I really have to say that 2022 was a great year. No, everything is not always sunshine and roses, but I am an optimistic dude and tend to have a positive outlook on things. Focusing on the positive has been helpful for me throughout my life. 2022 was a year where many doors opened up that were previously closed. I completed my 5th year of being in practice out of fellowship. 5 years in practice and I have to say I have zero burnout. I still love my job as an intensivist. I still love the people who I have the pleasure to work with. Above all, I still love my patients and the fact that they trust me to take the best possible care of them.
This year also provided me with a ton of personal growth. The cardiac and cardiothoracic ICU’s at my hospital are now closed and I’ve taken a larger role in the running of those two units along with my colleagues. It has been fantastic to work more intimately with the cardiologists as well as the cardiothoracic surgeons at my institution. Needless to say, I have learned a lot and continue to put forth significant energy and time to increase my skill set to be able to take great care of these patients. Along the way, I am extremely proud of the NP staff who I have the pleasure to work with for their interest and efforts to develop the skills to take care of these patients as well. Some are getting far more comfortable with an echo probe and now floating swans in our cardiogenic shock patients.
On an educational front, social media is where you’ve obviously run into my content in some way, shape, or form. You may have noticed that I have slowed down a bit on content creation. There’s a reality to this. The first is that I have a daughter. My daughter, like her father, wakes up every single day at 6:30am. Before she was born, I would take the hour between 6:30-7:30 to read and create content. Now, I take that time to get her out of her crib, change her diaper, feed her breakfast, and play with her a little before I go to work. This also gets my wife an extra hour of sleep. A regret that I have heard from numerous colleagues is that they didn’t spend enough time with their children because of work. I will not be guilty of this.
As a new years resolution, however, I will be working towards waking up an hour earlier to get more things done. This is a technique that I have learned from others who want to maximize time with family as well as productivity. Hopefully I will be able to record more instagram reels, youtube videos, blog posts, and podcasts. Instagram has always been my constant source for getting educational content out. My content creation has honestly slowed down because of the aforementioned reason. I have put my daughter first. Hopefully I’ll be able to record a reel taking apart an article a week. That should be realistic. I will keep sharing links to my work on my stories because, well, people click on them. Thousands of people click on the story links every month. As long as people keep clicking and giving me good feedback, I’ll keep on sharing that content along with new content. I have to find a way to get on the good graces of the algorithm again. Perhaps creating more content will do that. I think I was placed on the instagram naughty list with all my discussions about you-know-what.
The website, eddyjoemd.com has continued to grow over 2022. In 2021 the website had just under 200,000 views but that number has grown to over 240,000 in 2022. Many of the pages are works in progress as I never seem to have enough time to truly finish any piece of content. Seems more like it’s a living, breathing, collection of evidence-based content. Truth is that it is quite ambitious to try to tackle so many topics in medicine by myself. After all, there’s no one helping me with all these projects. It is all done by only me. By the way, if you’re interested in writing some content and publishing it on my page, feel free to reach out to me to do so.
The website has a ton of ads. I know. But it helps me pay for all the costs associated with running a website such as server and web hosting costs. It is a trend that is everywhere on the internet these days. I am aware that there are excellent foamed sites out there that don’t have ads but that’s not something I can afford to do. It’s also to receive a check in the mail for my efforts. After all, I don’t change any money for my content nor do subscriptions.
A curious and upsetting thing happened a few months ago. I received a message from the company that I work with that Google did not appreciate my content on you-know-what. They stated that my content contained information that was inaccurate. I attempted to reason with these individuals stating that all my content on the matter had citations and that I was a board certified intensivist actually taking care of these patients but they did not care. They asked me to remove the content from my website. To this day, I have not removed the content but I did remove the indexing of the content from social media sites. If my site disappears one day, you’ll know why. It’s frustrating that they’re trying to consolidate where one can obtain information that only they deem to be “reliable”.
The Saving Lives Podcast continues for yet another year. I like to create a new season each year so this will be the start of season 4. Thus far, there have been 111 episodes. This episode will be 112. The podcast has been extremely rewarding as I have received some fun commentary about it. An example was someone locally who recognized my voice and stated that her husband (who is also in healthcare) falls asleep listening to my podcasts. At the suggestion of Haney Mallemat and others, I have finally upgrade my microphone and hope that it sounds better to you all. The tail end of the year being as busy as it prohibited me from being able to create as many podcast episodes as I would’ve liked to. 26 episodes were still completed, though. 34 in 2021 and 50 in 2020. Hopefully I can complete at least two a month this year. Thanks for also listening to the ads and supporting the sponsors of the podcast.
Twitter has gotten quite interesting for me. I post the same content on that social media platform as I do here as well as on LinkedIn but it is reaching far more people that it did several months ago before the controversial change took place. Hopefully I can post a new, interesting article there every other day for people to read and comment about. Same stuff gets posted on LinkedIn. Let’s see what happens there.
My youtube channel needs to be revived. I haven’t been able to record and upload much because of the time issues but, in addition, my wife and I purchased a house that has needed a significant amount of remodeling. In that process, all the walls and ceiling of my office had to be torn down and repainted. My diplomas still need to be hung and the office decorated but that will come with time. I’m not going to have one of those fancy studios to create content anytime soon.
Last but not least, I have had numerous speaking engagements this year. I been fortunate to speak with Northwest Seminars who put me up in Maui, Hawaii and Savannah, GA in 2022. Numerous lectures including cardiogenic shock including mechanical circulatory support, high flow and non-invasive ventilation, lactate, metabolic resuscitation, IVF fluids, fluid responsiveness, ICU nutrition and gut health, and vasopressors. In 2023, I’ll be heading to Key West in March and Charleston in December in case you’re interested in some CME credits and grabbing a beer. If you’re interested in my swinging by to do one of these lectures at your institution, let me know! Several online conferences also invited me to run my mouth for a bit but the most fun was at ResusX where I discussed procalcitonin and also debated IV fluids.
It is important to mention ones conflicts of interest and I do always mention that I serve as a consultant/speaker for 3 companies. I am appreciative of my relationship with these three companies as they create products that I feel truly help patients. In addition, whenever I speak for them, I present data. There are no company slides in my presentations as I feel that it’s disingenuous to how I do my thing. There has been no shortage of companies who have asked me to speak for them but I would only do so if I truly believed that their product made a difference.
To wrap this up I would personally like to thank you for supporting all the different content I create. If you’re listening to this on a podcast, please take a minute to give me a 5-star review on apple podcasts or spotify. If you’re watching this on youtube, please hit the like button. If you’re reading this on my website, then you’ve possible realized that I will use this as a script to the podcast and youtube video that goes with this. I have just found that scripting things helps the recording and editing process go much smoother. After all, I have to maximize my time as much as possible and leverage the efforts in as many ways as possible. Wishing you all the best year possible in 2023. Much love to everyone. We got this!
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How to Support My Work
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