On the Radio: Giving Colleagues a Voice

CR: What are some of the memorable moments from Partners in Practice?

LENELL: My favorite shows, always, are the personal interest stories. My favorite was Vic Germino, one of the original four PAs from Duke. He is such a humble, amazing man, and he came on and told his story in a beautiful, personal way. I had goosebumps when it was over.

Another favorite is Russ Dorr, the medical writer for Stephen King. He’s a PA who still works full-time in pediatrics and he’s “Russ Dorr, the man behind the gore.” I got so many comments after that show, because who knew that the guy who writes all the medical info for Stephen King is a PA?

The only time we did a “breaking news” show was in Haiti. There were many, many PAs there, and of course no one talked about them. So I really wanted to get a PA who was in Haiti on the air. Eric Holden was in Haiti, and he managed to get a phone—we waited for him at the studio for a couple hours, in the hope that he could reach us. Anyway, Eric got a phone from a military operation that was assisting his group of responders. And you could hear in the background, while he was talking to us, everything that was going on. I was really grateful for him to come on.

My favorite topics in the past two years have been the global developments of the PA profession; I’ve become a little bit of an addict. I decided I was going to interview someone from every single country where there was a PA program. [These segments covered programs in Ghana, Canada, Australia, Scotland, England, Puerto Rico, and the Netherlands; Lenell has also interviewed PAs who did humanitarian work in Sudan and coordinated an exchange program with Thailand.]

SECOR: I think the most touching interview I have done was with Maryana McGlasson, who had just come back from working with Doctors Without Borders on the Nigerian cholera epidemic. That interview is just wrenching—how she found herself in the midst of hundreds of people suffering from cholera and she was basically put in charge, she had nothing to work with, and people were dying around her.

She also discussed how she had changed her life—she sold her house and moved back with her parents so that she could have the flexibility to, with two days’ notice, be dispatched wherever she’s needed in the world, to work for Doctors Without Borders. She described feeling like this was the reason she went into health care and became an NP, to make that kind of difference. It’s a poignant interview about how much of an impact we can have.

The most surprising guest was probably CAPT Linnea Axman, one of the top-ranked NPs in the Navy. I expected her to be a little more formal, but actually, she was so humanistic and so real in how she described her commitment to her service in the military, that it was just beautiful. She was so articulate and so personally motivated. She described her family history of multiple family members being in the military. I just didn’t expect to be moved that much.

CR: Who is on your wish list of future guests?

SECOR: My wish list includes the incredibly overachieving fellows in the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. I would like to do a radio show with every single one of them. I consider them the top-ranked NPs in the country. And I would need to do a live radio show every day to get through; there are several hundred now!

LENELL: One is Richard (Dick) Smith, who many consider one of, if not the, founders of the PA profession. He agreed to come on the show a while back, but then he had to cancel due to illness. So I still think it would be the capstone of my radio career to have Dick Smith on.

I would love to have President Obama on, but that’s probably not going to work out. We’ve reached out to Michelle Obama a few times for her diabetes work, so we’re hopeful that might work out at some point.

CR: What do you find most rewarding about your work on Partners in Practice?

LENELL: For me, it has always been about the opportunity to meet so many people. Along the way, I have learned more from the show than I’ve learned in any school or practice in life. I do my own writing—so does Mimi—and for a while I produced the show myself, so to do a good show, you have to know your topic. It forced me to learn about everyone and everything I was going to talk about.