. When I look back, I’m really happy that they did it in that way. it did give me some illusion of agency, which I’m sure was good for me developmentally somehow.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Oh, totally, totally. And that’s probably good parenting and definitely good negotiating. Like, I would want those people on my strategy team for tough negotiations. But I think that there’s also this interesting element. It reminds me of some things that I’ve had to grapple with, just in terms of what is living out an immigrant parent’s dream versus one’s own. Because you did say that you applied to Harvard because your parents had, you know, your mom wanted to see if you could get in. But at the end of the day, you know, there’s always this, I think that there is this coming of age process where we figure out our own identity. And part of that is the separation from the parent, too. So it’s like, who am I standing alone, not influenced by them, I guess. I’ll call back.

When you go into medicine, you question your identity

I don’t know if you’ve seen Gilmore girls, but Lorelei Gilmore, hopefully, a lot of the audience has. I recommend Gilmore girls, obviously, to everyone fall cozy show ever. But Lorelei Gilmore, she’s just this pretty, self assured woman, but she has some, we’ll call them mom and dad issues. And she’s loved pop tarts her whole life, but she starts freaking out because she’s like, she eats a whole box of pop tarts, which, obviously, you know, her daughter’s like, where did all the pop tarts go? She’s like, well, I had to try them because I don’t know if I like what I like. If my mom had not told me as a kid, you can’t have pop tarts. We don’t eat that stuff in this house. Would I still be on a full time pop tart diet? I don’t know. And she’s in her thirties, like, grappling with this, having a full identity crisis.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Yeah. And I think I, I mean, I relate to that. I really do have to get into Gilmore girls. All I know about Gilmore girls is that they talk real fast to each other. That’s got their style of dialogue.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: but it’s very east coast speed.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Of talking, which, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m here for that. but, yeah, it’s interesting, the idea of when you kind of come into your own, and kind of let go of, you know, what your parents wanted for you. and for me, like, yeah, for me, it took a while. I think I didn’t start to come into my own. I don’t think that process was really complete until kind of my mid thirties. I, think, you know, through high school, through, you know, of course, high school and college and, and through med school, I was kind of holding on to, these, conceptions of what, success should be like for me, and how to think of my life as a success. And you kind of, with medicine, I know, with, law and other kind of grad school based professions. you get on a train, and you don’t get off for ten years. And, by the time you get off, you got friends who have lived entire lives. They got kids. They got houses on their second house or whatever. They’re already divorced. They’ve lived these entire lives, and you’ve kind of been caught in this kind of perpetual adolescence. until you’re 30, you know, and you’re finally out in the real world, and you’re finally like, oh, okay, I have to take care of myself for the first time. I’m not in school. I don’t ever prescribe path forward for the first time. my parents aren’t telling me what to do. Maybe for the first time, and. Speak for yourself. Yeah, I totally speak for myself. My parents still try, but I started pushing back a little bit more. But, yeah, we just. It feels like, especially when you go into medicine, we start asking those questions of ourselves about who we are, what we really want. not until we get to the end of the prescribed journey. And then, you know, we feel kind of out of place and out of time makes it kind of a weird feeling.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: And that’s so well said. I like to call it the conveyor belt. And I got on a conveyor belt at 18, which is when I decided to go to medical school. And I did not get off until really after residency, as you said. But I will say that in terms of the disillusionment that I experienced, it started in residency because, you know, all of us in medical school were working so hard towards one goal. You know, it’s definitely the arrival fallacy to the max for all young physicians. Cause we work hard to get into medical school, hard to get into residency. But what happened for me personally is that I did. I loved the grind.

00:20:00

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: I honestly loved it at the time. In medical school, I was always like, oh, my gosh. Like, yeah, gunners are terrible. Like, don’t be a gunner. And of course, now, so many years later, I kind of look back and I’m like, what I was doing sitting front row, being very involved, occasionally cutting other people off. Like, was I the gunner the whole time? Tina Fey has a 30 rock bit about this where she talks about how much she was bullied in high school, and, of course, at her high school reunion, she was just the bully the whole time. you know, certainly hopefully not the case for my medical school experience. But I will say, like, I loved the grind. I loved being pimped, I loved learning. I loved to sit and lecture, etcetera. it wasn’t until residency where I was on the conveyor belt, happy as a clam. Like, I’ve been a teacher’s pet my whole life. I do well in structured academic environments, but having been in a malignant residency program, that certainly did nothing prioritize learning, nor prioritize, like, explaining things in a calm way. I found it very hard to learn when intimidated. Afraid someone’s yelling. You know, there’s always the threat of yelling. there were instances of physical abuse which we’ve talked about in other episodes of this podcast. So, you know, that learning environment was very deranged, and it actually started the disillusionment process for me because I was like, I’ve been on this conveyor belt. I did everything that everyone said to do. You know, the scores were there. Aoa, just do your residency, you know, mind your own business and do residency. But I awoke, or, you know, like, spiritually awoke to basically, a dumpster fire.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Yeah, I completely agree with that. Not agree with that, but I feel that sentiment. And I. For me, I always think about residency kind of as this perfect storm for, type a personalities, who have been over the course of our lives, we’ve gotten really, really good at masking, whatever our core issues are, whatever things we have about ourselves that we don’t like or that are challenging to us, you know, anything like that, where we become adept at covering those things up. So, you know. Cause, you know, we’re able to succeed academically in spite of them. but once you get into residency training, the way it’s set up, is set up to kind of strip all your defenses away, and kind of just leave you there, leave you with yourself, and all the pieces that you may not really like or you may have questions about, or you may be insecure about, and not really. It’s there to break you down. It’s not there to help build you back up. Just good luck to you.

Having gone through ent residency, we experience, like, the smaller department

yeah, hopefully you can make it to the end.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: But often even the leaders of teams and you and I both being. Having gone through ent residency, we experience, like, the smaller department, which I do think at the end of the day, is kind of core to a lot of the deranged situations that I’ve heard of from colleagues and things like that. Because, you know, in a larger system, a larger department, maybe a medicine group or something like that, there are more checks and balances in place. There’s ways to, like, maybe hide from one toxic personality. Well, in a tiny residency program, there is no hiding. This is like, you know, your worst nightmare person could have unfettered access to you for months at a time, no breaks and no professional rules in place for how that you’ll be treated.

Anthony Chin-Quee: You know, I think you’re right about that, because I think I know that many of my colleagues and friends who have gone through kind of residencies that are bigger. Have more people like er or internal medicine. I think in general, their experience has been different from mine, though. I think they had some similar feelings about things. But there is something very specific, and it usually ends up being the surgical subspecialties that, when every year they only take one or two of, you, it’s you guys, you know, eight to ten people total, and then the entirety of the staff, and they’re always watching all of you all the time. They’re always talking about all of you all the time. You know, they’re kind of comparing you guys there. And of course, just like every specialty, every part of medicine, it’s all policed by us. it’s policed by doctors. Yeah. There’s no recourse as far as how the rules are made when doctors are policing themselves.

00:25:00

Anthony Chin-Quee: Culture, is very difficult to change or regulate totally.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: And I was in a program that had two and three every alternating year, and I was part of a three year, and when I was in early second year, one of the attendings told me, unprompted in clinic, we were just talking in between patients, and he kind of got on a tangent, and he was like, every year the attendings picked a resident who’s the weakest to focus on and, you know, try to drive them out. And I was like, oh, and, you know, I. But I’ve heard of that, and I’ve seen that in other departments, at other institutions. Like, I heard about that first when I was looking at Ent like a decade ago at a completely different institution. So that’s not unheard of. But I think that that helps people. Like, especially for those who haven’t had an experience directly in medicine, it really doesn’t make logical sense that, like, you could be nurtured your whole life as a person who is maybe a promising young surgeon or a promising young physician. And then in the residency, microcosm be, like, torn down and not supported and not built up in the way that, like, you know, if you win, then we all win. Like, the department wins if they churn out really highly well trained, well adjusted surgeons. That’s what I would personally think. But the, you know.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Yeah, that’s what makes sense. But I mean, yeah, just to jump into a situation where, like you said, what they want to do instead of cultivate is weed out, you know, like, what’s the point? You know, like, everyone’s worked so hard to get there. They’ve worked so hard to prove that they can handle you know, however rigorous this is going to be. And so, honestly, you know, when you look at the amount of things we need to learn, both from the books and in the operating room, you know, you can teach those things, without being an ass and, like, without, you know, trying to break someone’s spirit down in order to just, pull them through. Like you. Like you said, like, it doesn’t reflect well on a program to lose residents or to fire them or for them to just drop off and disappear. But, you know, they kind of. A lot of the bosses, you want to say it’s from an older generation, but honestly, it’s just. It’s just. It’s not a generational thing. It’s just a, you know, cultural thing. They could be young as, you know, a couple years older than us and still embrace that. they think it’s about who can survive the gauntlet. does that make you a better surgeon? Absolutely not. and the way the gauntlet’s set up, no one seems to know the rules. the rules change every day. I will amend that. The rules change with time, but they also change with who you happen to be.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Yes.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Oh, my gosh. because there’s. I think my experience was there’s a set of rules. Some people kind of get told the rules, and some people don’t. And generally the people get. Who get told the rules are the white guys. Right. And because they’re just kind of. That’s. That’s the standard that everyone is trying to aspire to. and that’s what the boss wants you to do. And if you’re not that, then best of luck. You need to learn the rules somehow, and you get penalized for not learning them, or knowing them. I would always wonder, especially in the first couple of years, I would be like, why? Because we had two each year. my year was myself and my good friend, but, he was my co resident also, and he’s a white guy from Detroit. I was like, why does he seem to always know where to be, what to be doing, how to talk to people, what the requirements are of certain things. When. I have no idea. It’s not in a handbook anywhere. People just tell me to do stuff. I do it to the best, my ability, but it’s always wrong. And he just happens to be always right. And I was like, is someone helping him, or are people actively not helping me? and it just makes. It’s enough to make you feel completely nuts. which doesn’t help your performance. But I ultimately learned from him years later that I wasn’t wrong. They helped him quite a bit and told him lots of things that I was never told and would engage him in trying to tear me down, too, like, in the rooms where I wasn’t allowed or didn’t happen to be. And he tried to be nice and not say bad things, but

00:30:00

Anthony Chin-Quee: never told me, what was going on. He thought he convinced himself that he was protecting me by not telling me about what was actually being said or being done. in reality, I was just. I was floating. I was on my own.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Right.

Anthony Chin-Quee: and it’s just, we lose out on a lot of good doctors, by setting up the rules in the system in that way.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Yes.

Thank you so much for sharing that story about your residency experience

Thank you so much for sharing that, because, you know, it’s probably not even super easy or fun, I think, to reflect on some of the less palatable parts of, like, the residency experience. But I appreciate you sharing that story, because there are people who may be experiencing that today who feel like they are floating relatively unsupported, especially in comparison to perhaps even co residents and things like that. I do think that the gauntlet. The gauntlet is fake. The gauntlet just benefits the people who are running the gauntlet. They just feel better about themselves. one of my favorite attendings in the world, he called this micropenis syndrome. He was like, if a guy. If an attending is acting that way, right, he’s putting people through the gauntlet. He’s freaking out, in the OR. He’s screaming at people. He’s belittling people. He told me in response to my tears about it, you know, I came to him, and he was like, that guy just has a micro penis, and he’s just showing it to you. So you can just accept that and you can just, like, move on. But that’s really what it is. And so it did bring me a lot of comfort, because then, for the next couple years that I had left to finish, I at least had a word for it. I was like, okay, this is micro penis energy. And I would think that in response to somebody trying to, you know, they’re creating a fake gauntlet, throwing down a fake gauntlet, you know, and we’re having to jump through all these hoops. So I think that that’s one helpful way to, like, you know, it’s kind of an alternate rebellion tactic. Just think it privately. I probably wouldn’t say it particularly, if you’re still in training. So, you know, don’t. Don’t misunderstand me. I would just think it to yourself. But, another instance that it reminds me of to help illustrate and, like, flesh this out again for people who maybe haven’t been there or they can’t imagine how residents are viewed or treated differently. At the beginning of my residency in June, prior to the July 1 start, we, as incoming interns, had to show up and do various couple trainings, you know, orientation. We had to renew our ACLs BLS programming. And so I had one female co resident and I had one white male co resident. She was white as well. but the three of us showed up there. He had actually already trained at this institution. He was extremely beloved. He was from the state that we were all in now. She and I were transplants. I’m very much a transplant in the south. and what happened was we went to the ACLs bls. that involved CPR training, which, for anyone who has done CPR training, we all get, like, a little sweaty doing it. I had a. A zip up jacket over a Costco tank top. It was like, very thick straps. So, you know, I would not. This was not a spaghetti tank top for the fashion police, for the hospital police. It was not, like, lewd in any way. It was just more of, like, a muscle tank that, you know, maybe like, the fast and the furious guys would wear. Like, it was just. It was not revealing. And, I kept my coat on all day, except for about, like, a 15 minutes period post CPR, pre lunch. I overheated. I took my zip up off. this was in an education building attached to the hospital. Not in the hospital. Not patient care related, of course. It was just a bunch of interns doing orientation, and I didn’t think anything of it. And then by lunchtime, put my jacket back on, you know, covered up these little arms all as well. By the end of the day, I had actually received a notification from our department that said, hello, we received a complaint about you today. You violated the dress code policies for the hospital. I’ve reattached them to this email for your review, and of course I read them. And, oh, yeah. Oh, they got me day one. That’s, like, negative. Day ten leading up to my resume.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Yeah, you’re just. You’re not even really there yet.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: No, no. It wasn’t even patient care. It was ACLS training. So even the people who I would have offended with my, like, pale shoulders, side. Shoulder, would have been other interns. And then admin, some staff from the surgery department.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: but, yeah. Oh, man, oh, man. They reported me immediately, so that that’s how my residency experience started off. And, of course, I had to be like, I’m so sorry. You’ll never see my side of shoulder again. You know? That’s on me.

00:35:00

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Here’s what’s so interesting. My co resident, she’s very good at hair and makeup. Like, some people are just skillful at it. They’ve studied it. They know what to do. She is one of those people. At the end of that training day, we learned this, like you mentioned, we learned this, like, years later. Like, this came up a couple years later. Maybe people were, like, drinking at a departmental event, which is, like, why it would have come up, because otherwise, we didn’t really, like, share these things. And our co resident told us, he was like, I was actually quite uncomfortable because at the end of that CPR training day, that surgery admin woman who was running the whole show, he said, she came up to me, and she loved him. She knew him from when he had rotated there before. So she came up to him, and she was like, good luck. She’s like, your co residents. One looks like a hussy. That would be my co resident. And the other one dresses like a whore. That would be me with my side shoulders out. And they were like, best wishes to you, because, like, those girls, that is just rough. Like, what a difficult hand you’ve been dealt.

I think that story highlights the importance of residency equality

And he said, and he was very nice about it because he was like, I didn’t engage. That obviously made me uncomfortable. This is, like, day zero, and I’m being pitted against you guys. I also don’t have an issue with, like, women’s makeup and appearance. I don’t think he minded the side shoulder either. but I really think that that story highlights it, because think about, like, all of us show up to residency. Let’s just say, give the benefit of the doubt. All of us show up to residency very eager, very well intentioned, want to just kill it and do our best and contribute to the team and take good care of patients. So imagine getting bogged down in this type of stuff.

Anthony Chin-Quee: I have a lot of thoughts about that story. and thank you for sharing that. I’m having, some rage on your behalf. but, it makes me think about two things. First, this reminds me of the conversation I had with my co resident, when he told me years later what be going on. And it, sounds like, you know, this guy, he kind of came clean to you guys years later, too. And I always wonder, and I asked him you know, what are you looking for here? You looking for. Is this your apology? Are you looking for us to tell you it’s okay? that you experienced this. Like, this guy is like, wow, man, I felt so uncomfortable, you know? Well, what the did you do about it? You know what I mean? Like, what did you do? You know, that’s. That’s the thing. We’re not here to, like, women in surgery and medicine, black people in surgery and medicine. We’re not here, at the end of the day to assuage your guilt over that you’ve offensively been carrying the entire time. Okay? Like, so you chose to take that information. You chose to do absolutely nothing with it, you know, you knew your co residents were being targeted. You knew that you were in a position of privilege, being a favorite, because, like, a boss came up and told you this stuff, you know, candidly. So you knew what kind of situation your cohort was in for. So what did you do? And the answer is so often, nothing. But in the end, they want forgiveness, you know, or they want to feel like it was okay, like, man, you know, oh, you know, I felt a little weird.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Like, I experienced that with you because.

Anthony Chin-Quee: I was giving you a break with you feeling weird, you know, I was, you know, put on the red list, you know, on my very first day in training, you know? how do you think that makes me feel? Did you ever think about that? And I understand, you know, from his perspective, you know, like, you’re all running scared. You’re all trying to do your best. You all feel like you don’t have any power, and you just gotta get ahead and just survive. I get that, but I don’t forgive it, because you had the power to at least show some compassion and show some empathy for the people that you’re supposedly teammates with going through it. And that’s kind of like how I felt, when my friend told me this years later. I was like, yeah, I’m not here to forgive you. so my question is, what are you going to do now, you know, with your life? How you gonna make it up? You know, what’s the work you’re gonna do? I know what I had to do, because in order for me to survive, I had to learn this game. I had to learn what was going on around me. I had to learn that what they actually wanted me to be was not

00:40:00

Anthony Chin-Quee: me. They wanted me to be you. And I had to figure out, oh, they don’t want Tony at work. They want Tony’s best impression of this other guy at work. And if I’m going to survive, I got to give that to them. And that took me a little while to realize and what I did with that because that’s really hard one to realize, too, to live out every day, because then you’re just like, well, where, where do I go? Do I just disappear? You know, in all of this, and the way I tried to stay connected was by kind of giving that information and giving that knowledge back to the folks who are coming up behind me who I knew had to be going through this. So, like, there were, you know, a lot of, women coming up in the classes behind me, a lot of women of color coming up in the class behind me. And they would be struggling, you know, and I could see it on their faces. I knew the struggle, and it was just like, you know what? If we can’t change this situation, this world, then we’re all going to know exactly where we’re at, and we’ll support each other to give them what they need, so that ultimately, down the road, we can make it better. But in the meantime, just, you’re not by yourself. You’re not alone in this. was the best I could do, even though I’m still struggling through it, you know? But, you know, your co resident who had it easy, do better, bro. Like, you got to do better.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: I know it’s a hard proposition when they don’t have. Have to do better, though. Like, he didn’t have to do better to survive, so he didn’t. And so I get that, like, probably all people want to sink to the lowest level of their, you know, competence, especially in a high stress situation like residency. But what I really love is how you made really effective changes in your own practice and you helped the next generation behind you. Because at the end of the day, that’s everything that I have worked on since I graduated from residency because all.

Anthony Chin-Quee: The work is fantastic, even just this podcast. But everything else you do, you know, it’s kind of. You have your. Your heart and your mind on this next generation. I know they appreciate it because it’s, it’s so meaningful.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Thank you. And, you know, I’m not saying you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but I get it. If the old dogs don’t have care what I have to say or want to, you know, consider some of what I’m proposing. Totally fine. I do think that these are very actionable, kind of like, effective strategies and, like, the strategies that you handed on to your junior residents that are like survival strategies in a broken system. But like we talked about, I do think that the end goal is break the wheel, break the gauntlet. Right.

The way feedback comes, uh, to you in residency is really interesting

Because in terms of people who I think could have also behaved better are think about the department in that scenario where I talk about. So I get a, quite harsh, harshly worded email from the department that says, you violated the dress code today. That’s interesting. Cause by the letter of the law. You know, my dad’s a lawyer, right? Our dad’s our lawyer. So by the letter of the law, I actually did it because that dress code applies to patient care areas and the hospital. And I was in an, adjacent educational building. I just think that it really shows the departmental culture, which is like a very top down. Like, that’s how they view their residents. And I can envision other scenarios where those types of complaints would even be dismissed. Where the department might say, I’ve received your complaint. I understand that you’re saying that somebody wore a tank top for ten minutes in an educational area. Prior to their start date of July 1, by the way, via the contract. And I’m just gonna drop it. But the way that they handle those things says a lot about their character and also their values.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Absolutely. yeah, that’s the. That’s the thing with, kind of changing these institutions. I mean, yeah, eventually the old dog is going to be gone, you know? And so what do our contemporaries do with it? You know, I remember kind of thinking, you know, as I was going through, You know, we had. The way feedback comes, to you in residency is really interesting because the, bosses, they rarely speak directly to you. Sometimes they do, but especially if the stuff they don’t like, they never tell you to your face, which they should, because that’s. Otherwise, that means that’s too hard for them. They’re too fragile. But they’ll tell everyone.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: They’ll tell the circulators. They’ll tell the circulators.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Yeah, they’ll tell everyone. They’ll trash talk you to everybody. But the person whose responsibility it is. To actually tell you what’s wrong. Is your

00:45:00

Anthony Chin-Quee: senior resident or your chief. Right? They’re just like, oh, this is part of your job. I hate the way this intern does this. You know, fix it. You know what I mean? But there in. You know, when you’re a chief, this is what I learned when I was a chief. You know, there’s where you actually can start changing the culture of what everyone’s experiencing, because, yeah, you can be like, okay, you know, I’m just gonna be the mouthpiece of my bosses and be like, yeah, they. They think this trash, like, I don’t know, you gotta fix this. But what I would do, like. Like, I knew kind of their game. I knew what they were trying to do. I knew that we call it in entertainment. I knew the note behind the note, you know, like, I knew what they were trying to say. and so was it necessary for me to share every single trashy thing they said with the person they were talking about? Absolutely not. what would be helpful to this person who’s trying to survive? Well, I could explain to them, like, hey, you know, guess what? This isn’t about you. Okay, but. And I wouldn’t even tell them, like, this sort of thing is being said. I was like, okay, here are the expectations, however unfair they seem. Okay, and here are the perceptions that bosses are bringing in, however unfair they seem. Okay, here’s what we can do, and I will advocate for you. Like, I never engage in talking trash to the bosses, when they do it to me. but I gotta be there for you, you know, and my words, in some way can, be powerful. Now, so let’s work together to help you not only survive this thing, but let’s crack the code on, making you look good so that I can tell them, man, they looking good right now. and I know you can’t deny it, because this is exactly what you told me you wanted to see. And, you know, I’ll do my part, you do your part, so we can kind of, you know, move through this together. You know, being in a. Being a leader, I think, and thinking compassionately in that way is really, really important. And that’s just something I got from, like, other parts of my life where I just, you know, I lived other lives. I didn’t. I’ve done different things with my life, but there’s no requirement of leadership skills, you know, in medicine, even though at some point, all doctors are looked at as leaders of people or teams or communities and that sort of thing. And I think that’s a shame, because a lot of doctors are not good at it. But, it’s really not hard to be at least halfway decent if you want to put the work in.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Yeah, I think that you hit the nail on the head because you were really a different type of chief, and that’s how we start to break the wheel. But, you know, especially for people, like we talked about, who don’t have like, a vested interest in becoming better people, like, they do well without all that extra work. I get it. But, for those of us where it’s not really a choice, like, you just have to be better. You have to be clever, faster, more resilient, more agile. Like, you just have to do it. So we do it to survive, like, out of necessity.

You transitioned from practicing medicine to becoming a television writer

I definitely. I really appreciate this conversation. We talk about this all day, but I do want to make sure that we hit a, really intriguing part of your life journey, which was the transition after several years of Ent practice out in California to television writer, and then, of course, author. And now you do so much varied work in the writing world.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Yeah. yeah, I’ve kind of become the patron saint of quitting medicine to a lot of my, friends. and, it’s a title I’m very proud of, because I decided, that, after working, you know, in private practice for, like, three years after residency was done, that I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t enjoying it, and I needed something else. And, you know, I wasn’t sure what that was gonna be. but in the back of my mind, and I think this is part of the reason why I moved from Detroit to Los Angeles, in the back of my mind, I was like, I always kind of wanted to be adjacent to the entertainment world. Like, I thought that the things that I love because I’m an artist, you know, first and foremost, you know, that’s the kind of part of me I had to respectfully reawaken, in order to kind of survive residency because I kind of stuffed it down. but being an artist is really important to my identity.

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Anthony Chin-Quee: And I always thought there had to be some way for me to, be an artist and utilize the life experience that I’d had as a physician, in order to hopefully, you know, help teach people. And because that’s another big part of my identity is being an educator. And so, you know, one day I was. I was about to quit my job. I’d already told him I was going to quit. I didn’t have a new job lined up. so that was super fun. But then I was, like, on, Facebook one day, and I just saw this ad for being a, you know, consultant for Grey’s anatomy. and I emailed them and I went for an interview and I got the job. And it was, you know, it’s like being an intern, you make like, peanuts. And I was there for, like, four months, and I just lived off my savings and. But I got to spend every day in the writer’s room for Grey’s anatomy and, like, just walk around their sets all day and, help out on their set and, like, do all this stuff. And was totally, had my eyes totally open to this.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: That’s awesome.

Anthony Chin-Quee: This profession that I had no idea existed.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: And what were the hours like for that? Just for that month stint.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Great, compared to what we usually do. it’s just like, people in entertainment don’t start working until ten in the morning. So you show up at ten, and then, you know, on most days, you know, the writers, they’re kind of out of juice creatively by, like, four or five, you know, and they just wrap it up, you know, and throughout the day there, there’s breaks, there’s snacks. They’re eating all the time. They got to take a long lunch because, like, it’s hard to keep the juices flowing, so they gotta be able to do all that stuff. And sometimes you have late nights, but, but the majority of the time, like, it’s. These are not hours that we are used to as doctors. And I was like, this is easy and really fun. and also, I just love the power of this medium. And so, like, how can I get, like, you guys, like, is there a path to doing this as a job? And, luckily, there were a lot of people on that staff for whom, writing was kind of their second act. They had full careers elsewhere before they started writing, so they kind of took me under their wing and showed me, kind of how to engage in it and how to start writing and learn all the things I needed to learn. and so that kind of transitioned into my next job at the resident, where I wasn’t just consulting, I was writing episodes. And I’m, currently in the process of working on my tv adaptation of my book and hoping that that, moves along somehow. but, yeah, that was kind of my transition. It’s kind of a few good coincidences. but I was also kind of. I’d put myself in the right position to be in the right place. and I was ready for that kind of adventure. So, yeah, that’s the short story.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: That’s amazing.

You help people give themselves permission to leave medicine, which is important

Well, I love that you’re the patron saint of leaving medicine just because, again, cool job title. You should have people announce you that way when you enter rooms. Ooh, I could see, like, I can see a candle, for instance, in the line of, like, yeah, I see that a million percent.

Anthony Chin-Quee: That’s okay. Yeah. I like that. but yeah, I just love. Cause like, a lot of friends of mine, like, people who I was in residency with, they’ve called me over the years, and they were just like, I don’t know who else to call, but we haven’t talked in a long time. But is it okay to leave? And, helping people give themselves permission to leave and recognize that all the work they’ve done, the money they spent, the hours they’ve put in is not going to waste. You’re tending to your life, you’re tending to your garden, your wellness, your brain, and your happiness. and whatever path you choose, you’re going to bring the lessons that you had, from all of your experience that came before. so don’t listen to anybody who tries to scare you into not taking a jump, because you don’t want to wait too long either. there’s always an excuse not to jump, but, you gotta.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Yeah. And that’s incredible, you know, like your friends are obviously very lucky to know and have you to reach out to for that question. I think it just shows, though, how little discourse there is about it and how, how deeply, you know, tied up and emotional the decision is. Because it’s so funny. Like, nobody else, in any other job, in any other scenario, would a grown adult call like an acquaintance or, you know, like someone especially who they aren’t very close to, and be like, hey, I have a secret question. The secret question is, could I leave? And, you know, and then you like, counsel them very brilliantly, but like, it’s crazy because a lot of people don’t have like trusted advisors in their life or people

00:55:00

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: who could understand or grapple with that question or help them, like really go through that decision making process, which is an important. For sure.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Yeah. If anybody out there wants to leave, you can feel free to find me on the Internet. I’m happy to chat with you anytime.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Absolutely.

A lot of physicians are also artists, and it’s very true

I do want to share a couple quotes just because I love my quote wall. I’m a big quote person. I’ve always got quotes for things. But, a couple that I love. Well, this one is better to admit that you walked through the wrong door than spend your life in the wrong room. M, I really love that. And, maybe this one will resonate with you, but I decided to reimagine my survival as a creative act.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: And I really love that. I think like a lot of physicians are also artists, and it’s very true that the conventional us medical training system, it does tend to try and kill the artist within. And so I think that it. I just so appreciate you having this discussion and allowing us to just kind of play with what that can look like, what being a physician who still has love for the arts looks like, what the transition between the two. you know, there are people a rarer track, but there are artists who go back to school later and become physicians, so certainly not one size fits all.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Yeah. No, I’m so glad that I could just. I mean, I hope that hearing these sorts of stories, these. These different paths, can. Can help, you know, those of us who are. Who are going through and trying to figure out, what we want to do with ourselves and what we want to do with their lives, especially those of us going through, the medical training world. there’s so many more options than, they’d have you believe. so they’re really just embrace the fact that whatever it is you love to do, you can find a way to mesh it in a way that, makes your life feel fulfilled.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: And to build on that, they benefit from you thinking that you have no options. So it’s so important we always try to say, okay, zoom out a little bit. brings me to my last. My final quote here is, if anyone is magically going to appear and suddenly make your life better, just know that person is always going to be you.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Mm That’s right. So we got us. We gotta stick up for and take care of ourselves. It’s a really hard lesson.

Do you believe in karma, or do you hope for bad karma

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: So I’d love to go into our final segment, which is, do you believe in karma?

Anthony Chin-Quee: I think so. I think I believe in karma.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Okay, perfect. Any case, for or against.

Anthony Chin-Quee: I tend to believe in good karma. M. I try not to dwell on or hope for bad karma for people. but I do think that good things tend to come back around.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: I love that, and I certainly hope so.

Anthony Chin-Quee shares where listeners can find his memoir

So thank you again so much for coming on and sharing your journey with us today. It is, like, truly just such a privilege. It’s so fun to talk to you always. I’d love to share, where can our listeners find your memoir? I can’t save you. And then also connect with you online or reach out to you if they have any questions.

Anthony Chin-Quee: Yeah. so you can find. I can’t save you anywhere. You get your books. you can get on Amazon or what have you. I recommend, finding your independent bookstores, and asking them, if they have a copy, because hopefully they should. And, if you want to find me online. I am on Instagram. you can find me if you search my name. Tony Chin-Quee. I’m on there. And, I’m also on Twitter as well, there. Anthony Chin-Quee. it’s like at CQ, MD. It’s one of those annoying ones, but yeah, if you look for Chinqui, there’s not that many of us. So you can find me.

Dr. Frances Mei Hardin: Perfect. Follow me on Instagram at francesmei, MD and ethinkingresidency. Visit my website, rethinkingresidency.com to learn more about resident physician stories and ways that residents can most effectively navigate the game of residency. I cannot wait to connect with you on the next episode of promising young surgeon.

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