Performing in the Face of Disaster with Dr. Jeffrey Upperman

Leading the Rounds

In this episode we interview Dr. Jeffrey Upperman. Dr. Upperman was recently appointed as the Surgeon-in-Chief of Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital. Prior to that, he served at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and received recognition as an expert in trauma, disaster preparedness, and injury prevention.

Upperman is a retired lieutenant colonel in the US Army Medical Corps and was chief of surgery during operation Iraqi Freedom 2. He serves as a sworn member of the National Advisory Committee for Children in Disasters.

Upperman has published over 180 peer-reviewed publications, 200 abstracts and 20 book chapters. His research includes sepsis, inflammation, trauma and disaster preparedness.

He is happily married to his wife of 26 years who is also a physician and has three sons.

In this episode we discuss his background playing sports, his journey to pediatric surgery, excellent performance, disaster preparedness, and more.

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We hope you enjoy this episode of Leading The Rounds.

Questions we asked included:

• How did your background in athletics influence your mindset as a surgeon?
• How are surgery programs working to balance hard work vs overworking/burning out?
• How has your background in the military influenced your leadership as a physician?
• How did you become involved in disaster preparedness?
• Has this background affected how you view the pandemic?
• What could we have done differently in the pandemic?
• Should information be censored to promote positive communication in pandemics?
• What are some of your favorite books?

Our favorite quotes:

• “You can’t hurt me”
• “When you look at NFL, college, and high school football teams, they do more film review than surgeons do.”
• “You control your lifestyle, but you don’t get to make boatloads of money and also sit at home all the time.”
• “My life's mission is to improve the health of people”
• “When you’re in certain environments, you need to learn how to make lemonade.”
• “They were just unprepared because they didn’t want to read.”
• “I am sick of lessons learned”

Book suggestions:

• Philippians
• Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them by Gary Hamel
• Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott

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