By: Udhay Joshi
Posted For: November 25, 2013
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| Dr. John Lynn Jefferies (Courtesy of cincinnatichildrens.org) |
Working 70 hours a week, constant life and death cases, exhaustion, endless accreditation exams, stringent teaching, instructing interns, and advancing medical research are just a few of the grueling aspects about a physician's work. The purpose of a physician is to diagnose and treat patients through conventional medicine, allopathic medicine, and or surgery. Most physicians tend to act clinically, interacting with patients, but all physicians are also qualified as medical researchers.
There are hundreds of specialties that a physician can focus his or her career on. An example of this kind of specialization would be a physician who focuses in the field of Cardiology, known as a Cardiologist. A renowned Cardiologist within Cincinnati, Ohio is Dr. John Lynn Jefferies. Dr. Jefferies works at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center as an Adult and Pediatric Cardiologist. Dr. Jefferies specializes in Cardiomyopathy and Advanced Heart Failure.
Dr. Jefferies got a chance to share his story on November 23, 2013 in a face to face recorded interview at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Dr. Jefferies began his pursuit of medicine in 1988 when he entered the University of Tennessee as a freshman pre-medical student. Dr. Jefferies was interested in medicine all his life and had many family members in medicine. “Originally, I was just going into medicine because all of my family did,” Dr. Jefferies stated. “However, my affinity toward medicine was fully developed after volunteering for 3 straight years at a hospital in my hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee.” The trials of all physicians start as an undergraduate student and an iron will is the only factor that will allow students to achieve their dreams.
Dr. Jefferies confirmed that his path to becoming a Cardiologist was “traditional” by modern standards. “I went to four years of undergrad at the University of Tennessee (1988-1992), four years of medical school at the University of Tennessee (1992-1996), spent four years as a resident physician at the University of Kentucky (1996-2000), received my Master of Public Health degree at the University of Kentucky (2000-2001), and had a fellowship at the Baylor College of Medicine (2003-2006).” The combined total of 16 years of upper and professional level education is roughly the average amount of time a student spends in the process to become a physician.
Dr. Jefferies jokingly quotes about the trials and tribulations of life as a physician and adding more depth than “just the job description”. “Getting into medical school and all those years of residency are the easier parts of physician's life,” Dr. Jefferies jokes. “I currently have to train interns and residents, see roughly 15 patients a day, address patients with very severe heart conditions, keep up with the 20 research grants under my name, and go home to raise my kids. The books and clinicals in medical school were much easier!” As with most physicians, Dr. Jefferies is committed solely to his patients while in the hospital, but must train other young physicians so the same excellent care can be given to all future patients.
Other than teaching proper bedside manner, Dr. Jefferies acts as a consultant for resident physicians. “The best way to learn the in depth techniques and decipher through cases more efficiently is through experience in the field. I purposely give my residents the hardest cases. It’s not out of personal laziness. It’s about dealing with the extremes because the hardest cases will give you the most experience in every facet of medicine and in life as a physician.” Dr. Jefferies's commitment to his patients is equally as important as training his residents.
For Dr. Jefferies, friendly patient interaction is one of the most important skills to develop and the hardest skill to cultivate in physicians. “Most interns and residents have had their brains hardwired to be able to think critically and rely on their medical school training to properly diagnose and treat patients; however, I feel that most of them fail to realize that patients are people too, but they are much more terrified than the medical staff.” Dr. Jefferies has enacted a protocol within the Cardiology department, with the help of the Co-Director of Cardiology Dr. Jeffery Towbin, that requires all physicians and researchers working through Cardiology to spend at least 12 minutes with each patient.
There are hundreds of specialties that a physician can focus his or her career on. An example of this kind of specialization would be a physician who focuses in the field of Cardiology, known as a Cardiologist. A renowned Cardiologist within Cincinnati, Ohio is Dr. John Lynn Jefferies. Dr. Jefferies works at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center as an Adult and Pediatric Cardiologist. Dr. Jefferies specializes in Cardiomyopathy and Advanced Heart Failure.
Dr. Jefferies got a chance to share his story on November 23, 2013 in a face to face recorded interview at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Dr. Jefferies began his pursuit of medicine in 1988 when he entered the University of Tennessee as a freshman pre-medical student. Dr. Jefferies was interested in medicine all his life and had many family members in medicine. “Originally, I was just going into medicine because all of my family did,” Dr. Jefferies stated. “However, my affinity toward medicine was fully developed after volunteering for 3 straight years at a hospital in my hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee.” The trials of all physicians start as an undergraduate student and an iron will is the only factor that will allow students to achieve their dreams.
Dr. Jefferies confirmed that his path to becoming a Cardiologist was “traditional” by modern standards. “I went to four years of undergrad at the University of Tennessee (1988-1992), four years of medical school at the University of Tennessee (1992-1996), spent four years as a resident physician at the University of Kentucky (1996-2000), received my Master of Public Health degree at the University of Kentucky (2000-2001), and had a fellowship at the Baylor College of Medicine (2003-2006).” The combined total of 16 years of upper and professional level education is roughly the average amount of time a student spends in the process to become a physician.
Dr. Jefferies jokingly quotes about the trials and tribulations of life as a physician and adding more depth than “just the job description”. “Getting into medical school and all those years of residency are the easier parts of physician's life,” Dr. Jefferies jokes. “I currently have to train interns and residents, see roughly 15 patients a day, address patients with very severe heart conditions, keep up with the 20 research grants under my name, and go home to raise my kids. The books and clinicals in medical school were much easier!” As with most physicians, Dr. Jefferies is committed solely to his patients while in the hospital, but must train other young physicians so the same excellent care can be given to all future patients.
Other than teaching proper bedside manner, Dr. Jefferies acts as a consultant for resident physicians. “The best way to learn the in depth techniques and decipher through cases more efficiently is through experience in the field. I purposely give my residents the hardest cases. It’s not out of personal laziness. It’s about dealing with the extremes because the hardest cases will give you the most experience in every facet of medicine and in life as a physician.” Dr. Jefferies's commitment to his patients is equally as important as training his residents.
For Dr. Jefferies, friendly patient interaction is one of the most important skills to develop and the hardest skill to cultivate in physicians. “Most interns and residents have had their brains hardwired to be able to think critically and rely on their medical school training to properly diagnose and treat patients; however, I feel that most of them fail to realize that patients are people too, but they are much more terrified than the medical staff.” Dr. Jefferies has enacted a protocol within the Cardiology department, with the help of the Co-Director of Cardiology Dr. Jeffery Towbin, that requires all physicians and researchers working through Cardiology to spend at least 12 minutes with each patient.
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| Dr. Jefferies with a patient during one of his Cardiomyopathy Clinics (Courtesy of cincinnatichildrens.org) |
Dr. Jefferies, aside from have an excellent history with his patients and students, is an avid researcher in the fields of Cardiomyopathy and Advanced Heart Failure. “I have 20 research grants devoted to the fields of Cardiomyopathy and Advanced Heart Failure alone,” Dr. Jefferies states. “Our research has given options to 1,000 patients that were diagnosed with cardiac diseases and death sentences.” Most of the Cardiomyopathy patients are pediatric patients diagnosed with some form of muscular dystrophy, and most of the adult patients experience the symptoms of Advanced Heart Failure.
Dr. Jefferies worked with the medical team that discovered the correlation between Cardiomyopathy and (Duchenne’s) muscular dystrophy. Dr. Jefferies, when talking about the correlation between the diseases, states, “Cardiomyopathy – the weakening of the heart muscle due to scar tissue replacing cardiac muscles – correlates to Duchenne’s through a combined skeletal and cardiac muscle wasting effect. As Duchenne’s replaces skeletal muscle with scar tissue, it also begins to slowly replace cardiac muscle with scar tissue. This scar tissue formation progressively leads to increasingly degenerative stages of Cardiomyopathy.” The linking factor was found to be a protein called periostin and Dr. Jefferies, who acts as an Associate Professor of Cardiology at the University Of Cincinnati College Of Medicine, bases an entire course on this linkage.
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| The difference between a normal heart and a heart with Cardiomyopathy (Courtesy of library.thinkquest.org) |
Advanced Heart Failure consumes much more of Dr. Jefferies’s time because these cases are constant life and death scenarios. Dr. Jefferies, places a significant amount of emphasis on the stress in life and death cases when acting as a physician because of the repercussions of failure. “If one of my Advanced Heart Failure – a cardiac prognosis that goes beyond simple heart attacks and causes people to require advanced life support or a new heart to replace their failing one – comes into the clinic, five different specialties (Neurology, Pulmonology, Cardiology, Internal Medicine, and Endocrinology) must examine the patient. The situation becomes very tense and a code (medical jargon for a heart attack) tends to happen in 1 of every 6 patients because they haven't been taking their medicine and the strain of the testing causes their heart to fail.” Although progress has been made in both fields of research, much more information needs to be gathered and clinical testing needs to be done in order to assign better treatments.
Dr. Jefferies is quite skilled in his work and has only had three major misdiagnoses in his 17 year medical career. His second misdiagnosis was, in his thoughts, his worst moment in medicine. “I had a patient who was experiencing some very irregular cardiac symptoms. She tested positive for end-stage Cardiomyopathy at age 16, but I could not figure out why her heart was failing so quickly. There were no major symptoms of her muscular dystrophy getting worse; in fact, her skeletal muscle ratios were improving. After she passed away, it was discovered that she was 1 month pregnant and her child was causing too much strain on her heart. I should have looked for that, but I was not as thorough with my prognosis.” It was during this case that Dr. Jefferies experienced one of the hardest lessons a physician can learn and realized that all the symptoms may not lead to straightforward answers. Since the case, he has firmly believed in the cooperation of all medical specializations to properly diagnose patients.
Dr. Jefferies has had many more highlights than somber moments in his medical career, one of them being a successful heart transplant of a toddler. Dr. Jefferies, as a pediatric cardiologist, has been forced to approve of a risky heart transplant only once. “Heart transplants on patients with severe Cardiomyopathy are very high risk surgeries because of the complications that can happen when the patient is put on and removed from the CPB (cardiopulmonary bypass) pump. The only transplant case I had that require my approval and post-op (operation) treatment involved a 4 year old female with severe Cardiomyopathy who had to undergo the surgery. It was our only hope of saving her, and the immensely skilled surgeons completed the surgery without having a single moment of cardiothoracic failure.” Dr. Jefferies, as with most physicians, continues to admire medically miraculous moments with patients who are given death sentences.
Throughout his 17 year career, Dr. Jefferies is a shining example of medical excellence and is a clinical research pioneer. He serves as an in inspiration to all those who aspire to be physicians and is, personally, a very good mentor to those students who are willing to put in hard work in order to learn. Dr. Jefferies has saved countless lives and touched even more through his tireless work with suffering patients all across the United States.
Dr. Jefferies is quite skilled in his work and has only had three major misdiagnoses in his 17 year medical career. His second misdiagnosis was, in his thoughts, his worst moment in medicine. “I had a patient who was experiencing some very irregular cardiac symptoms. She tested positive for end-stage Cardiomyopathy at age 16, but I could not figure out why her heart was failing so quickly. There were no major symptoms of her muscular dystrophy getting worse; in fact, her skeletal muscle ratios were improving. After she passed away, it was discovered that she was 1 month pregnant and her child was causing too much strain on her heart. I should have looked for that, but I was not as thorough with my prognosis.” It was during this case that Dr. Jefferies experienced one of the hardest lessons a physician can learn and realized that all the symptoms may not lead to straightforward answers. Since the case, he has firmly believed in the cooperation of all medical specializations to properly diagnose patients.
Dr. Jefferies has had many more highlights than somber moments in his medical career, one of them being a successful heart transplant of a toddler. Dr. Jefferies, as a pediatric cardiologist, has been forced to approve of a risky heart transplant only once. “Heart transplants on patients with severe Cardiomyopathy are very high risk surgeries because of the complications that can happen when the patient is put on and removed from the CPB (cardiopulmonary bypass) pump. The only transplant case I had that require my approval and post-op (operation) treatment involved a 4 year old female with severe Cardiomyopathy who had to undergo the surgery. It was our only hope of saving her, and the immensely skilled surgeons completed the surgery without having a single moment of cardiothoracic failure.” Dr. Jefferies, as with most physicians, continues to admire medically miraculous moments with patients who are given death sentences.
Throughout his 17 year career, Dr. Jefferies is a shining example of medical excellence and is a clinical research pioneer. He serves as an in inspiration to all those who aspire to be physicians and is, personally, a very good mentor to those students who are willing to put in hard work in order to learn. Dr. Jefferies has saved countless lives and touched even more through his tireless work with suffering patients all across the United States.
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