[00:01:09] Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Executive Plus Podcast. In this episode, we're bringing you a special guest. In the past, we've talked a lot about how doctor and patient interaction is a great way to learn more about communication, the things that you can learn from what makes good bedside manner versus bad.
[00:01:33] How do you do communication in these perhaps more chaotic environments. And today we're bringing in a special guest who can speak more on this firsthand. Kevin was a practicing doctor in the US for 10 years, both board certified in emergency medicine as well as sports medicine. And today he is actually working with teams here in Taiwan, looking at the future of medical AI.
[00:01:58] We were lucky enough to bring him in and share all of his experience and wisdom with us.
之前我們有談到醫生和病人的溝通模式其實是很好的學習素材。而這集節目我們邀請到Kevin 來和我們分享他從醫的第一手經驗。他的專業是急救醫學和運動醫學，在美國工作了10年，現在在台灣的AI醫療團隊工作。
[00:02:22] Sherry: So welcome Kevin.
[00:02:27] Kevin: Hi guys. Thanks for having me today. I'm very excited to be here. Uh, my name is Kevin Lee. I'm an emergency and sports medicine physician trained in the States, emergency medicine residency at Mount Sinai in New York and Sports Medicine Fellowship at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. And I work here now in Taipei. I've been here in Taiwan for about three years and working in the tech industry as mentioned now in medical AI.
我之前在美國受訓，有在紐約的西奈山醫院接受緊急醫學住院醫師培訓，還有底特律的亨利福特醫院進行運動醫學研究員訓練。現在在台北從事醫學人工智慧領域的工作。
[00:02:54] Nick: Well, thank you for joining us, Kevin. We've had a chance to sit down and talk with you about the stories working both in the US and Taiwan, but specifically for this episode, what really stood out to us is you are someone who has had to thrive in a lot of different environments, both in the chaos of an emergency room, but now even talking to tech companies and making sure that their medical understanding versus the technology that's getting built. And you've kind of had to, we talked about like code switch a lot. Could you tell us a little bit more about how you think about communication and code switching in order to get the best information across?
你很特別的一點是適應不同環境的能力，像是混亂的急診室，還有現在跟科技公司溝通醫學相關的技術。其中我們有聊到語碼轉換 (code switching) 這件事，你可以多和我們分享一點嗎？
[00:03:39] Kevin: Yeah, I think that's really interesting. You know, as far as code switching and as far as making patient or whoever you're speaking to, whoever that person on the other side of the conversation to make them feel comfortable and also for them to trust you, I think a lot of the time involves speaking in their language, and so that can be anything from as literal as you're actually speaking Chinese, Mandarin versus Taiwanese versus English. You know, business language versus, uh, the way that you talk to your salespeople compared to the way that you might be talking to your engineering team is going to be different. And so, uh, not only does this come up a lot, you know, in the emergency department or in the hospital in general, but I think this is something that we can learn from for anyone in terms of, you know, succeeding in the workplace.
我覺得要讓患者或說話對象比較輕鬆或信任你，很多時候會需要用對方熟悉的語言溝通，這可以是字面上的「語言」，像是中文、台語、英文，或是各領域的習慣用語和溝通模式。我覺得這個能力除了醫院的工作，對於其他各種工作也都很重要。
[00:05:05] Sherry: And I remember talking to you earlier, you talked about this really fun story that happened in Uganda, right? You were doing a training there and you really had this experience where they simply ask you to speak in their accent.
[00:05:23] Kevin: Yeah, that was a really interesting situation and a funny story just in general, and I, I think it has to do with a little more than just code switching, but just to give a quick rundown of what happened.
[00:05:35] So we were in Uganda, it was in Rukungiri. And we were giving a talk, I believe it was about nutritional recommendations, having some chronic disease issues, diabetes, blood pressure, things like that, very common, and how to best approach those with diet changes. And so this was going to be kind of outreach to the community and just to mostly to a non-medical audience.
Uganda is a former colony, former English colony, and they speak English, but there's a definite Ugandan accent to the way that they speak, and a dialect in general, you know, word usage beyond just the differences in pronunciation. You know, I, I'd worked pretty hard on this presentation. I was still a relatively young attending and gave this talk, and I felt like it was going pretty good. You know, people were a little bit shy. Not a lot of questions, but a lot of heads were nodding, and people seemed to be following what I was talking about. The lecture was about an hour. And again, there was only one really kind lady who was asking me questions, and then the Q & A period seemed to dry up pretty quickly.
[00:06:45] And then one of the really nice old ladies asked in Luganda and someone translated and said if it would be okay to do the presentation again. This time, either with someone translating or if I could do my best Ugandan accent, which, you know, typically for us might seem a little bit offensive. But it actually even reminds me of how, you know, I will find myself speaking if I'm trying to speak English to someone who doesn't speak English that well. I'll find myself kind of speaking slower and enunciating a little bit differently, and I don't know if it's offensive or not. I'll just say that first, but I do think that it helps. You know, a lot of the time I've learned how to speak a Taiwanese accented English, when I throw it in the middle of a Chinese sentence, right. It just ends up being the tonality of it is a little bit different.
我們之前在烏干達的魯昆吉里辦了一個和營養攝取還有慢性病相關的講座，聽眾主要是社區民眾。雖然烏干達是前英國殖民地，但他們有自己的口音和方言。我在分享的時候覺得好像蠻順利的，雖然大家有點害羞，沒什麼人提問，但很多人點頭，理解我在說什麼。然而就在我分享結束，提問環節的最後，有一個老婦人用盧干達語問，可不可以重頭講一遍？她希望可以有人翻譯，不然就是我試著用烏干達口音來講話。