How This Intrapreneur Is Tackling The Diversity Problem in Urology with Dr. Shenelle Wilson.

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Hi, docs. Welcome to the Entre MD Podcast, where it's all about helping amazing physicians just like you. Embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms. I'm your host, Dr. Una. Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Entre MD podcast. This is Dr. Oona, your host. As always, I am pumped to be here. I have a super special guest today, Dr. Chanel Wilson. She's a student at the ontremd business school. She is a urologist, and. And she is one of the ultimate intrapreneurs in my world. So we're gonna have a really fun episode. I want you to kick back and whether you're an intrapreneur, an entrepreneur, whether you have a product based business, service based business, private practice, whatever it is, there's so much to learn from this episode, so I Hope you're ready. Dr. Chanel, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

I'm excited to have you. All right, so I will let you introduce yourself to the listeners, let them know who you are, what you do.

Yes, hello. I am Chanel Wilson. I am a private practice urologist in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm with Georgia Urology. I just completed my fellowship in female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery at UAB in Birmingham, Alabama. And then prior to that, I did my residency at MCG in Augusta, Georgia. So now you can find me in Atlanta, in Midtown and Sandy Springs.

Now, isn't that amazing? Now, I didn't know initially when we first met, but this is your second career. So what's your first career?

Yes. So before medical school, I was a nurse. I did my bachelor's in nursing in Puerto Rico. I went to school in Mayaguez because I wanted to make sure that I could communicate with my patients. So I was an ER nurse for seven years, three years prior to medical school. And then I worked actually during medical school on my breaks.

Wow. Okay. Medical students usually break on their breaks, but okay, that is so, so good. You have a wealth of experience there. So let's track back.

Right.

So before you joined the. On trendy business school, because that's where our paths crossed, where were you career wise? What. What were you thinking? What were your thoughts about your career? All that kind of stuff? Where were you? Sure.

So I was in fellowship. I was finishing my fellowship last year in 2020. I had initially planned on going into academics throughout my residency, and even when I first went into fellowship, during the course of my training, you know, I had some rough times and probably developed some imposter syndrome and thought that I didn't really have what it took to become an academic urologist. So I went back to my first love of urology and found Georgia Urology and signed with them. But I. But I knew that I still kind of wanted to give back and to be a mentor and to help students get into urology. So my brother is actually applying for urology this year, and I was able to mentor him as he went through his med school career. And when everything went virtual in 2020 with the pandemic, a lot of the sub internships that students were going to do went virtual. And so a lot of minority students, they developed an extra sense of anxiety around it because they were nervous about being perceived, you know, not being perceived in the way they wanted to be and not coming across and showing, putting their best foot forward. And just they had a lot of fear about, you know, matching into such a competitive specialty that in general is not very diverse. So there were students who were speaking to my brother, asking him advice to ask me, and I just kind of got tired of the redundancy and said, let's just do a virtual program with all of the students that, you know who are currently applying who are having these concerns. And then on the back end, I got my friends who were also in fellowship together, and we put on a virtual program and invited academic Faculty to come and speak. And so we were able to just provide support and advice to all of these students who are currently applying. And basically, my nonprofit organization snowballed from there.

Wow. So the real reason why you wanted to be in academic medicine was so you could mentor, so you could give back and all of that. And here you are, not in academic medicine, but getting exactly what you wanted. This is so good. All right, so tell me a little bit about. A little bit more about your nonprofit. What is it called? You know, what's going on there?

Yes. So it's called Urology Unbound, and it's a nonprofit organization dedicated to the recruitment, retention, and promotion of black and underrepresented minority urologists. So we started initially with the recruitment arm, which is a lot of student interventions. We had virtual programming, professional development, peer mentoring. We also did application polishing, where we helped the students going through their CVs, their personal statements, and editing. We did mock virtual interviews to help get them used to the format of being virtual, and also giving them some immediate feedback on how to best perform. We're also working with current residents and giving them support that they need with just the challenges of being in residency and also oftentimes being the only person of color in their residency. And we're going to be starting to work with academic faculty. Currently, we have faculty who are volunteering and taking part of a lot of our initiatives, but we're going to be doing a lot more supporting for them and faculty and development so that we can help with the promotion aspect as well.

My goodness, woman.

Got a lot that we want to do.

Yeah. And you're already doing it.

You know what I mean?

Like, because some people talk about things and, you know, it's a pipe dream. Like, they're talking about this thing that may happen if they wish hard enough, but you've already set the stage for it. You're already on it, you know. Now what is the why behind what you do? Right. So I know that you at least have two layers, Right. Of you're a double minority. Right. Because you're female and you're a woman of color. Right. So is it your story of going through Urology that made you decide, this is what I want to do? What was the trigger for that?

I think it's a culmination of my experiences and the experiences that a lot of black and minority and female physicians notice as they go through their training and get into their careers in which, you know, you realize that a lack of diversity, a homogeneous workforce, just isn't the best for our patients. You see that patient outcomes are just continuing to decline, even though we're improving with our technology and our capabilities. One of the really impactful experiences for me when I was in medical school was when I was working on the floor and there was a Spanish speaking only patient and she had a kidney failure. And she was only 36 years old. She had children. And multiple times when I went, I would round with different faculty or be with the nurses, people were speaking to her in English, just loudly and slowly, slowly. And so I started to translate since I'm fluent in Spanish. And so many times she would say, oh, I just, I never knew that. I didn't know that. Oh, I'll definitely do that. And it made me realize that this woman's renal failure probably was preventable. She was otherwise very healthy and just had a very uncontrolled blood pressure. And maybe if she had been spoken to in her language before and someone had taken the time or understood the importance of that, she wouldn't be in the situation she was. So being in health care, seeing that and going on through my experiences, I know that a diverse health care team is paramount to fixing a lot of the health care issues that we've got in this country or in the world.

Wow. Well, let me tell you something. You, my friend, are real entrepreneur, right? Because what businesses do is they solve problems, right? And you, over the course of your career have just been looking at problems and you don't just look at them and say, that's awful, and walk away. You're looking at them and setting the stage to fix them. That is so amazing. That's such a powerful story. To think that there's a woman who had renal failure and it's a lack of diversity that may have cost it. That's serious. That really is. And to everyone who's listening, this is an example of the businesses that you're actually carrying inside of you. A lot of times they're tied to the problems you notice is tied to some experiences you've had. Those experiences are the foundation for businesses. So sometimes people are like, I don't.

Know where to start.

I don't think I have a business idea. I'm like, you do. You need to take inventory. So this is so good. Thank you for saying that. Now, so for these students who got the mock interviews, they got the their resumes cleaned up and all of that stuff, tell me what kind of results they're experiencing. Tell me what they're telling you. Because I have never heard of a program like what you offer. And then so for them this must be such a wow and such a relief. What is their experience like?

The feedback has been overwhelming. It often brings me to tears because they're so grateful and so many times I feel like I'm not doing enough, I'm not doing anything. And the impact, they tell me how much their fears were relieved, they were nervous about the interview process and just they didn't think that their applications were strong. So many of them just feeling that or realizing that they, they're enough and what they've done is enough. And having that feedback from other urologists and academic urologists has been life changing for them. And so many of them instead I've had the confidence to go into my interviews and know that I can be my most authentic self. And you know, a lot of them have just said this is just, they go to medical schools that don't have urology programs. So they just have so many questions. And so having a resource, we encourage them with every email. If you have any questions, ask us. There's no wrong question. You can't ask enough. There's no dumb question. Like you can ask us because we would rather you ask us and we get you set straight and then you can go out and be your best self and not be worried about being tripped up. And so that's been just, that is so good.

I love it.

It's been awesome. And you know what? They match in February and so we'll know Our full results February 1st because urology is an early match. But many of them had a bunch of interviews and have just had a ton of good feedback about their experiences and their confidence that they put their best foot forward.

So now if I remember correctly, you have 66 students and 39 in the match. That is not your first year. Like, this is so crazy.

Yeah, it's insane. I mean I could never have imagined this. It's like I said, overwhelming a lot of times.

So. So let me ask you this, right, because when I hear you talk, I don't see this as being a one off thing. I don't see this as, you know, something you're doing because you're bored. You know, there's a pandemic, maybe have extra time to do all this stuff. What do you see in the future, like five years from now, ten years from now? What kind of impact is this going to have on the field of urology? What kind of impact will it make with respect to the amount of diversity in urology?

I mean the potential impact is Huge for us to. Currently with black urologists, we're at 2% of the workforce and it would take matching 70 black students every single year for 20 years with nobody retiring or leaving the workforce for us to get to 13 and a half percent population concordance. Similarly, with Latinx applicants, there are only about 500 Latinx urologists in the country. There needs to be around 2000. So there needs to be 90 something matching a year. And what's often said is we don't have, we don't know where these applicants are. There's not enough applying and a lot of it is a lack of exposure because there's only but so many urology programs. And if you don't go to a school with one, you just have no clue how to get into the field. So as we expand to all of the medical schools, the amount of diversity we can bring to the field, it gives me goosebumps.

Wow, okay, well, go for it. You know, you have. It's like when I talk about my bhag, right? I look at the medical field and I'm like, we are a group of amazing, brilliant physicians that are a skill away from building careers and businesses that will shock the world. People say doctors don't make great entrepreneurs. People call bad deals doctor deals, right? And my thing is like nopity nope. Right? And I'm like, I'm going to help 80,000 doctors fix this. And this is where your business goes beyond just being a business to becoming a mission. And then you never work, right? Everybody listening to you. Even they can't see you. I can see you. So you're glowing, right? And you're just like, oh my God, so excited, just moving, right? They can't see you. But even just listening to you, it's clear this is a mission, right? So good. Okay, so you've been in the entremd business school. What is this, four months going on the fourth month or so. How has this helped what you're doing?

It's been transformative. I never thought of being a business owner. I actually expressly did not want to be a business owner. So many times when we're in medical school, we're pushed away from private practice, entrepreneurship. We don't want those problems. We're like, we're doctors. I just want a doctor, somebody else who is business minded, can handle the money, can handle this all. I just want to to practice medicine. But now when I've come out, I realize that there is no way to practice medicine the way that I want to unless I have Those business skills, it's quite literally impossible to do it in the exact way you want to because you don't know unless you're paying attention. You don't know the things that are hindering you from practicing medicine the way you want to. So the intrapreneurship skills have been. I mean, I'm a new private practice urologist. I don't know where I would be if I did not know how to train my ma, know how to make sure that I was clear and concise, know to seek help and to ask people and just continue to ask and not worry about. If someone doesn't get back to me, I'll ask the next person. Because at the end of the day, I need to get this information so that I can practice medicine the way I want to. And so for the, my prior practice side, it's been transformative and just in general for starting a new nonprofit, I. The support. Support has been like my word for 2020, 2021 onwards.

Oh, support.

I love it because so many times as a woman, as a woman of color, as a woman physician, we just want to be independent. We're bad. We're like, we've got this all. We can take care of everything. If someone doesn't do it right, I'm just gonna handle it. But you go into thinking that you don't need support, that you can just do it all. And maybe you can, but it's such a struggle to do any. So just being able to ask people a question versus spend hours and hours researching it and maybe getting it wrong so that I can move along and be able to build my nonprofit at the same time I'm building my private practice as a brand new attending has been life changing.

Like really, I love it. I love, and I love that you're having such a great time as a brand new attending. Right. It's just amazing. So good. All right, now I'm asking you this question because you posted about it in the business school Facebook group. We are, for those of you listening, we are running a transfer, a four week transformation challenge. And you know, what we're doing is every day we're doing some mindset work, we're doing some action steps, you know, in our businesses to push them forward. The idea is take the first 30 days of January and kill it. Right. And you know, the thing about the business school is it's not just it's business transformation for sure, but it's all around. So you did this post about you were doing the challenge and these things happen. I'd like you to share that with the audience.

Yes, well, so much stuff happened. I. Well, the first thing was that I've been saying my daily affirmations, which you always call them, woo, woo. And I mean, not even. I know affirmations work. I've heard it for years. I'm always talking about the power of positive thinking. But then to really do it every single day and say, okay, no matter what, I have to say my affirmations, I didn't know the kind of change it would make in such a quick amount of time because I'm not relying on motivation anymore. I'm saying these words and say, oh, I just said them. Now I've got to do them. And so I've been trying to get myself into daily exercise with my new attending job. I wake up so early, I don't think I have time. And I. I've said, all right, I have time. I need to work out daily. I need to have six hours of sleep nightly. And daily stretching and meditate. And for the last four or five months, I've been telling myself, I don't have time for this. And all of a sudden, in the beginning of January, I have all this time to do that every single morning. And so that's been crazy.

And you have time not because they're now 27 hours a day, but because there's a mindset shift that's going on. And then all of a sudden you have more time. Isn't that amazing?

It's not even so much time as priorities, because you have that time. It's just, you don't realize that you have to prioritize your stuff, do the stuff you really want to do first. Schedule it. Scheduling it. Oh, my goodness. Scheduling things has been my jam. I put everything in my calendar. My calendar was empty before, and I would just make all these conflicting, you know, appointments all of the time. And now my calendar is like 85 things a day. Like every little thing is planned out. But it's so helpful. It really is truly helpful. And I'm able to get to the end of my week and I've done all these things. I didn't think I would have time, but there it was.

Look at that. That is so good. Now, when you think about your career now versus your career before you started making all these changes, what's your outlook like? Like, what do you think about it?

I think that the sky is the limit. I think that, yes. I mean, I think that I. I know that I'm going to build exactly what I want. I'm going to have exactly the career that I want because I've already started building it now it's not going into something and hoping that it'll work out because. And then maybe in two years, I gotta go somewhere else to hope that that works out. It's gonna work out. Cause I'm building it and I'm making it around myself. And so it has to work out isn't working. Then I just change it.

Look at that. If it's not working, we don't whine, complain, gripe, blame anybody. We change it. That is like, this is such a. The mindset shift you've had is so huge. And you're making taking action your default. And when you do stuff like that, like, you know, what you're doing is you're setting yourself up so the sky is your limit. That's really what you're doing. And I'm so happy. Like, I'm almost 13 years out of residency. I mean, you're new attending and you're doing all this stuff. I wish I was like you when I first got out of residency. But, you know, you know, this is so good. This is so good. I love this and. And thank you for sharing it and for everybody listening. Embrace it all. There's a whole world out there. I know sometimes it may seem like when you look at the healthcare space, it's like doctors have never been devalued the way they're devalued now. There's never been a time when doctors didn't have job security. But, you know, that's what's going on now. There's never been a time when there's been so much misinformation, so much distrust, so much competition, right? And it makes it look really bleak. But sometimes I ask, what if all that is a setup for you to become MD 2.0? And that's what we call entre MDs, right? There's an old type of version of being a doctor, and there's a new version, and that new version is the MD plus the entrepreneur. So you set your stage, you get to the head of your table, you own your own table, you negotiate. I mean, like, you build a business system around your passions, right? Because if I remember correctly, the American Academy of Urology, Society of Urology. Who called you to speak?

Oh, so I'll be speaking at the sau, the Society of Academic Urology.

Academics as a doctor who wanted to be in academic year. Look at that.

It's amazing, right?

Look at that. So you're setting the stage. And this is the beginning of your career. So you are setting the stage for all kinds of great things to happen. And I am so happy for you. Thank you. This is so good.

Thank you.

Okay, now, where do people find you? And if somebody's like, I want to support what you're doing, I love the diversity and inclusion and all these things you're doing. Trying to make a way for minorities to show up, excel in the field of urology. Where do they go? How can they support you?

Thank you. So to find me and my private practice, you can find me@georgiaurology.com and you can also follow me on all of my social media. At Twitter. I'm Hanelle with two ones as the L's instead of yeah, Chanel. And then I'm also on Instagram and FacebookenelleWilsonMD for my nonprofit. You can follow us at urologyunbound. That's on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. We also have urologyunbound.org, which is our website. And you'll be able to go find ways to support us there, whether by financially or donating. Not donating, but or volunteering. Please come volunteer and work with our students.

Excellent.

So all of those links are going to be in the show notes. Go support in whichever way you can. This is a movement that is going to change the landscape of urology. And you know what would be so great as being a part of it? All right, so I'm going to let you leave us with this. Dr. Wilson, for somebody who's thinking about entrepreneurship, they hear your story, they're inspired, but they're like scared spitless. What would you say to that person?

I would say to become an entrepreneur so that you can become the doctor that you dreamed of being when you went to medical school.

Become an entrepreneur so you can become the doctor you dreamed of being when you went to medical school. Now how good is that? That is so good. All right, guys, so you guys got it. I hope you're able to take the lessons from here, apply it to yourself. Maybe you're here, you have a passion and you just thought it was a passion, but you can go to work on it. Maybe you think you don't have the skills. You can acquire the skills. Maybe you've been thinking about investing in yourself. I will invite you to come join us in the entre Mindy business school because it's people like Dr. Wilson, a whole bunch of doctors in there who are doing mind blowing things. So come join us there. You can sign up on trimd.com for/business to get on the waitlist. So once it opens up, you'll be the first to know. But thank you so much, Dr. Wilson, for coming. And for everyone here. I will see you on the very next episode of the EntreMD podcast. Hey, if you love listening to the Entre MD podcast, I want to invite you to join Entre MD on demand. It is my signature subscription program that gives you access to a library of business courses designed to help you do.

One thing as a physician entrepreneur, and.

That is to thrive. Just head out to entremd.com forward/ondemand and I love to have you join us. See you on the inside.