Thriving on feedback: essential lessons for IR professionals

Episode Transcript

Recorded live from the Cook booth at SIR, and featuring leading experts in the field of interventional radiology discussing a wide range of IR-related topics. This is the Cook@ SIR Podcast Series.

Welcome to Cook@ SIR Podcast. We’re live at the Cook booth in Nashville, Tennessee, at the SIR 2025 50th annual meeting, and excited to explore the moments, lessons, and strategies that can help shape your careers as a leader. I’m your host, Parag Patel, and today we’re diving into a topic that is both universal and deeply personal: feedback.

First, let me introduce my colleagues. I’m joined by Dr. Gloria Salazar and Dr. Amy Taylor and I’d like each of them to share a bit about themselves and understand maybe best how they would digest feedback and why they think it’s important. First off, let me introduce Dr. Gloria Salazar.

Thank you very much, Parag, and thank you very much to Cook to have me in this podcast. I’m Gloria Salazar, and I happen to be the chair of this meeting, which I’m very excited to host for everybody. But my history goes back to Brazil when I graduated in radiology residency and then moved to United States in 2005, and I did my IR training in the United States in Boston at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

And then I moved to become an attending at the Mass General. And more recently, I am three years now at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and I’m vice chair of development engagement now. So, for me, it’s very important to have conversations like what we’re going to have today because we are in a field that we need to communicate with different medical specialties, different patients, different stakeholders.

And the most important thing as a leader in my opinion, that you can have is somebody that can provide you honest feedback for you to improve on your skills, because all of us have and can have room for improvement. So, I’m very happy to be here and happy to talk to my colleagues, Amy Taylor and Parag Patel. So, looking forward to the discussion.

Great, thank you. And thank you for Parag and Gloria and to Cook for having us all here. I am Amy Taylor. I am currently on faculty at the University of Virginia. I’ve been there about four and a half years. Before that, I spent a couple of years in private practice. I did my fellowship at the Medical College of Wisconsin with Parag, and currently I am the associate program director for the independent IR residency. So, have some role in education of residents as well.

I think this topic is very timely right now. I think a lot of people are talking about feedback more. I think it’s coming up. We ended up talking about it quite a bit at the leadership seminar yesterday. And so, I think it’s a great conversation to have and discussion to have.

Thanks Amy and Gloria, it’s wonderful to be joined by both of you. You guys are leaders in your own, right? We all learn from each other, and I think we learn from the feedback we receive. It’s a powerful tool that helps shape us as trainees and as leaders. But it often goes unexamined in our busy lives, like how do you do it well? We receive it, we process it, but sometimes you get a sense that that was very helpful in others that were extremely unhelpful.

And maybe, Gloria, I want to talk to you first or ask you first about your time in Boston. You had the opportunity to be involved in a unique course or offering that Harvard offered in leadership. What inspired you to take that step? Or offered you that opportunity to do that, and what did you take away as the most impactful lessons from that experience?

Yeah, no, that was very important for me, and I think that the way to put it is you may be given a leadership position in your career, but then how do you take care of that position? How do you take care of your leadership skills is another story. You can have the title, but then you need to improve and understand what’s your role.

The reason that I took this leadership course was really part of an initiative that—I think it’s common in most academic environments—in which physicians get to learn the business of medical or leadership, and how do you manage that. And so, I think most of us and many of us in medical school and in training, we were really focusing on the technical skills, which is great. That’s why we’re here now. That’s why we are who we are.

But there is another part of training that relates to non-technical skills that I don’t think that we focus much. Perhaps now we are getting more attention to that, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a training in medical school or in fellowship about how to speak or even how to apologize to a patient; briefly we’d talk about those things.

So, anyhow, so, I had the opportunity to be part of a cohort of physicians from different specialties. So, I was representing radiology, and at that time I was actually a quality chair for the department of radiology. And so, it was very important for me to understand very simple concepts of leading, leading with authority, but at the same time not being biased. So, being able to hear everybody’s comments and opinions and insights.

So, the course really was transformative because I did something different. It was totally different than what I have done in the past. I got to get one-on-one coaching, one-on-one feedback from the teachers, from the professors, even in how to give a lecture for example.

And most importantly, the course allowed us, as a cohort of medical professionals that already have our own habits, to actually choose people to give feedback about your leadership style. So, it’s a little bit of a vulnerability there, exposure, like you’re exposing yourself. But it was really interesting because you actually had to choose the people that you wanted to hear feedback from.

So, you need to be very strategic, and it had to be certain rules, like you cannot have somebody who’s your friend but doesn’t know how you are as a leader. You have to have somebody that has experienced your leadership in action in that particular case. So, I think that was the beginning for me on this road.

And at the same time, I had a lot of training on how to communicate effectively, not only because I’m not from here, I’m not American-born, but also because I think there are differences in how do we lead being different genders, for example, being a woman, being a man or being different cultures. So, it was really helpful for me to be essentially understanding a little bit more about what the role of the leader means in healthcare in this country.

That’s great opportunity that you had, and it sounds like effective for you and skills that you’ve taken in your time now with leadership at UNC. Amy, you’ve done some postgraduate education and training yourself, maybe comment on what you’ve completed and maybe has feedback come up in that environment as well.

Yes. So, I recently completed my Executive MBA through the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.

Congratulations.

Thank you. It was a lot of work, but I think it was very beneficial. There was a lot of focus on leadership skills and, as part of that, feedback did come up. We also had a similar exercise where we had to reach out to people to receive feedback about certain things. And as you were talking, Gloria, I was thinking that your initial reaction is that you want to reach out to your friends or to people who are going to tell you nice things because that’s what you want to hear.

But when it really comes down to it, there are certain people you know that will give you direct feedback and it’s not necessarily going to be just fluffy and nice, but it’s actually going to be feedback that will help you grow. And it’s not meant to be criticism in any way but is meant to try to help you improve. And so, those are the people that you reach out to in those situations.

And so, that’s what I did. And so, I think that part of being able to give good feedback is being able to navigate that line of not making it personal or offensive, but in truly trying to help that person grow and improve.

So, not like “That sucked.” or “You’re bad.”

Right.

Something more objective–

That would–

and constructive, perhaps. Right?

Typically be a less ideal, yes.

I think that’s the crux of this a little bit. I think giving good feedback and taking good feedback takes a little bit of self-awareness and a willingness to reflect on why didn’t it go so well for the individual you’re maybe giving feedback to, and how do I share that in a way that’s not an attack? Because that’s not really what it is. If you’re giving feedback, it’s to try to improve the individual or help them improve in a specific area in which presumably they want to improve it, right?

So, I think that’s the key to that, and at the same time when you’re taking feedback, because all leaders require feedback whether they want it or not unless they work in a vacuum, they think that they’re doing wonderful and sometimes they just don’t, they’re not as effective in moving the team forward.

So, I find those points in a more objective educational format that both of you have formalized, have gone through, been able to take away from. And now how are you implementing that now because you, Amy, are working with trainees and you have to give feedback and do you do it in a structured manner? Or is it different for each person? Or have you found a way to approach how I’m going to do this when I have to do so?

Yeah, so, I’m lucky in that I leave all the formal feedback structured sessions to Luke Wilkins, who’s the program director, and let him deal with that. But I find that giving feedback in the moment or very timely to the moment makes it much more effective.

And so, if I see something in a resident’s report that they send me about a dictation and I’m like, “No, that’s wrong. We didn’t do this in the procedure, we did this.” Or something like that, I try to find them immediately and say “Hey, this is what we actually did, and this is how we should word it or phrase it.” Because I think it’ll be much more effective that way if you find them three months later and say, “Hey, remember that report?” that’s not going to mean as much.

So, I try to do it in a very timely manner. It doesn’t have to be right in the room. So, if you’re in a procedure or something like that and it’s something that’s a little more sensitive and you don’t want to do it in front of a patient, you can wait until you’re out of the room. But if you still connect it to that event, it will be, I think they’ll be receptive to hearing it and remember it more.

So, timely feedback, right?

Yes.

In relation to the moment.

Mm-hmm.

I love what you said about giving the feedback after timely, but not in front of the patient because I think it goes back to what you said, Parag, about self-awareness and yes, we want our trainees to be the best to be probably better than us, but at the time you have to also think about the whole situation. So, I love that you said that because I think sometimes it may just, we just don’t pay attention, we just, “Oh…” and the patient is probably listening.

Right. I think we forget a lot of times that our patients are awake for most of our procedures and even though they’re sedated, they can still hear what’s going on and so that affects their experience as a patient to hear all of that.

Yeah, we’re not like the surgeons that are using general anesthesia, and they can say whatever they want. I love the surgeons, they’re my friends, but I’m just saying it’s different for us in interventional.

Right. But even not just the patients but the techs and the nurses that are in the room, you have to just remember that a whole team is there and everybody is listening. And so, that’s not necessarily the best environment to be giving feedback to one particular person.

I think it’s spot on, right? Because you want to make them better. As we said earlier, the point of feedback is to help them improve, but if they lose the confidence of their techs and nurses because the feedback was given in that setting, what are you going to do right? Now you’ve lost perhaps the faith of the team for that individual, and you made them lose a little bit of faith in you because the self-awareness wasn’t there to share that feedback at the right time, at the right moment.

Right. And then all they’re going to remember is embarrassment about the moment and they’re not going to take that feedback for what it’s meant to be, which is to make them better.

And if all of you listening aren’t aware, we are live at the SIR exhibit hall, so, you are hearing over background noises. But that is fine because we’re here, this is not scripted, this is us trying to just talk real talk about feedback. You know, I want to shift a little bit to something that I think is relevant to all of us, but I suspect to Dr. Salazar and Dr. Taylor may have some personal experiences about emotionally charged feedback, right?

So, feedback that maybe didn’t seem constructive or didn’t happen in the right setting. It happens. What do you do? What is some advice you could give to someone who’s listening, an aspiring young future IR, how to handle that in that setting? What do you do in that moment when you get that?

Well, for full disclosure, I probably have also given emotionally charged feedback. So, just for the record, I’m a very passionate person for all of you, you know me very well. But yes, I think that the emotions are great. Obviously, we should feel emotions, but I think that just like what Amy said about the location of the feedback or having self-awareness of who’s around, similar thing goes for emotions.

I think maybe the emotion sometimes takes away from the real messaging, and yes, we do, we are entitled to have emotions, but sometimes the feedback doesn’t come across effective if somebody is angry, for example. I think that’s the most unfortunate type of situation, and it does happen. It does happen because we’re humans, probably happened to me too. But I think in these situations, I think you really have to reflect.

So, if you are the person receiving that emotional feedback, whether it’s goes ranging from whatever, being very upset or angry to even more sensitive, let’s say. I think the major point is to, if I am in the situation, I usually state and acknowledge the emotional state of the person for example, like, “Oh, I see you’re upset.”

And then you can say whatever you feel like, “I am sorry that this happened.” or “I’m sorry that you feel that way.” And then I follow that by a specific and objective question of, “Can you please help me understand what happened during the procedure?” For example, if it’s a procedure “That made you feel that way, what did I do wrong?” Even you can say very straightforward depending on the level of the emotional state.

So, it is hard because you are the receiver of feedback with emotion and then you may yourself, of course, become emotional in the opposite way or the same way, whatever it is. And so, it requires a lot of, I would say not self-confidence, but I would say empathy. Empathy for the person because the person is really having an emotion, strong emotion about whatever happened.

And it’s not easy I think at home, doesn’t work for me, ask my husband. But I think it’s extremely important for us to be empathetic, whether you’re receiving it or you’re giving, and you’re noticing yourself, you need to at least recognize, “Okay, yes, that day I was really upset. Apologies, I want to make sure that we don’t repeat this again.” Or something like this.

So, then hopefully if you are the person giving that you can apologize or you can at least acknowledge that you were feeling that way. But it’s very hard, and it’s very hard because it depends on the situation, it depends on what are we talking about here. Is this high-stakes situation? Or is this just something routine?

So, all of these aspects have to be taken into consideration. But primarily I would say acknowledge that the person is upset, of course, don’t upset the person more and say, “Oh, I’m so sorry I made you feel that way.” You don’t need to say, “I see you’re angry, right?” You could say, “Oh, I’m so sorry I made you feel this way. Can you tell me what have I done or what did I do? Can I do better?”

Right. I think that ideally the person that’s giving feedback would be empathetic and have some self-awareness. I think if you’re on the receiving side, obviously you have no control over the person that’s giving you that feedback.

And so, if it’s someone who maybe isn’t so self-aware about that and who is frustrated or angry or just giving that feedback in a way that becomes emotionally charged for you and creates an emotional response, I think the best thing that you can do is just take a step back and request some time to process.

I think people who are getting feedback don’t realize that they actually have the ability to say, “I would like to table this, and I would like some time and maybe we can discuss this again tomorrow or next week or something like that.” Because especially if it’s attending to a trainee, the trainee doesn’t always feel like they have that power, but you do.

And so, everyone processes emotions differently, and I think that sometimes you need some time to yourself, and you got to process through that anger first. Like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe that that person said that to me, and like they weren’t even there, they don’t know, or they didn’t have all the information.”

And then as you ruminate on that and then you can start to piece out and say, “Okay, yes, here are the facts and maybe I could have done something better here, and maybe this is where the breakdown came in.” And so, then when you go back to the table to readdress that situation, now you’re calmer, you’re prepared, and you can actually have more of a discussion about it and come away with something that’s positive in it.

And I think also just you standing up for yourself and saying, “I need some time, and I need to table this.” Will alert the person that’s giving that feedback, “Hey, that didn’t come across very well, and maybe I need to think about how I go about giving feedback in the future as well. That was not a good way to go about that.” And so, hopefully that will also help in the future.

That’s a great strategy. And I don’t think one that people think about instinctively because the hierarchy from you know, a faculty or attending or a chief to a younger faculty or from attending to a trainee doesn’t allow for it to be, “Oh, I have control of the situation or have the opportunity to exert control in the situation.”

So, I think that’s an excellent point. I think overall themes from both of you I heard was the instinct of human nature is to meet that energy with the same energy so that negative feedback could instinctively for all of us be met with the same negative energy–

Sure.

And that only escalates the issue, doesn’t really help, but to have the awareness, the self-awareness to say, “What did I do to make you feel that way?” Or to say, “Hey, I’m going to take, can we table this? And I do want to talk about this but can we do this later today or tomorrow?”

And take that time to be self-aware. What might’ve triggered that to really come to the conversation now in a space that’s not at the energy in which it was initially confronted or brought to you, I think, is a huge takeaway for listeners in thinking about how to manage those challenging feedback scenarios.

Absolutely.

I have another question. Both of you are in positions where you have to give feedback to leaders ahead of you but are also leaders in your own right and have to give feedback to younger faculty or to trainees. And as women leaders in the field, there is a gender dynamic, there are much fewer women in the field than there are men.

Something we need to continue to work on, and we’re doing better, but work to be done. Can you, from your unique perspective that I can’t comment on, share how that gender dynamic plays a role and how feedback is delivered and received in the medical field?

And that might be with your trainees, it could be even with other physicians from other specialties having to negotiate or interact. Maybe this gets beyond just feedback alone, but I’d love to hear a little bit about how you’ve had to navigate some of that and maybe tips you can give to our listeners.

Yeah, no I think that’s a great, great point. Gender dynamics played a role when you are in a situation of feedback or giving feedback or leadership. I think, for me, it has been really interesting. Well, when I was in Brazil, I think definitely we had a male-dominated attending faculty team. It was very rare to have for all the specialties by the way, except for pediatrics, I guess. But it was definitely more common for us to receive feedback from male attendings, etc.

And so, it was very rare for me to have a female attending to train us even like or give us the feedback. And so, when I was in medical school, I didn’t think much of it. Maybe in residence, I started thinking about it, that could be different. I always thought that we were equal, and you know in the sense that, “It doesn’t really matter what are we talking about?” And then I heard people saying, “Oh, because I was treated differently because of my gender or whatever.”

And I was like, “I never had that happen to me” But I was a trainee, I was in a different country. So, I come to United States and it’s different, obviously, but also I was a trainee still, right? I was still– and also by the way, during your training, your formative training years, you are the most vulnerable because everybody’s looking at you.

So, you will most likely than not receive feedback from all people, tech, nurse, the program director, maybe not so much program director, and other specialties. But anyhow, but the theme of gender dynamics really came about when I became an attending, and I think that it came about because I basically graduated from VIR Fellowship, almost 20 years ago.

And, of course, most of my colleagues were male. And then I think that I felt that, in a good way, I don’t think it was a malintention, that people were afraid to give me feedback because I would not take it very well. I don’t know because I’m a woman and then they were not wanting to tell me some things.

And so, and then the other side of this is somebody who may have a style of leadership that doesn’t really account for the gender differences and then have a rough feedback that maybe I was not ready to receive, for example. In both situations I think that what I realized is that we need to first acknowledge that there are different gender dynamics. There’s no way.

And I think that the major reason that I became to realize that is when I had my boy, like I have a 15-year-old boy, and I noticed that now I see the differences between men and women because you know, and I said, “Oh my gosh, now I understand better.” And of course, being a mother made me a better person in many different ways, but also in the way that I understood a little bit of the gender dynamics.

So, how do we– I think what the characteristic of a gender dynamic situation in feedback is that there’s a couple. For example, different genders like a male-female, depending on the position of power. If you’re the male position of power and the female not in the position of power, I think that there may be some hesitation from the male in the position of power to give feedback, not to hurt the person’s feelings.

The other way around it may be that as a leader, female leader, you may be seeing more of like a nurturing role and then the person, the other-gender person receiving the feedback may feel like, “Oh my gosh, but what did she say really? Is this like real feedback or not?”

So, I think for me what has worked is to be self-aware, again we will go back to that, is to ask, “Listen, yesterday I had that meeting, you were there. Can you tell me why do you think this happened? What did I do that I could have done different?”

So, but the way that I would ask for the feedback, it was really using a real example because otherwise you wouldn’t be able. You would take the emotion out, you would receive what you need, and you wouldn’t have the other person being—how can I say that?—afraid of giving you feedback because it’s your colleague, perhaps, you know, we’re working on the same project maybe.

And so, that’s how I handle that. But in terms of overall gender biases, differences, I think that there’s definitely dynamics that can play into the opposite effect. So, you want to give feedback, but you come across differently, and then you don’t get to your goal of actually having that person be a better or improve, right?

And then you miss an opportunity, but also the person misses an opportunity to be better, right? Because you already completely lose the person if the person use the gender dynamics in a way that is not positive. So, it’s hard. I don’t think there is a solution to that, but I think that self-awareness and being cognizant of the other person’s position and where you are, it’s very important.

So, I have a couple of follow-ups. There’s two scenarios you brought up. So, let’s say the gender dynamic is a male chief and you’re a female junior attending and you’re getting feedback and you feel like they’re, let’s call it sugarcoating it or maybe not giving you the feedback that they’re giving others.

Mm-hmm.

What would you recommend, someone who’s aspiring to be an IR faculty member or senior and move up the ranks, to share with that chief? You know, candidly–

Mm-hmm.

What would you recommend, say, “Hey, I want the same feedback, I got this, I can handle this.” Or is there a discussion? Have you ever had to have that discussion? You mentioned at MGH maybe that they were a little hesitant to give you feedback. Did you approach them about that?

Yeah, no, not everybody but yes. But I would say that I think the most senior attendings, they had more experience to give the feedback and the less senior were– But yes, I did have that, and the way that I approached it was essentially being very straightforward to the person that I felt comfortable talking to, and everybody I felt comfortable talking to and asking, like, “Can you guys tell me what happened? What happened in that meeting?” or whatever.

And then over time I realized that I also needed to be direct because if I wanted to have the right feedback. So, I also needed to be direct and not sugarcoat or go around, round, round, and don’t give the feedback.

Mm-hmm.

So, yeah, no I think that that was how I learned, I guess. But I think that the problem is that—it’s not the problem—is the reality is that we are going to face those differences we are going to face, and each one of us have a different background. We have different manners that we learned something, and that we are receiving the information differently.

So, it is very hard to understand everybody’s style because we are unique and that’s a good thing, right? But generically speaking, I think you just have to read the person and see if he or she is really understanding, and you just don’t want to have to deal with some situation of sugarcoating or being too rough. So, there’s a balance there.

Dr. Taylor, rising star in our field. Obviously, you’ve done a lot accomplished to date, but you’ve certainly had to go through, I suspect, these experiences too with either gender dynamics or having to establish yourself as someone who has the knowledge to give the appropriate feedback but may or may not have been received well by your counterpart. Have you had those experiences? How have you handled that, or how is that affected how you get feedback?

So, I think as far as gender differences in feedback, I think a lot of the differences come not, in my experience, so much in how the feedback is delivered to the female in question, but in the types of feedback that is given. And a lot of feedback towards women trainees or junior faculty is more subjective feedback.

You know, “You weren’t nice enough, or you’re not friendly enough, or the nurses think that you don’t like them, or you’re snubbing somebody.” Or things like that. Whereas feedback given to men tends to be more objective, like “You need to work on X, Y, Z, like this your technical skill, blah blah blah blah blah.” Or something like that.

Something that’s a little more– has a more direct pathway and direct correlation. So, I think realizing that and being aware of that so that when you go to give that feedback to trainees or junior faculty or whoever it is that you’re giving feedback to, just recognizing that and so you can catch those biases before they come out is really important.

I don’t– I can’t recall having been in a position where I have given a male trainee feedback that wasn’t necessarily received. So, I haven’t experienced that, luckily. But similar to what Gloria was saying, going through academic training, I’d never really felt a gender bias.

And then I went out into private practice right after fellowship, and that was like night and day and it was like a slap in the face. I was just like, “Wow!” Just the way that the referring doctors or other doctors in the hospital, even doctors in my own group treated me as a woman versus how they treated my male partners was just very different.

And so, that took a lot of adjustment, and ultimately it was part of the reason why I left that practice to take my current role. But some of that’s a culture problem, and there’s not something that you can– one thing that you can do to fix that, but just be aware that that’s out there and that culture change will take a while.

The other thing I wanted to piggyback off of Gloria was when you were talking about requesting feedback and trying to do it in very specific circumstances and asking for feedback about something very specific. So that instead of being like, “Hey, just how am I doing in general?” Whereas people are going to be like, “Oh you’re doing great.”

But wanting them to actually give you feedback. Another thing that you can do that I’ve heard people talk about is instead of asking for feedback to ask for advice and then people will really feel very comfortable in giving you that feedback without thinking about it as feedback, but just saying like, “You know, how would you suggest that in the future I do X, Y, Z?”

And they’ll lay it out for you in a much more– in a lot better manner than they would if you just asked for feedback, when they might just give very generic answers.

Another great point, changing, framing the question in a different way as advice rather than feedback. Gloria?

No, I just, yes, you’re absolutely right, Amy. It’s brilliant. Just everything that you’re saying is brilliant. I’m learning a lot today. No, really, I mean it, and the feedback can only be good as the cultural context, and I just want to give two examples that I have a lot of things happen in my career, but in terms of gender dynamics, right?

It is normal for the world to see, perhaps not now, but in the past or more recently, that only men can be doctors, right? Let’s just put it that way. So, in Latin America is even more of a problem. So, I remember two situations. So, one, I was seven months pregnant, and of course you can see my bump, and then I was on call in the middle of the night.

I had to do a TIPS, an emergent TIPS, and I had my trainee with me who was a male, like very tall guy, very nice guy, Dr. Norton. He was– this was my second class of trainees. And so, we were in the middle of the night and then introduce ourselves to the family, we’re going to do this TIPS and know there’s whatever, consent, patient and everybody, and then one of the family members look at me and “Who’s going to do the procedure?”

Looking at my trainee and not looking at me. And then Dr. Norton says to them like, “Dr. Salazar is attending.” And they look at my belly and they said, “Are you going to do the procedure?” And I’m like, “Yes.” So, that was one. The second one was more recent.

I do have a lot of Hispanic patients from different parts of Latin America, and I basically saw the patient in clinic, and she comes with the husband for the procedure, and then my patient says to me, “Well, where is the doctor?” And I’m like, in Spanish, I told them, “Yo soy la doctora.” And they’re like looking at me so embarrassed, right? Because that’s what they used to see.

So, anyhow, I just want to give two examples because all of we’re saying right now in terms of gender dynamics has the context of all of that. Assuming that we are not the physicians or assuming that we are still in training or assuming that we don’t know.

Assuming that we’re not qualified, for example. I think these assumptions do happen, and that’s why I think we have part of the issue of gender dynamics when it comes to feedback in these situations.

So I still serve as a program director for a fellowship, previously and now the new residency. And we have had a history of both, obviously, men and women come through the training program, and I’ve always– and so, give you my background, right? I’m married to a health professional in her own, right?

Who owns her own business and practice, and I have two daughters who– So, I am surrounded by women in my personal life, and I’m a huge advocate and a proud girl dad. But I’m also cognizant and try to be self-aware about how I’m doing with managing my trainees.

And I think of them all equal frankly, because I don’t think of one as a male IR and a female IR, I just think of them all as IRs or future IRs. And when I think about the gender dynamic role and I’m cognizant of it, Ican’t be, I can’t put myself in their shoes, but I also say, “What would I want?” And I try to be objective about that.

And if I were to reverse the roles, it was just the same. And what I’ve come to for me is, in the setting of education, I try to set the expectations up front. And I talked about this a little bit in our leadership seminar, which by the way, a quick plug for Dr. Taylor’s leadership seminar. It should be something that people should listen to in the video podcast or video library of SIR. It was excellent yesterday.

But setting expectations at a high level—IRs are high-level functioning, there’s a lot to learn, and there’s high expectations at all of our training programs—and to set that up front and so, that all trainees coming through male or female doesn’t matter. Understand that upfront.

So, then when the time for feedback comes, it’s under that context: We’re in this together, we want to achieve this goal. You’ve already bought into the vision and mission, or what we’re trying to accomplish through this path or this process.

You could extrapolate that to a practice. You’re the chief, and you have younger faculty, and this is the goal of the mission or the vision of the practice, and what we’re trying to achieve, and is this in line with that? And we’ll give you feedback with relation to how you handled this clinical workup or a technical part of the procedure or follow up or management and preparation.

And I think when you do it in those contexts and it’s objective and it’s constructive and it gets back to what you establish as the guidelines or what the goals were at the onset, make that less of an attack and much more of like advice, which is a great way.

I don’t think I ever put it in those terms, but that’s exactly what I think I was trying to do is how do I give them advice rather than them thinking like I’m being critical of them. So, you’ve helped me put maybe better words to that as well. I’m curious–

I can say from a personal experience, as one of your former fellows, that that’s exactly how it was received, at least on my end. I never felt like you were criticizing me as a person or telling me that I was a bad fellow or a bad IR, and just wanted to make me better and gave me steps into how I can improve. And so, I think that helped me become the best IR that I could be coming through that program.

Well, I’m a fan.

No, I love this conversation. I think this is very interesting and I appreciate you taking the time and being self-aware that you have a role and you see everybody’s future IRs, and this is what’s important at the end, right? That we have a workforce that is ready, that is capable, and represents us well. And then you asked me earlier about a junior faculty, and I think that it’s very important, and I forgot to mention,

I think most academic places have this systematic way of giving feedback. The career conferences with your chair, maybe with your chief, you may or not have patient evaluations, for example, that are not kind of feedback, feedback from your peers, but it’s feedback.

And so, I think that it’s so important to have a system that you feel safe, that you have psychological safety to say what you think, and so that you can also receive what you need to receive. And it’s not considered bias, it’s not considered an attack or whatever is that you are interpreting out of this.

And I think that the career conference are great opportunities even if the person is doing great, right? You say “Okay, is there anything else that I can do?” It makes a better environment ,working wise. You feel more happy at work because you feel that people care, that people are listening, and they care about you.

So, no, that’s very important. Having structure both in training programs and also in faculty-level programs that you can actually do the feedback, the advice, without any connotation of critique.

I love the term that you use, psychological safety, that’s one that came up a lot in my MBA program. So, it’s a business buzzword, but I think that’s so important to establish that and that’s what makes the feedback be accepted and be internalized. And then be able to move forward with that.

Knowing that the person that’s giving you the feedback is on your side, on your team, wants the best for you and is not doing this to tear you down, but actually to build you up and make you better.

Well, we’ve covered a lot on feedback. I know we’re not quite done with our time yet, but I do want to hit on a couple points and maybe close this up with maybe a closing recommendation from each of you. But before we get to that with regards to feedback or perhaps conflict resolution, because sometimes feedback can run into that.

Have you had challenges with working same gender to gender feedback? Or have you had– I think, and maybe this is a little bit an offshoot of the topic, but I think that the role of mentorship and guidance comes hand in hand with feedback. If you want– if you seek a mentor and you want someone who you can relate to or you feel like can relate to or you want to emulate, I think it’s not uncommon for women IRs to look at other women IRs in leadership.

Have you found the best way to find that? Because it may not be at your own institution. UNC is unique with the number of female faculty they have, but I know that’s not the case around the country and I know that that’s an area of need for I think many young faculty.

Yeah, no, I think that happened to me at Mass General for sure. I would seek out for my surgical colleagues, my surgical female colleagues, for both feedback and advice or just to vent. Sometimes.

Right, not limited to your own specialty?

Not limited, but in terms of the dynamics– and of course, at UNC, we are like 50% female faculty, and our chair is female, and it’s the first time that I work with a female chair, and it’s been amazing. Not that it wasn’t amazing with the other male counterparts. You know who you are, I don’t want to get in trouble. But it’s amazing not because of anything other than, I think I can relate.

I feel like I can say things and I’m listened to more easily because of the gender dynamics. It is more of a bias on my end. I can feel like I can say things, but at the same time, I think that if you don’t have that, maybe you can seek other specialties, other people outside of your own team.

And I know that private practices– I mean, I don’t know because I never practiced in private practice, but I know people who did, like you and others. So, I know that is a very difficult space, I guess, to advocate maybe for those things, maybe even other things that relate to women in IR.

And so, I think that it’s extremely important for you to find it somewhere, and you can. And I had a lot of people from other institutions say, “Can you mentor me? Can you give me advice?” Just so that they can feel like there’s a safe space for sharing things.

Sure. I’m the only female faculty member at UVA, and so, I don’t have other women faculty but I do have women residents and so, I do try to do things with them. And I make it a point to do things outside of work and gather them together.

And I try to do it quarterly, but it doesn’t always happen, where we can just go and talk about work if they want to talk about work, or vent or tell me things that are happening. That’s usually where I hear about all the problems that the program is having and that we need to address, or they can talk about whatever else is going on in their lives.

And so, it’s a good way for them to just be able to interact in a more informal manner. So, I do try to do that. I have found that, I do have lots of women mentors, many of whom I found through SIR and through SIR work, but I also have a lot of male mentors.

And so, I think that’s also super important. And I understand that you want to be– it’s important to have people that you can relate to that you look up to and want to be a mentor as well, but you don’t have to. If you’re at an institution and there are no women faculty, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have mentors at your institution.

And so, I think find the people that are there to be mentors as well and then also, look outside for additional mentors, whether it’s other specialties at that institution, whether it’s peer mentorship in your trainee class or through RFS or ECS or whatever it is that you get involved with SIR.

And so, you build this network of mentors from all around, and I think that’s more important than having one woman in IR mentor, that if you’re a woman that you have to have a woman in IR mentor. So, I think it’s more important that you create a village, right? It takes a village. So, I think that’s important in child raising, even though I don’t have children, but also in just life in general. It’s important.

Well, I really appreciate hearing that for one because I have given my reasons for why I’m a big advocate, but I know others will have their own. But many of us who aren’t of the same gender want to help support, promote, sponsor women in the field because we think it’s important, and it’s wonderful to hear that you welcome that both of you do, I know. I think this has been a super informative session here and I hope our listeners have felt this way as well.

I think there’s essential lessons and takeaways on how to take, receive, and adjust to challenging feedback, good feedback, how to give it. Maybe to close this off, looking ahead, what is perhaps one concrete step or habit that you would recommend for others to create consistent transformative feedback as they’re giving it moving forward? And we’ll close it up.

So, I think one of the themes that I saw today and I’ve learned it, and of course we’re live from SIR, I want to say “Live from SIR 2025!” I think our specialty’s innovative; it’s always changing, and one of the many messages that we had today from our gold medalists and all the awardees is that we also have to remain curious.

And that means you have to have self-awareness that we don’t know everything, and we are not aware of everything at a moment of time that you make a decision, that you give feedback, that you give advice. You need to have the whole picture. And it’s hard to have the whole picture. None of us is going to have it a hundred percent of the time.

And so, it’s important to remain humble in the topic of feedback and leadership and all of this. And it’s important to have self-awareness that you can always improve. We all can always improve, even in our techniques when we’re doing procedures, we only can get better, right? And that’s true. The more you do, the more you practice, the better you are.

So, I think for me the takeaway should be that be humble, remain curious, and be self-aware that you can always learn something like I did today from Amy and from Parag. And I appreciate that, I appreciate this level of conversation that we have. And I know that’s not just only here, it’s outside of here, and that’s what makes us better as a group, as friends, as a society.

Yes, I would definitely agree with all of that. I think that the most concrete thing that you could take away in order to provide good feedback moving forward is to provide very objective feedback and provide concrete steps that that person can take to improve and not just say, “You need to get better at this,” but to say, “This is something that we need to work on. This is how I propose that we do that, and this is the timeframe and then we’ll circle back and see how things are going. And then also if you have other ideas, I’d love to hear them.” But provide a framework so that they don’t leave that conversation going, “Well great, I know what I need to improve but I don’t know how.”

That’s great. An action plan if you will.

Exactly.

I’ll close with one thing that I haven’t brought up in this last hour, but as a receiver of feedback and as a giver of feedback, I think what you can do is consider reversing the roles and if you’re receiving the feedback, consider the feedback you’re being given if you are the person giving the feedback, and I’m trying to understand where that might be coming from.

And in turn, if you’re giving the feedback and you say something that may be off-putting or may be a challenge, put yourself in the receiver of feedback’s position. “How would I take that?” I think if you do that internally, it’s a little bit of a lesson or practice of self-awareness, but a specific way to perhaps do that might be a way to help you improve in receiving and giving that feedback.

So, I’ll leave that as a takeaway. With that, I want to thank very much Gloria Salazar and Amy Taylor for joining me today and us at the Cook@ SIR Podcast. We’ve been live at the Cook booth in Nashville. It’s SIR, live 2025–

2025.

50th anniversary. Thank you, everyone, it’s been a pleasure, and hope you enjoy the rest of the meeting.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you.