Mar 26, 2021
Stefanie R. Brown, MD is the Internal Medicine Residency Program Director at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Section Chief for the Med-Peds and Pediatric Hospital Medicine. Dr. Brown completed her medical school from the University of Cincinnati, pursued a residency in Med-Peds from Rutgers New Jersey followed by a chief resident year. Prior to this role, Dr. Brown has been the program director of the Med-Peds Residency at the University of Miami as well as the Assistant Dean for Diversity and Multicultural Affairs. She is the recipient of a number of awards including the Women in Academic Medicine Excellence in Mentorship Award.
Today, Dr. Stefanie Brown shares an analogy that a past mentor taught her about achieving excellence: In medicine, there are two pies that define your life. The first contains the things you are responsible for. The slices are made up of your job and your responsibilities, whether it be clinical, administrative, research, or teaching. But the second pie is full of the things you really like to do: The slices in this pie contain all the things you are passionate about. The key to success—and excellence—is getting these two pies to intersect as much as possible. The more these pies overlap, the more we will accomplish with less stress and effort.
Pearls of Wisdom:
1. Moving from good to great is about knowing
where your strengths are, and knowing what you need to improve on.
From good to great, comes greatness to excellence, then excellence
to amazing. And when you are able to pay it forward to others…that
is when you move from amazing to inspiring.
2. If you’re not at the table,
you’re on the menu. As residents, we have the opportunity to be in
the environments where decisions are made, we can sit in on
committees, and learn from the best so that we will be more
prepared in the future to hold our own seats at the
table.
3. In medicine, there are two pies.
The first one contains your job responsibilities. And the second
one is about what you are passionate about. The goal is to get
these two pies to intersect: The better it will be for us, and the
less effort it takes to achieve excellence.