With my wonderfully full career in the digital health world, I’m often asked if I still see patients to maintain my clinical skills or my license or to “keep my hands in it”. The other day I realized the answer is quite different than that.

Every time I work in the urgent care clinic, I get to walk into a bunch of rooms, briefly introduce myself to a patient or family, and then hear fascinating details about someone’s life. It’s up close and personal and intense in a way that goes deep, but it happens only moments after meeting each other.

I thrive on intimacy. There’s just nothing more interesting than people, their complex needs and challenges, how our needs and challenges overlap and sometimes conflict, and of course how we can collaborate to better understand and address those needs.

The privilege of working as a clinician gives me a front row seat to that intimacy and I hope it helps keeps me grounded and focused on what’s most important in everything I do.