This week's guests:

Dr. Nicolas Fernandez is an associate professor at the University of Washington and a pediatric urologist at Seattle Children's Hospital. With a PhD in genetics, he serves as the current Director of Robotic and Minimally Invasive Surgery at Seattle Children's. He is passionate about improving surgical education, including a project using technology to improve intraoperative communication and the surgical teaching of trainees. In his free time he loves painting, bonsai, and playing baseball with his kids.

Dr. Paul Tran is a pediatric gastroenterologist, pediatric clerkship director, and specialty advisor dedicated to improving the culture of medical education. Through his platform Elementary School, he champions a philosophy of viewing and treating learners as the colleagues they are. A keynote speaker at several events, Dr. Tran is also a husband, boy dad, and fantasy football fanatic — a physician who leads with kindness and empathy for both patients and the professionals who care for them.

Together they explore rating culture in medicine and what surgical and medical education looks like today.

Maheetha Bharadwaj, MD sits down with Dr. Quoc-Dien Trinh, Chair of the Department of Urology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Chair of Urology at UPMC. A globally recognized urologic surgeon-scientist, Dr. Trinh has been honored with the AUA Young Urologist of the Year Award for New England (2022) and the AUA Distinguished Award for Health Advancement and Impact (2026).

Together they unpack the cycle between payers, hospitals, and physicians that drives RVU pressure; how teaching styles have evolved since the "old school hard knocks" era; what it actually means to be a servant-leader as a department chair across 19 hospitals; the realities of capital budgets and competing departmental interests; and what a chair says to a resident who walks into their office and says, "I'm losing hope."

Whether you're a trainee, attending, or just a Scrubs fan curious about how real medicine works behind the scenes, this conversation pulls back the curtain on the leadership decisions shaping resident life today.

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Audio/Video Production by Paul Bogosian

We get into the old-school shame-based teaching culture versus the new guard, whether "see one, do one, teach one" still holds up, the bureaucratic bloat that's squeezing physicians out of their own profession, and what burnout really looks like when you're a surgeon who feels guilty being spotted at Starbucks at 3:30 in the afternoon.

This episode covers themes from Season 1, Episode 1 of the Scrubs reboot, now streaming on Hulu.

Guests: Dr. Brian Hoeflinger — Neurosurgeon, author, 27+ years in practice Dr. Helene Okpere — Board-certified emergency medicine physician, founder of Rest in Rx Dr. Melinda Thacker — Surgeon, master coach, TEDx speaker, podcaster

Follow us: @thescrubslifepodcast on Instagram and TikTok

Audio/Video Production by Paul Bogosian