Dina Strachan, MD - Dermatologist in New York City

Eva Sheie (00:03):
The purpose of this podcast is simple. We want you to get to know your doctor before meeting them in person because you're making a life-changing decision, and time is scarce. The more you can learn about who your doctor is before you meet them, the better that first meeting will be. There's no substitute for an in-person appointment, but we hope this comes close. I'm your host, Eva Sheie, and you're listening to Meet the Doctor. Hello. Today on Meet the Doctor, you're listening to my interview with Dr. Dina Strachan. She's a board certified dermatologist in New York City. Welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Strachan (00:38):
Thank you so much for having me.

Eva Sheie (00:40):
So what part of the city are you in?

Dr. Strachan (00:42):
I'm in Manhattan in the Murray Hill neighborhood near Grand Central Station.

Eva Sheie (00:49):
What do you like about the neighborhood?

Dr. Strachan (00:51):
I love that it's really convenient that there's all sorts of transportation, even for people who don't live in the city. So people who live on Long Island can get to my office very easily on public transportation, Connecticut, we're near Grand Central, which has the subway and also the Long Island Railroad, and then we're not far from Penn Station as well. And of course there are buses, so it's right in the heart of the city.

Eva Sheie (01:16):
Okay. So how did you end up there in Manhattan?

Dr. Strachan (01:20):
Well, I am a native New Yorker. I was born in the state, but raised in the city and I did my high school outside of the city. I went away to a boarding school in Connecticut and I went to college in Massachusetts, medical school in Connecticut, and then I went out to California to train, but New York called me back home.

Eva Sheie (01:43):
California either has that effect on people. They're like, I got to go back home, or they're like, I'm never leaving. It's one of the two.

Dr. Strachan (01:52):
I had a period when I thought I'd never leave, but then after a while I was like, I miss home. I felt like there were just certain things in New York that I wasn't getting, but I still love California.

Eva Sheie (02:03):
Sure. What's not to love, especially if you're just visiting. So how long have you been in your own office, running your own business and really owning everything yourself?

Dr. Strachan (02:16):
Gosh, I've been doing that since 2003. And to be honest, I know many doctors have this fantasy or this goal of having their own practice and that never was mine. I had wanted to be in academia, which I did for four years, but I was just finding it to be very corporate. It wasn't what I thought it was. Medicine was really changing in the early two thousands when I started practicing late 1990s and I wasn't finding what I wanted and I never wanted to do private practice, but I got a couple jobs just as I was thinking about, well, what do I want to do now? And I ended up deciding to open my own practice, not because that was a fantasy, but I just saw it as the only way I was going to get what I wanted in terms of having a work life that I enjoy and having things run the way I like them to run.

Eva Sheie (03:10):
Dermatology, how has Derm specifically changed since you started?

Dr. Strachan (03:17):
Wow. So I would say that since I went into it, it's become a lot more cosmetic and there are a lot more people who aren't actual board certified dermatologists in it because there's a lot more mid-level providers in dermatology now, and there's a lot more private equity. It's the goose that was laying the golden eggs. So a lot of people took interest in dermatology who aren't necessarily interested in dermatology. That's my take.

Eva Sheie (03:49):
What do you think, what do people still not understand about the importance of seeing a dermatologist when something's going on with your skin?

Dr. Strachan (04:01):
Well, I think it's because you can see the skin yourself and it seems like it's low stakes, so I think there's a temptation to do it yourself a lot. I would say that I didn't even understand what dermatologists did when I was a medical student. And I remember when I first got interested in dermatology, it was one of my friends from college who was a couple of years ahead of me in medical school who was so excited to having made the decision to go into dermatology. And I thought to myself, dermatology, how boring? Because I, because really know anything about it. And I was originally an AIDS dermatologist because I was in school in the nineties during the kind of height of all of that, and a lot of those patients had skin problems. So that's actually what started to draw me into dermatology. I was so impressed that the dermatologists that some of the other people made fun of would come in and solve the problems that the other doctors could not. They had such specialized knowledge.

Eva Sheie (05:07):
What a time to be figuring things out and helping people and such a unique experience for you. Do you remember anything about that time period in your career that propelled you into the future in a way that maybe others didn't?

Dr. Strachan (05:27):
Being interested in HIV and dermatology seemed kind of odd. You know what I mean? That's not what people thought of as derms going into dermatology to do the hard things. And I just think that taking on challenges makes you better at what you do, whatever it is that you decide to do. So I just feel like it helped engage my mind, which likes to solve puzzles and solve problems.

Eva Sheie (05:56):
Have you ever thought about writing a book about it?

Dr. Strachan (06:00):
I haven't thought about writing a book about that, but that would be an interesting book. I've written a book about just running a practice

Eva Sheie (06:08):
Oh, you have written a book?

Dr. Strachan (06:08):
Called Moxie Mindset. Yeah. That was just for doctors, but it's kind of a workbook just to get yourself in that mindset to make that transition from being a doctor to a doctor business owner, which it's a transition because a lot of what we are selected for in medicine doesn't encourage us to be good business owners or to be business owners that kind of actually can undermine our confidence and actually doctors can be great at business, we can learn medicine, we can learn business.

Eva Sheie (06:44):
I might sum that whole statement up by saying it's important to know what you don't know.

Dr. Strachan (06:50):
Yes, yes.

Eva Sheie (06:55):
When do you think that aesthetics really started to take hold for you?

Dr. Strachan (07:05):
I would say for me, when I was in private practice, and I was a little reluctant at first because my intention as a doctor is about the patient helping people. And it's not that I don't feel like aesthetics helps people, but I know that it often would attract an energy where people were interested in it just for money. And I had a patient really humble me because she had gone to get a chemical peel somewhere and had gotten a complication and she came to me with it and I said, well, why would you go to that type of place where people aren't as expert to do that procedure? And she says, do you do it? And I wasn't really offering it yet in my practice I was more of a medical practice. And I said, well, I don't really do it. She goes, but you would do it better? I said, well, I know how to do it. She says, well, if you would do it better and you wouldn't offer it to me to do, then where should I go? And I realized, wow, that was my stuff. And that actually I was helping her by actually providing the cosmetic service.

Eva Sheie (08:21):
She was going to go somewhere.

Dr. Strachan (08:23):
She was going to go somewhere to get it.

Eva Sheie (08:23):
And she ended up getting hurt.

Dr. Strachan (08:26):
Yeah, yeah. So then I started to add it more and sort of get over how I felt about that.

Eva Sheie (08:32):
What kinds of things did you start out with?

Dr. Strachan (08:35):
Oh, chemical peels. It was so obvious that that would be helpful for the patients. I was already seeing, I had so many acne patients with hyperpigmentation and they really benefited so much from the chemical peels. I mean, chemical peels built my practice really when Botox was FDA approved and came out, it was popular, but I had a relatively young practice, so I didn't understand how people were doing all this Botox because I didn't seem to have anybody who needed it at the time. And so I had such a young practice.

Eva Sheie (09:10):
Today, Allergan would say they all need it.

Dr. Strachan (09:13):
Yeah. Well, young people still do it. They do.

Eva Sheie (09:17):
Do they need it?

Dr. Strachan (09:20):
Well, that's a personal decision. That's a personal opinion. But yeah, there's so many more things now that you can do for people. There's so many more devices, there's so many more opportunities to help people cosmetically. So it's just easy. And then there's demand and awareness.

Eva Sheie (09:44):
So as you built out that menu, what did you add next?

Dr. Strachan (09:48):
Well, I probably added Botox. I got some patients who had some wrinkles to treat and fillers and devices. I started with hair removal device, some lasers, laser resurfacing, different things. Right now RF microneedling is very popular in the practice is it has so many great applications and it's so effective. I'd say it's the most popular procedure I do on men. People like it. I haven't had anyone who didn't like it even though it's, it's a longer appointment, but they, they've liked that very much. And then we have hair restoration in the practice that I have a big hair loss practice and that developed over time organically, before it was popular to treat hair loss. I just went to a program that trained us really well in hair loss. So to me it was just regular dermatology. And when I went into private practice, I learned that not every program trained people as well in hair loss. And so I would have these patients come in who had what seemed like pretty straightforward problems to me, who claimed that they had gone to see many people and I couldn't believe it, but so my patients made me a hair loss expert. So that is how my practice grew to have so many hair loss patients.

Eva Sheie (11:19):
What is your approach to treating hair loss look like?

Dr. Strachan (11:22):
Well, I treat it like I would treat any other medical problem. First of all, you get a diagnosis because there's so many different types of hair loss. So I'd say my approach is we determine what it is and we don't, hair loss and alopecia are the same word. So people say, oh, I have alopecia. And I'm like, well, yes, you have hair loss. You knew that. You knew that before you came to see me because that's why you came in. But they're different types. So we determine what type and then we start treating. I'd say that hair loss is getting really popular now because again, more and more technology, medications, options are available now. But as that happens, patients have to be more careful to make sure that they're not just picking up something for hair loss when they might have lupus and that's what they need to treat. Or they might have a scarring hair loss that's not going to respond or is going to progress if they don't treat it properly, if they don't get the right diagnosis and they'll get permanent balding. Or they have a thyroid disorder. Or I've diagnosed people with syphilis, even things like that who came in with the complaint of hair loss. So it's very important to understand that hair loss isn't just the people think of androgenetic alopecia or the hair loss that kind of just runs in the family. There's a lot more to it than that.

Eva Sheie (12:54):
I think this also highlights why you can't just go anywhere or to anyone that says they can treat hair loss, that you should actually see a real doctor. One of the funny things, I always laugh at my own stupid assumptions, and I've gotten better at not making those as I've gotten older, but I had no idea that dermatologists were the primary people who treat nails and hair along with skin. I think most people just assume it's skin. But you're also the experts in hair and nails.

Dr. Strachan (13:34):
Yes, skin, hair and nails. That's dermatology.

Eva Sheie (13:38):
Who knew?

Dr. Strachan (13:43):
I didn't know until I went into it. So

Eva Sheie (13:47):
Yeah, I mean,

Dr. Strachan (13:48):
Don't feel bad.

Eva Sheie (13:48):
If your hair's falling out, a dermatologist is a great starting point for what is happening to me.

Dr. Strachan (13:55):
Exactly. And there isn't just one blood test or one thyroid test. So here's an example, I get a lot of referrals from primary care doctors for hair loss, for patients who have hair loss. And they may have checked routine labs like TSH, which is the thyroid stimulating hormone, which is a general screening test for your thyroid. But that can be perfectly normal. The patients will come in and say, I've had every test, everything's normal. We dunno what's going on, but actually you would check different thyroid tests if you're concerned about hair loss. So I check auto antibodies and many times those are elevated and the TSH is normal, the regular thyroid test is normal, but those other ones will be abnormal because they're having some type of inflammatory event in their body that's making their hair loss not necessarily affecting their thyroid yet.

Eva Sheie (14:57):
How do you go about treating that then?

Dr. Strachan (15:01):
Well, I send them back and that's what they have to manage with either a rheumatologist depending on what it is or an endocrinologist, but it just tells you that something is about to happen.

Eva Sheie (15:14):
Yeah,

Dr. Strachan (15:15):
There's smoke.

Eva Sheie (15:15):
Are there types of hair loss that can actually be treated and then your hair could grow back?

Dr. Strachan (15:21):
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And with the new technology we have available right now, I have an alma TED device, which is a hair restoration device, which is a great alternative to PRP. No blood, no needles, no pain, and it's very consistent. And I use that a lot off-label FDA cleared for male and female pattern hair loss, which is the genetic type that's not scarring, meaning that the hair follicle hasn't been destroyed or scarred up. But even in a lot of my patients who have scarring hair loss, I've gotten excellent results with the alma TED because it's kind of rescuing the hair follicles that are damaged but not dead, which might otherwise not produce a hair or it makes them produce a higher quality hair. Sometimes you'll see that the person, it looks bald and then you look with a dermatoscope or a magnifying glass and they have really fine hairs, but cosmetically it's not doing enough because if you can't just see the hair, does it matter that it's there? You want to make it thick enough so that it looks like they have hair. And so with those types of treatments, sometimes we can get the hair follicle that's not dead to make a nice thicker hair that you can see with the naked eye.

Eva Sheie (16:41):
If you think you're losing your hair, what is the very first thing you should do?

Dr. Strachan (16:46):
I would see a board certified dermatologist to determine whether or not you are losing it. I mean, sometimes people come in and they're not actually shedding hair from their scalp, but it's breaking and they can change their grooming routines and their grooming products and that can change.

Eva Sheie (17:05):
So we might be doing something to ourselves to cause the problem.

Dr. Strachan (17:09):
Heat, your hair can get dried out, if you color your hair or you change the texture of your hair, that can damage your hair. It always damages your hair a little bit and then your hair is more likely to break.

Eva Sheie (17:22):
Before we start a recording, you told me if you could have been anything else other than a doctor, you'd have been a detective, but you sound to me like you're the hair loss detective.

Dr. Strachan (17:34):
Yeah, I guess I am a detective. I'm just applying it differently. But yes, I admit I live true crime.

Eva Sheie (17:43):
You just lit up. So is the thing that you love the mystery and solving the mystery of what is going on with somebody's skin, hair, or nails, you get to do that over and over?

Dr. Strachan (17:55):
I do. I do. I love that. I love mysteries. And again, I thought I was going to be a psychiatrist when I went into medicine and I love anthropology. I would read anthropology books as a child for fun. I kind of understanding the mystery of people and what makes them tick. And in crime, true crime, you're kind of trying to figure out what would motivate somebody to do that and how did that happen? How did they miss that? And it's the same in medicine, and I feel like derm gives you a lot of opportunity to do that because I'd say it's one of the few specialties where you kind of get to use everything. You get to use your brain, you get to use your hands. You could run derm in a vacuum because you can see the patients. You can do a biopsy, which is a surgical procedure. In some states, and we get training on this. You can read the slides. If you need to do a slide, you can read it yourself and you can do the surgery. So you can do a lot as a dermatologist.

Eva Sheie (19:01):
So also good for people who are fiercely independent.

Dr. Strachan (19:05):
Yes.

Eva Sheie (19:11):
When did you know that you wanted to be a doctor?

Dr. Strachan (19:14):
It was always something that was on the list. As a child, I wanted to be like an artist. My mom was a doctor, so yeah, I'll be a doctor. Lots of things. But I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to be a filmmaker. when I wrote away to get my applications., cuz I'm from back in the day when you had to request them and they arrive in the mail. I actually sent for anthropology graduate school and film school applications as well, but I only sent in the medical school ones.

Eva Sheie (19:48):
Oh man. Do you remember that feeling of mailing something super important?

Dr. Strachan (19:55):
Oh, yes.

Eva Sheie (19:56):
It felt totally different than fill out this online form.

Dr. Strachan (20:00):
Yeah, I think you put a little more thought into what you were doing because of the friction, because you had to invest time to make the request to receive it, to fill it out, versus just blanket applications that are very easy. I'd say one disadvantage of the easy applications is that I feel like people apply for things that they haven't really thought about as much. That's what I'm noticing,

(20:30):
Which is a shame because I think that especially when it's something like your career, your education, you're investing a lot of your time, your money, and so you want to think about why you're doing that. But I do remember, I was living in Boston when I applied to medical school and I just waited until the last minute for an application. It might've been for the medical school I went to Yale. I had to go get it sent overnight. And so I had to find out the times of a overnight delivery box, and it was at Logan Airport. And so there was a dramatic mad dash to the airport to that box in Logan Airport that would get my application in on time

Eva Sheie (21:15):
And change your life forever.

Dr. Strachan (21:20):
Their last pick up.

Eva Sheie (21:20):
Which it did.

Dr. Strachan (21:21):
Yeah.

Eva Sheie (21:22):
Let's bring it back. Are you well known for treating hair loss in New York City now? And do people call you to be an expert in that topic?

Dr. Strachan (21:33):
All the time. I mean, I do a lot of media, so I do a lot of media queries on hair loss. People approach me about hair loss products, hair loss projects, hair loss technology. I have done brand ambassador work with different hair companies, so that's definitely one of my things. It's not the only thing I do, but it's definitely a big part of my practice. And I noticed that so many people had hair loss before I was a hair loss expert. People come in for a wart and they leave with the diagnosis of hair loss as well. It becomes, by the way,

Eva Sheie (22:16):
Because you can't help yourself?

Dr. Strachan (22:18):
Well, I do a skin check on someone. I mean, some of the people I've helped the most had already decided that there was nothing they could do. That's when it feels so good. So we're just doing a routine skin exam, and I notice this hair loss often a scarring hair loss. And I say, well, how long have you had that? Are you treating it? And they're like, they might be wearing a wig. And they say, there's something I can do? And I said, yeah, there are lots of things you can do. And those that's life changing didn't even come.

Eva Sheie (22:50):
It's right there at the surface. They are sort of continuously wishing there was something you could do. I don't think that ever goes away.

Dr. Strachan (23:00):
No, no, no. I mean, I even have social friends that didn't realize I did that, and then it just would come up that I do that and I'm seeing them and I didn't realize because I'm not examining them, they have it well camouflaged that they have the problem, and I tell them if they are able to come and see me or they want to go see someone else or somewhere where they live, because it may not be possible to be seen in New York that they can get help, ask for help. You have this, I mean, that's one of the fun things about being a dermatologist. People always want to talk about it. Which

Eva Sheie (23:37):
Does it bother you or you're fine with it?

Dr. Strachan (23:39):
I'm fine with it. I mean, of course in context, if we're on the train and you bump into me, there's hipaa, we don't discuss. I have my white coat on now. I'm being the doctor, Dr. Dina. When it's off and we're in the street, we can have a conversation. But I often send people to the office because you don't want to practice medicine over dinner or at a cocktail party. People have to treat the problems they have with respect.

Eva Sheie (24:09):
What kinds of media appearances have been your favorites? Is there a show that you have been on or a story or something?

Dr. Strachan (24:17):
I'd say the most fun, the most fun one was being in a Netflix docuseries and I got to walk the red carpet into Hollywood. That was fun.

Eva Sheie (24:27):
What series was that?

Dr. Strachan (24:29):
ItTs called the Black Beauty Effect. It is a docuseries about the history of the impact of black women on the beauty industry.

Eva Sheie (24:38):
So what was it like walking the red carpet?

Dr. Strachan (24:41):
Oh, it was fun. It was fun. I went out to LA and invited some of my friends and it was just a nice experience to have. And I mean, it made me feel it was a different kind of honor that I was just here practicing, taking care of people, trying to do a good job for them, and that it was appreciated and it was like appreciated someone and wanted to codify it in a docuseries.

Eva Sheie (25:11):
Did you have to have somebody help you find what to wear and all the things, hair and makeup. And did you get to do all that too?

Dr. Strachan (25:21):
Oh yeah. It was out in LA and I ordered a dress that I brought with me, and then I had somebody from one of those mobile glam squads come over to my friend's house that I was staying with and do my makeup.

Eva Sheie (25:34):
That's such an LA thing.

Dr. Strachan (25:36):
Yes. When in LA.

Eva Sheie (25:42):
Yep.

Dr. Strachan (25:42):
When in LA. So that was fun.

Eva Sheie (25:48):
You told me also there's a fun fact about you that most people don't know.

Dr. Strachan (25:53):
That I've been to all 50 states.

Eva Sheie (25:56):
You have. Was that a goal that you set out and then you started going on trips? How'd that happen?

Dr. Strachan (26:03):
Well, it's funny how I decided to do it. It wasn't a goal, but I was watching, it was in 2016, I was watching the presidential campaign, and I just thought to myself, why do only presidential candidates get to go to all 50 states? I thought they went to all 50 states, but they did not. I think they skipped some. They skipped some, but I thought, well, I could do that. I should do that as well. And then when I counted the states I hadn't been to, I realized I'd only missed 16 and that it was quite doable. I set out to do it. And it actually, I feel like as a New York City doctor, people come from all over the country who live here. So it's kind of cool when there's the new patient, the new kid in town, bright eyes in the big city, and they come to their doctor for the first time and they're from someplace where they think no one's heard of, and I've actually been there.

Eva Sheie (27:10):
That is fun.

Dr. Strachan (27:12):
So it's a way of connecting with people.

Eva Sheie (27:15):
So we're the 16 just the least interesting states, and you had to go there. How did you do that?

Dr. Strachan (27:22):
Oh, it was kind of embarrassing because when I moved from the east coast out to California, I became acquainted with this term, the flyover states. I hadn't heard that term before. And I thought, oh, what a horrible thing to say. You know what I mean? And then when I counted the states that I hadn't been to had been the flyover states.

Eva Sheie (27:42):
It was like what, Oklahoma, Kansas, Indiana.

Dr. Strachan (27:47):
Yeah, exactly.

Eva Sheie (27:47):
You've been to Illinois, I'm sure.

Dr. Strachan (27:49):
I've been to Illinois because we used to have to physically go to the headquarters area, and I think for a lot of medical specialties, because Illinois is kind of in the middle, things are headquartered there. So we had to go there to take our boards back in the old days. And I'd been to some places in the Midwest just for social reasons, or maybe there was a conference or a course I went to, but most of them were the Midwest and mountain states. And it's not that there wasn't anything attractive about those states. I didn't have a reason to go, and I'd never driven across.

Eva Sheie (28:29):
They don't hold dermatology conferences in those states very often.

Dr. Strachan (28:32):
Yeah. Yeah. But it was fun.

Eva Sheie (28:37):
You drove.

Dr. Strachan (28:40):
Oh, I mostly flew to places and then maybe I'd drive. So the first trip I did, I flew to Wisconsin and went to the Harley Davidson Museum because I had rules. I had to go to some place, iconic, a state capital, someplace kitch. But that was really representative.

Eva Sheie (29:00):
Now, what does it say about you that you chose the Harley Davidson Museum and not the Kohler Plumbing and Toilet Museum in Wisconsin?

Dr. Strachan (29:10):
I didn't know what was there. That's what it says.

Eva Sheie (29:12):
Oh, now you're going to have to go back. It's amazing.

Dr. Strachan (29:14):
I have to go back. That does sound amazing. But Harley Davidson Museum was amazing and fun fact is that motorcycles used to be a gentleman's sport, not a bad boy sport. I learned that at the Harley Davidson Museum.

Eva Sheie (29:32):
That's really interesting.

Dr. Strachan (29:33):
Yeah.

Eva Sheie (29:34):
Okay, so you went Wisconsin, and then where did you go?

Dr. Strachan (29:37):
I drove to Iowa, and it turns out I had two friends in Iowa.

Eva Sheie (29:42):
You didn't know that you had friends in Iowa?

Dr. Strachan (29:43):
Well, one of them I knew was there, but then another one who was literally moving there the weekend I went, so I went to stay with one friend who had recently moved there, and then the other one was moving there. And then the big deal for me that trip was to go to South Dakota because I thought I was just going to pass through South Dakota. But then I saw pictures of Badlands National Park, which was so beautiful, and I stayed there for three or four days in South Dakota because it was just so gorgeous, and there was just so much history t

Eva Sheie (30:16):
here. That's wonderful. I'm so thrilled that you did that. I'm from Minnesota, so

Dr. Strachan (30:24):
I've been to Minnesota.

Eva Sheie (30:26):
I approve your flyover message, flyover state trip. I approve this message.

Dr. Strachan (30:30):
Yes.

Eva Sheie (30:33):
There's so much beauty and it just so many interesting things to do and see and people, yeah.

Dr. Strachan (30:39):
It's true.

Eva Sheie (30:42):
And a lot of kids who want to move to New York City and chase their dreams, who go and then go right back home.

Dr. Strachan (30:49):
Yeah, it's different. I mean, it's a different vibe. I could see how so much of the many of the rock stars came from the Midwest because you have that space to develop you, and then you go to the coast to kind of sell it, but you don't have all the noise competing. You know what I mean? There's an advantage there that you can just work on your own craft. You can work on yourself.

Eva Sheie (31:17):
Yep. It's very good observation. How do patients find you?

Dr. Strachan (31:24):
They find me all kinds of ways. I mean, word of mouth, referred by their doctor, on the internet. I had a website pretty early in my practice, so I think that's why when I started out, my patients were all so young and so all different sorts of ways.

Eva Sheie (31:46):
What is it like coming to see you for the first time? Can you kind of take us through that experience?

Dr. Strachan (31:51):
Well, we try to incorporate useful technology as much as possible to make an efficient experience. So I'd say that what we like to deliver in my office is effective, efficient, elegant care. And some people say that comparing it to the airport is not a good analogy, but I like that my dad was aviation instructor and that kind of regimen checklist that yes, everyone wants individualized care, but there's certain things that have to happen in this process. So we make the appointment for people, we verify their insurance, we take insurance, and then now we send them digitally intake information. So instead of people sitting in the office for 15 minutes filling out papers, it's all done. So now when they walk in, there's just a little bit, they show us their insurance cards if they haven't already sent that, and then we can see them very quickly.

(32:55):
And I tend to be a very results oriented doctor, focused on solving the problem for people. So I tend to be fast. I actually wrote an article for Kevin md, I don't apologize for being a fast doctor. That was actually one of their top 10 articles in 2016.

Eva Sheie (33:16):
Oh, cool.

Dr. Strachan (33:17):
And it's the idea of I did all the work already. If it were an app and it were fast, we'd say, yay. If it's me and I'm fast, we should say yay, because you didn't come to waste your time on earth. People have things to do. They have their jobs to get back to, their families to get back to. And so we try to solve your problem the first time. People might think it's more complicated to come to a specialist. It's actually easier if someone knows what you have the first time. You don't get three biopsies by someone who doesn't know.

Eva Sheie (33:56):
That's a nice benefit.

Dr. Strachan (33:57):
Exactly.

Eva Sheie (33:59):
It's interesting. In one of my jobs, I surveyed patients for about five years. That was all we did. And I learned that people don't like being rushed, but they also don't like waiting and that the amount they don't like those two things is equal. And I spent a lot of time thinking about this. We like things to be fast, but when we're rushed because we're not being heard, that's what we don't like.

Dr. Strachan (34:25):
Yes,

Eva Sheie (34:26):
Fast getting the answer fast is not what we're complaining about when we say that I was rushed. So how do you balance giving your patients time to talk and be heard with being fast?

Dr. Strachan (34:41):
Well, I'd say I try to figure out what's going on, and then it just depends on how much somebody needs to be heard. Because living in a time now where people spend a lot of time on social media, and a lot of times they want to talk and talk and talk, but it's not helping them. No, honestly. And so I see myself and my staff, we talk about this. It's a way of shepherding, corralling us back, getting us back on track because it's different. It's different than when I started. I wanted to be a therapist when I started, and therapy is much more popular now. So this kind of idea of engaging every situation, like you're in that situation during therapy, but it's not always good to do that in every situation. Sometimes things are just straightforward, and so you want to keep them straightforward. It actually makes it harder to get you help, and it can make it more expensive for you if you want things to be dramatic and complicated when they don't have to be.

(35:53):
You know what I mean? I don't expect, I've taken care of people in the ICU and I worked in the hospital, very sick patients. That's how I started my career. So I know how to spend time, the right time with people who need that kind of time, who require that. But if you have one wart, but have a lot of feelings about it, I may not spend as much time with you as I did, I do with the person whose skin is blistering off.

Eva Sheie (36:21):
Let's be realistic.

Dr. Strachan (36:23):
But this is just the truth. I mean, people's sort of expectations, sometimes the person who's concerned about that, maybe you don't need that to be heard that way from your doctor. Maybe you need to do more social things. That's one of the things I talked about in my article. I was noticing it as a doctor in a very social job that the people who would complain about not getting enough time from me got the most time from me.

Eva Sheie (36:48):
Are they lonely?

Dr. Strachan (36:51):
I thought in some cases that might be the case, but also it was before people were starting to work from home, order everything on apps, interact on a phone, not interact with people. And so when you stop interacting with people, the doctor, I can't make up for that loss of social contact. And so that's one of the things I was able to observe. I guess that's what my anthropology brain, that's why that article was very popular that year. I'm here, I'm just your dermatologist. I treated your wart. It's fine. We treated you well with respect, but I can't make up for the fact that you don't talk to people that you don't socialize. There's nothing I can do to compensate for that, nor should I, because that's not my job. You should go socialize with people, I think, in all services, because I feel like,

Eva Sheie (37:51):
What about Bob is what popped into my head? How many times did I watch?

Dr. Strachan (37:55):
Oh what is that?

Eva Sheie (37:55):
What about Bob the movie?

Dr. Strachan (37:58):
Oh, I don't know that movie.

Eva Sheie (37:59):
Are you kidding? Really?

Dr. Strachan (38:01):
I'm surprised I'm such a filmer.

Eva Sheie (38:02):
Oh No. Okay. Bill Murray is like a hypochondriac and he goes, he drives his doctor crazy because he needs him too much.

Dr. Strachan (38:13):
Okay.

Eva Sheie (38:14):
Okay. So I know what you're doing tonight. It's your assignment is that you have to watch. What about Bob?

Dr. Strachan (38:19):
What about Bob. On it. No, I'm surprised. I have not seen that. I used to run film societies in college and medical school, so I'm surprised I haven't heard of that one.

Eva Sheie (38:32):
I think maybe if you look it up, you'll be like, oh, that movie, it's right there with Groundhog Day. I would put it in that category with Bill Murray Classics. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, it's been a pleasure getting to know you today. Is there anything that we missed that you want anyone who is considering coming to see you to know about you?

Dr. Strachan (38:57):
Well, we offer medical and cosmetic dermatology for patients of all skin types and hair textures, and I think that we can probably help you if you have a skin, hair and nail problem and want to come to New York. We also do telemedicine. I have a license in New York State and Connecticut right now and I'm working on some others. So check in with us if you're watching this at some future date because we may be able to do a telemedicine visit if you can't come to New York.

Eva Sheie (39:30):
I'll make sure we put the link to your website and all your social media in the show notes. And thank you for joining me today.

Dr. Strachan (39:39):
Well, thank you. This was fun.

Eva Sheie (39:43):
If you are considering making an appointment or are on your way to meet this doctor, be sure to let them know you heard them on the Meet the Doctor podcast. Check the show notes for links including the doctor's website and Instagram to learn more. Are you a doctor or do you know a doctor who'd like to be on the Meet the Doctor podcast? Book your free recording session at MeettheDoctorpodcast.com. Meet the Doctor is Made with Love in Austin, Texas and is a production of The Axis, theaxis.io.