Dr. Lisa Weber is a fascinating and extremely busy person, a nephrologist and dialysis medical director in Wichita, Kansas. Dr. Weber has a multifaceted career involving caring for CKD and transplant patients in the city of Wichita, and travelling to oversee dialysis clinics in the surrounding areas. She attended medical school at the University of Kansas and completed Nephrology Fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. We talk about some of the joys and challenges of practicing as a rural nephrologist and how she “wears a lot of hats” by necessity.

This episode is a conversation with Dr. Vanessa Grubbs, a nephrologist and Associate Professor of Medicine at UCSF. Dr. Grubbs went to medical school at Duke University, completed internal medicine residency at Highland Hospital in Oakland, California, and nephrology fellowship at UCSF. She describes her true passions as renal palliative care and narrative non-fiction. We talk about these topics as well as racial disparities in the care of kidney patients, and her path to nephrology from primary care. Her book, Hundreds of Interlaced Fingers, a Kidney Doctor's Search for the Perfect Match, was published by Harpers Collins in 2017. It’s a memoir, a love story, and a gripping description of the experience of dialysis and kidney transplant patients all in one. She also has the enviable Twitter handle: @TheNephrologist.

This is a conversation with the first cohort of interns from the American Journal of Kidney Diseases (AJKD) new Editorial Internship Program. This one-year program is an opportunity for nephrology fellows to participate in journal editorial processes.

The first year’s interns are:
Samantha Gelfand MD, University of Pennsylvania
Pascale Khairallah MD, Columbia University,
Devika Nair MD, Vanderbilt University,
Adrian Whelan MD, University of California at San Francisco
The application for the 2019-2020 internship is now open! Applicants need to be current first year neph fellows or second year fellows staying on for a third year, with an interest in academic writing and publishing.

Music by Scott Holmes “Follow Your Dreams” licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

Dr. Andrew Bomback is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University and a specialist in glomerular diseases. He is also a writer, having published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Atlantic, and The Kenyon Review, among others. His recently published book is entitled Doctor. It’s part of a series called Object Lessons - short books that are part memoir, part nonfiction, each looking at the ‘hidden lives’ of an everyday object or concept. We talk about that book as well as his thoughts on working as both a physician and a writer.

Doctor (Object Lessons) by Andrew Bomback https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/doctor-9781501338175/ https://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Object-Lessons-Andrew-Bomback/dp/150133817X Music by Scott Holmes “Follow Your Dreams” licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0t.

In this episode I spoke with two internal medicine residents, Dr. Lena Vaynberg (Duke) and Dr. Sam Kant (University of Maryland) about their experiences with nephrology to date. They discuss what draws them to the field, including various works of literature and gaps in medical education, and explain the related work they’ve each been involved with so far. See a write up of Lena's here, the book and article Sam references here:

Guns, Germs and Steel (Amazon)
The Heroism of Incremental Care (The New Yorker)

Music by Scott Holmes “Follow Your Dreams” licensed under BY-NC 4.0

Dr. Mukesh Sharma is an interventional nephrologist in private practice who also works as an adjunct professor at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Interventional nephrology is a sub-specialization that enables the physician to perform a number of procedures related to creating and maintaining dialysis accesses (AV fistulas and grafts, and catheters). Dr. Sharma went to medical school in India before completing residency and fellowship at Louisiana State University. He shares some great career advice for those interested in interventional nephrology (and anyone, really!).

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UCSF medical student Ani Chiligirian talks about her experiences to date and how they have sparked her interest in nephrology. She also explains the research she's working on as a 2018 NKF award recipient.

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In this episode we listen to a conversation between Dr. Vera Delaney, a transplant nephrologist, and Dr. Kelly Beers, a second-year nephrology fellow, both at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. Dr. Delaney lived and completed medical training (and a PhD) in Ireland and London before moving to the United States in the 1970s to pursue a nephrology fellowship. She talks about transplant nephrology as a subspecialty and the changes she has seen in the field over the past few decades.

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This episode is a conversation between two first-year nephrology fellows, Dr. Anthony Provenzano at Duke University, and Dr. Rachel Hilburg at the University of Pennsylvania. We recorded it the weekend before they began their programs, and it is full of good advice (and enthusiasm)!

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Here we talk with Dr. Belinda Lee about some of the various career choices available in nephrology. Dr. Lee attended Mount Sinai School of Medicine in NY and completed her residency at Columbia University NY Presbyterian Hospital. She then completed a combined nephrology and transplant fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. She worked first as an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Tulane University and is now in private practice in Baltimore.

Music by Scott Holmes “Follow Your Dreams” licensed under BY-NC 4.0

This episode is a conversation between between Dr. Matthew Sparks, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Associate Program Director for Nephrology Fellowship at Duke University, and Dr. Diana Mina, a graduating nephrology fellow at University of California San Francisco. They talk about the role of social media in medical education, mentorship, and how to get involved with the nephrology community...right now. Email us at NKFpodcast@kidney.org.

Resources discussed:

GlomCon
https://glomcon.org/glomerular-disease-case-conferences/

NephJC (Journal Club)
http://www.nephjc.com/

Nephrology Social Media Collective
http://www.nephjc.com/internship/

Nephrology Business Leadership University
http://NBLUniv.com/

Renal Fellows Network
http://renalfellow.blogspot.com/

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This is an interview with Dr. Leslie Gewin, a practicing nephrologist and basic science researcher at Vanderbilt University. She is an attending physician on the general internal medicine and nephrology consult services at the Nashville VA Medical Center. Dr. Gewin also runs a basic science laboratory which focuses on understanding how growth factors alter the epithelial response to renal injury. We talk about her career so far and how she manages its various components.

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Today we hear from Dr. Clarissa Diamantidis, an Assistant Professor in the Divisions of General Internal Medicine and Nephrology at Duke University and a nephrologist at the Durham VA Medical Center. In addition to seeing patients, Dr. Diamantidis works as a researcher and clinical educator. We ask about her career path and what advice she has for medical students and residents considering combining nephrology and clinical research.

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Dr. Devika Nair and Dr. Kelly Beers are back. Laura Brereton (National Kidney Foundation) asks them about general perceptions of nephrology, and what some medical students and internal medicine residents might not know about the field. What else would you like to know about working as a nephrologist? Get in touch at NKFpodcast@kidney.org.

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Welcome to the Life as a Nephrologist podcast series! In this first episode Dr. Devika Nair (Vanderbilt University Hospital, Nashville, TN) and Dr. Kelly Beers (Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, NY) talk about their experiences so far as nephrology fellows and why they chose it as a career. Would you like to suggest topics or interviewees for the podcast? Write to us at NKFpodcast@kidney.org. For more information about the National Kidney Foundation, visit us online.

Music by Scott Holmes “Follow Your Dreams” licensed under BY-NC 4.0