Training Future Physicians with Empathy (ft. Anderson Spickard)

Thanks for tuning to Digital Voices podcast, where we chat digital transformation, challenges, and opportunities across healthcare and life sciences. And now your host, Ed Marx.

Hey, it's Ed here. Welcome to another edition of Digital Voices, and super excited because we get to go into academia a little bit, but even more than that, it's just a great, great person. So I want to welcome Dr. Anderson Spickard, Dean and Professor, Thomas F. Frist Jr. College of Medicine. Anderson, welcome to Digital Voices.

It is such a delight to be here. Thank you for having me.

Now, this is fun because I haven't touched into the teaching side very often on Digital Voices. And so we are all things healthcare. And so this is super, super appropriate. We first met less than a month from this time of this recording, which is in July of 2025. We have someone in common, Dr. Slakey, who works with you, serves with you, and he invited us out to check out this innovation center that you all have. And then I was sort of surprised, you know, we were sort of wrapping up and we're gonna go into a boardroom conference room and just talk about the experience we just had before headed to dinner. And then you came and I was like, Wow, the dean of the medical school is spending time with us. And I immediately just felt a connection because you were so real with everyone and authentic and genuine and warm. And it's like you wanted to be there. And then, then you double surprised me coming to dinner. And now you're my guest on Digital Voices. So again, thank you. But that's, that's how the genesis of how we met.

It was serendipitous, that's for sure. Thank you.

And then the most important question on Digital Voices, even though we are going to get into academia, are what songs are on your playlist?

You're so funny. You know, I'm, I'm coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee, so this is huge pressure. It's a little rangy. We have the country songs from my favorite songwriter named Tom Douglas. House That Built Me, Little Rock, Grown Men Don't Cry. Maybe my favorite that he wrote for Lady A, I Run to You. And there's a great story behind that that I know about. There's another artist in town who's more of a ballad, beautiful writer named Andrew Peterson. I listen to a lot of his things. And then I'm, you know, I don't know if we're going to do age of each other or the audience. There's a lot from the '70s and '80s that just will not go away, right? Bob Seger, Turn the Page.

Yeah.

You know, of course, I don't know, Chicago, Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind& Fire. Billy Joel, Piano Man.

Yeah, I love those. Yeah, and a lot of the songs you're describing and the artists are, are definitely poets, right? Right. I mean, you, you listen to those music, listen to the lyrics, like Turn the Page, and you feel like you're right there. And same with Piano Man. Those are classics for sure. And I don't think we've had Andrew Peterson or Tom Douglas mentioned previously. We do have a Spotify playlist for Digital Voices, so we're gonna add them to it.

That is really fun.

Yeah. I just, sometimes when I'm just chilling, I just put on our playlist and it reminds me of all the different guests that we had.

I get it. And it says a little bit more about them, doesn't it?

Yeah. What about life message and mantra? Are there words that sort of guide you?

There's 3 or 4 or 7 or 9 or 17 or 25. I don't know. I, you know, it's interesting as a dean to start in this context, but I will tell you, I'm a person from a Christian ethos and I believe that I was created and I was created for a purpose. And so, I'm going to say I believe that the God who created me delights in me. And so then I can delight in him and, Lord willing, be a delight to others. So it's just this sort of this idea of something bigger is going on.

Wow, that's profound. That's good. It's giving me goosebumps. I like that a lot. Sometimes I think about You know, purpose, life purpose, and it's always hard to articulate it, you know, what you just so beautifully articulated. And so that's another— so I have some new language. So thank you. Let's talk about you. Like, where were you born?

You know, native Nashvillian comes home is my story. I grew up in the city from which I am speaking to you, Nashville, Tennessee. Older brother, younger sister, middle child, not a complicated you know, harrowing upbringing. I mean, seriously, a home filled with love and faith and a deep sense of responsibility. My parents were both community leaders who did model service, you know? And so I grew up with a strong sense of the value of others and this idea. It sounds so righteous. Like, this— I'm going to disappoint you in a nanosecond as soon as you get to know me. But seriously, just, uh, A perspective of thankfulness, of a perspective of I have been given a lot, you know, and that phrase, you know, he who has much is expected. I don't, I don't mean that in a way that's onerous or shame-provoking. I am so filled with love and maybe less confusion about who I am.

Yeah.

You know, how do I orient myself towards others? And that came through a, through a solid home upbringing. And then And then I met my wife, my college sweetheart. We're coming up on 40 years this spring. Best friend. And like your beautiful listeners, you know, we've navigated the joys and challenges of life. Um, like, like I'm sure you have. And, um, here we are. Um, still at it after all these years.

Yeah, no, that's great. And, and what, what was the college where the two of you met?

We met at Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. I went there. From Nashville. She was from Charlotte and we met there our freshman year essentially and dated throughout college.

Wow. That's cool.

And then funny story, funny story. I tried to do medical school without her. So I came back to Vanderbilt, to Nashville, Tennessee. She went on as a loan officer in Atlanta. And I remember studying like several months into that first year of med school. I was like, I cannot do this without her. I'm going to ask that girl to marry me. And so we got married soon thereafter.

You're a smart man. Yeah, that, that's great. Yeah. What a story. That is, that's awesome. Who asked who out first? Like when you saw her, like how long did it take before you, you or she asked you out?

Yeah, it was first night of college. We met at a fraternity party, wild fraternity, and I offered to walk her home. So, um, I think it was a mutual walk that led to, hey, let's hang out. I don't know anybody. Do you? You know?

Anderson, you're, you're smooth.

I love that.

What, what about becoming a physician? What was the catalyst that led you to choose medicine?

Yeah, it's a great question.

I—

my dad's a physician, um, and frankly, and, you know, really my best friend. So I grew up with, you know, an understanding of what that could look like. Still, for me, I love the science, the, the intellectual curiosity of the field, and of course, not of course, but for me, the human connection. And as I explored more and saw more, I realized, um, there's just an unusual invitation to be at the side of people in their communities and their, in their contexts at their most vulnerable places. And man, that, that to me is very sobering and very motivating.

And tell us about your, your specialty, and then how did you get involved on the academic side?

This is great. Internal medicine, general internist, one of the, you know, old school primary care docs who hung in there, loved, and was really sort of shaped by being with patients in that setting and being in longitudinal relationships. I started all this in academia actually because I thought that, you know, we're— and you've done a lot of work in this area, where the puck is going and how the next generation needs to be handed over the revealed knowledge and the skills and attitudes to do it would be something I'd probably be a part of. So I got involved with academics, but was a little bit unusual to stick with primary care and to be in a tertiary academic medical center. It ended up being Vanderbilt, although I trained all over the country, but almost 3 decades at Vanderbilt as a primary care physician, but also involved with the academic work of research and teaching.

Yeah, no, that's really cool. And even though Thomas F. Frist Jr. College of Medicine is the newest medical school, right, in this country, I think it's still—

There's one that's starting this month. And so, you know, I think we're number 158.

Okay. So pretty new, pretty new, but you're not the first dean. Tell us how you became the dean.

Oh, first of all, this endeavor is pretty courageous. This is a smaller university college that has health-related colleges and conceived to add to it a medical school. And from the conception to current state, this has only been 4 years or less. And so I was invited to come as one of the inaugural faculty members, kind of a jack of all trades. In fact, that story is just a little bit interesting. It was a text from a medical student who texted me, hey, Dr. Spicker, crazy question. A former medical student of mine who still had my cell phone number. how would you feel about helping start a medical school across the street? Because geographically Belmont University and Vanderbilt University are about half a mile from one another. And then, so, so I was part of the initial crew of a few of us conceiving how we were going to put all this together while the building was— the ground was being excavated and the building was being built and we were having input in all of that. And so did not come as the dean. And then our founding dean had an acute health issue from which he has recovered, but it created a situation where someone needed to step in and I was asked to do that singularly in one day. And from there was asked to stay and to continue on as the, not permanent, whatever you say, the standing dean of the school.

Well, Anders, I remember you telling me how it all happened, where they asked you and what, and your response was so beautiful and authentic. And I was wondering if you wouldn't mind sharing, you know, that response that you had.

For your audience, our conductor of this music has now taken us to a beautiful and rigorous place, and that is this. I came to the university here at Belmont in a situation of navigating the diagnosis and treatment of my 27-year-old son Lucas's acute myelogenous leukemia, AML. I had the privilege of actually diagnosing him when he was in town, uh, when COVID broke out. So it was about June of 2020.

Yeah.

And we had a long journey, um, of just so much to say. But there I was as a professor for 27 years at Vanderbilt, watching the young men and women and the multidisciplinary team Take care of my son in the ICU weeks on end for the, for the chance of getting to remission. And his only chance thereafter was a bone marrow transplant. And so we fought and fought for that opportunity. He got there, he and his wife, story of a, of a young married couple with extraterrestrial courage who moved to Nashville to get all this treatment. And I tell you all that because we did find a perfect match for him. It was our daughter.

Wow.

Who lives in Denver. And so you can imagine, and I know you have many in your audience, and Ed, you have your story too that you've written about, but in this situation, having 2 children who are facing the most dire of situations and giving their all for one another, just a beautiful, beautiful thing. And, uh, very, very deeply Esconstan and science and discovery and bedside and teams and All the things that my whole life had been about and that I wanted to give to others. And here it is, the recipients in a small way of what I've been a part of were actually giving back to me and caring for my son. And Belmont called me to join this endeavor when he was in remission after receiving his bone marrow transplant from Anna, our daughter. And fast forward, uh, helping to start the school and then have the situation where I was asked to become the interim dean acutely. That actually is dated after Lucas lost lost his life to his disease. And frankly, some other things too, including my father passed away just a month thereafter.

I'm sorry. Yeah.

And I actually had a diagnosis of cancer myself that folks didn't know about and was being treated for and was literally post-operative the day that I was asked by the president, the provost, and the board to take this on. Doesn't make sense on a spreadsheet.

Right.

Called my wife from the parking lot of a, of a, of the lunch that I had with the president and the provost when they asked me to do this. What do you think? And I think what you're referring to, Ed, which I mentioned to you, was that that evening the board met with me to ask me to take this on. And we made the agreements and I found myself saying at the end of that conversation, Okay, we're all good, but you need to know what you just did. You just brought on a wounded leader. And the board chair, you know what? That's the best kind. So things get pretty real in the face of suffering that really asks a lot of us to reflect and to figure out how we're going to put days together, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. That's deep. There was part of that story I was not aware of. I appreciated where You had shared, look, I'm a fallible leader. I'm a broken person, you know, and you're so authentic to be able to say that. You know, a lot of us would wanna put up a mask and, and, uh, present ourselves differently when it's not real, you know? And that led Anderson to some profound conversation we had at the dinner table about humility and authenticity. And we sort of went around this table. There were some other colleagues with us. And we asked a question of what is, what's the catalyst that makes someone, you know, humble or that makes a leader a great leader? And you had an answer that just stopped me in my tracks. And, and it was suffering. And that a leader is really sharpened. I don't want to, I'm not, I'm not putting words in your mouth. I want to ask you the question to elaborate on it, but You know, leadership may be sharpened or developed with suffering. Would you mind going into that a layer deeper? Obviously, we know the backstory now of Lucas and some of the suffering there and the trauma yourself. And there may be other parts and pieces like all of our lives. But yeah, can you elaborate a little bit more?

Yeah. Well, gosh, this is— how do you put your thoughts together on this one? All right, when you suffer, guess what? Your vulnerabilities become, uh, you know, uh, so exposed. You become just like those patients on the gurney.

Yeah.

Um, you know, and you become, you know, sort of undone by some of your assumptions, maybe, and especially about yourself. And so isn't this ironic? That I would talk to you, that a starting point of this is just understanding my own limitations.

Yeah.

As opposed to how much I've accomplished, you know, how I'm going to be the answer to everything. And just, you know, you buy me and trust in me and I'll lead you to the promised places that we're trying to get to, right? No question, no question that, that I have to set vision, be enthusiastic about the future. Yeah. You know, be confident and obviously be competent.

Yes.

Not just confident, but competent.

Yes.

But a healthy dose of understanding my limitations and allowing, you know, the work of suffering to have to run its course, which can build up resilience and perseverance. And now I'm talking over my head. There's so many people in your audience who know. so much more than me. But if you move, if, you know, in my case, if you marry that with a faith system that you do think there's hope, that there is a future, that it's all for naught, then all of a sudden you find yourself not leading in spite of brokenness, like you're white-knuckling your way.

Yeah.

And I can overcome this. And, you know, you just find your way. But you're allowing it space in your life to almost have a shaping influence. And so you find yourself leading, living through brokenness, not in spite of it.

Yeah.

I used to say, you know, there's a big hole in my heart, as if I manage it on weekends or something, you know, and just be strong during the week. And I'm learning how to say it differently now, which is this thing is, you know, shaping my new identity. And it's informing me. And it's not to be something to repress or to, and I hope I'm not doing this with your audience, you know, leak all over everybody.

Yeah.

It's not, doctor's words, you're not coagulated, you know, in order to keep thoughts and strategic work and all the things going, but allow it to have its role. And I'm still working it out. Still grieving, still allowing, as you and others, all of us who grieve know, the grief to have a life of its own, because it does, right?

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's beautifully stated. It's interesting. I was thinking as you were sharing that God tends to use broken people the most. You know, when you think about examples from scripture and you think about other examples from from life from the last couple thousand years, it's oftentimes the broken, you know, that the Lord calls to do amazing things. And if you looked at it from a spreadsheet, like you were talking about earlier, you know, you would say, no, I'm not going to pick these people in that column because, oh my gosh, they're broken. They're so messed up. I'm going to get these perfect people. So it's kind of funny. Or not funny, but, you know, interesting.

You know, if I may, especially in your work, Ed, um, I'm so endeared to all that you and your team and your co-writers have done. You know, this conversation, when you hear the word broken, you hear that a lot. I don't love that word. It's, it's because it sounds like there is, there's nothing good within that per— you know, for example, and this is where I'm trying to go. I've been encouraged in our, in my role here, 'cause we, we think a lot about the health system and, and we're training the next generation of students. Yeah. A whole other conversation. And you've had some conversations with my colleagues on, on our team, but how do we, you know, how do we not just category somebody or something only as broken? End of sentence.

Yeah.

How do we believe that life does come through death? That a grain does have to go into the ground before it sprouts. How do we train the next generation of physicians, which we're trying to do here in our strategic plan at Belmont, to think not just that the health system is broken, but to become students of it and agents of hope in it?

Yeah.

And they see it again, like AI and everything you guys are talking about, we are too, not as binary positive or negative. But as a revealed asset from our, our God who's in control, and how do we steward it, right? So it requires entering in hard places, places that are often deemed as broken. That's just being a house call doc my whole career, et cetera. You know, I've enjoyed getting in the ditches and trying to figure out a third way out.

Yeah. No, that's, that's great insight. We're going to pivot back to Thomas F. Frist Junior College of Medicine because I'm super curious. I think our audience is as well. So this is a good segue into some of the other questions I had for you. So in training the next generation of physicians, speaking about empathy and the whole concepts of suffering stuff, how, how do you help clinicians who are developing have that kind of Yeah.

Yeah, it's a great question. Of course, it starts with the aim and how we articulate what our mission is and make sure that we're very clear and deliberate about that, both in our students that we recruit and in our physicians and staff. It's on the web. We have this mission that we're trying to cultivate physician leaders of character who embrace a whole-person approach to healthcare in a community of service learning, and in our context, inspired by the love and grace of Christ. And we want to do so in a very hospitable way that is receiving and welcoming of all faith and no faith and all people and bring, you know, multidimensional, beautiful fabric of the mosaic of all God's people and ideas together. And so we try to keep that in front of our students. And it's not, you know, okay, once a month we're going to, you know, have this half day and we're going to talk about our hearts.

Right.

We actually have courses like a, you know, a regular course in the first year that's about the wisdom and wonder, W-O-N, not U-A-N, wandering around, wondering, you know, what, what's, but the wonder of what we're doing, you know, boy, if we could graduate students who still are enchanted with all of this and are not, you know, already sensing the burnout. and the lack of hope, I don't wanna say optimism, but just hope and being value-added people, then we're away from our mission. So to answer your question, we embed it sort of in threads, we embed it in our weekly work. It's all over the curriculum from day one. There's specifics we can give around that. Yeah.

So this is Digital Voices, so I have to ask one technical question to qualify, 'cause we're under Apple, we're in the tech bucket, number 8, by the way. way, in the world, thanks to great guests like yourself. How are you incorporating— and we do have Dr. Slakey, another of your colleagues, also on one of our other channels going in depth into the simulation center. What are some ways, one way that you're making sure that the current students and graduating physicians are equipped with technology?

Yeah, I mean, there's so many. So We do a combination of cadavers and virtual reality and augmented reality with how we teach anatomy, for example.

Yeah.

And we would have, you know, an anatomy digital dissection table that goes along with that. And so it's a combo. We have point-of-care ultrasound. We have an electronic medical record that our students are already learning about.

Yeah.

But underneath all that are the deeper things like how do you ask a good question? What are the resources What are the— how do you evaluate the, you know, the value of those resources?

Yeah.

Are they appropriate for this type of setting? What are the ethics around using information, especially with all the AI stuff that can, you know, the beautiful ways that AI can be used? We have clinical decision support tools already in the type of assignments that we have for our preclinical students. We're testing wearable devices on some of our faculty staff right now. Just to see if the students would like to be involved with some work in that space.

This has been a great conversation. On leadership, I always like to ask, how do you recharge your batteries and remain fresh? Because obviously being a dean, I mean, that's big. And you're a father and you're a husband, and I'm sure you're involved in the community and in church. So what do you do to sort of recharge?

All right, we got to get outside, we got to hike, got, uh, a regular, uh, tennis match with a bunch of knucklehead friends. Of course, at our age, we think it's the Super Bowl every time we go out, right?

What about pickleball? Did you have to go to— did you have to move to pickleball, or are you a tennis player?

Yeah, you know what, my, my answer to pickleball— I really love it, but I only do it if I'm invited. So I'm not proactive. And actually, it's something my wife and I can do together. We're enjoying— I don't know, I love journaling. I love those morning coffees and reflection time before I get going. Dinner conversations with friends. Picked up my guitar from when I was a kid, back taking lessons. And just last weekend, I gave it a go trying to make bread.

Make bread.

Give myself a B-minus. We're going to try again if I get the courage up.

Oh, that sounds fun. Yeah. Yeah, those are all great, great techniques. We covered so much ground. I mean, we could have kept going and I was like looking at the time and I wish we had more, but we talked everything about music. I love the life message. I'm probably not gonna get it exactly right, but I'm gonna repeat it the best way I know how, that God delights in you and as you delight in him, you can become a delight, hopefully to others.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

And, uh, I've never said that before. That came to me this morning. So that's really special.

No, that spoke to me big time because like I said, I, I have a hard time articulating. I do have a sort of a strategic plan for my life and a vision statement of why I'm creating, but it's not as nice as that. So I may steal that from you. So, um, we talked about you and your life and your 40 years almost of marriage, your college sweetheart. We just talked about a lot of things on on, on how wonderful the Thomas F. Frist Jr. College of Medicine is and how you became the dean and how you are teaching the next generation of, of physicians. And then, uh, we talked about some tech, and then we talked a lot about suffering, which, you know, is about the human, you know, spirit. And is there anything we missed or anything you want to double down on? I'll give you the last word.

So I'm a new grandfather, and there's a, there's a, there's an awesome little book called The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse. And it has these sayings in there. And there are 2 of them that kind of speak to the same topic and maybe in a contradictory way. One is, I wish I listened less to my fears and more to my dreams.

Hmm.

Isn't that crazy? Isn't that just amazing? Because here I am, it sounds so accomplished, but I live in such that imposter syndrome. And I ask myself and I ask my colleagues and I ask the students, Is your imposter syndrome having an eroding effect, E-R-O-D-I-N-G, or a helpful effect? 'Cause there's this sense of humility and, you know, holding something bigger than yourself. So that's, that's just one phrase. And, you know, as a leader, I need to keep my dreams in front of me. You need to keep the dreams in front of everybody else.

Yes.

I mean, but the day-to-day is really hard.

Yeah.

So then the next quote, just, I can't believe I'm reading this to a 3-year-old. As they were, they were talking about, is your cup half empty or half full? And the animal said, I think to whoever asked, little boy maybe asked it, I'm just happy to have a cup.

Yeah.

And so this idea of all this analysis.

Yeah.

Are you empty? Are you full? Are you below the line? Are you above the line? How are you coming into work today? You know, yes, yes, yes, all of that. But let's just step back and just for a moment realize that we have been privileged To carry the cup like our Lord carried the cup.

Yeah.

To empty ourselves for others as he fills us up. And that there's a missional something. I'm trying to sort out what this means. This is again new to me, but this, instead of debating how full life is, but just appreciate that I'm alive and I'm equipped to live it, you know?

Anderson, well said. Thank you so much.

Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Digital Voices Podcast with Ed Marx. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your preferred streaming service and leave a rating and review. And most importantly, thanks again for listening.

Thank you.