Here is the full transcript of comedian and ophthalmologist William Flanary, aka Dr. Glaucomflecken’s speech at University of Michigan Medical School 2024 Commencement address on May 10 in Hill Auditorium.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Thank you, this is a new costume for me, you guys, it’s great. Thank you, Dean Weinstein, faculty, graduates, family and friends, let’s just get this out of the way. Yes, I am a TikTok comedian. And yes, they meant to invite me today.
As far as I know, it wasn’t a mistake, family and friends. I’m just as surprised as you are. I am not an academic physician. I am not what you would call scholarly.
Believe it or not, I don’t even have any Nobel Prizes. But what I do have is over 100 hours of social media content, most of which is pretty funny. I want to thank the graduating class first and foremost for inviting me to share this important day with all of you. And I’d also like to thank the dean for being totally cool with it.
This is my second time visiting Ann Arbor. The first time was in 2013 when I interviewed for ophthalmology residency. I was enamored by this place. Sometimes you just know you belong somewhere.
Matching for Residency
I remember excitedly coming home and telling my wife, Kristin, about all the wonderful people, the amazing facilities, the Coney dogs. And I remember her saying to me, “OK, but what about winter?” And I was like, “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it’s fine.”
But as soon as I left that interview, I knew I’d be ranking Michigan number one. So you can imagine my disappointment. When I opened up that envelope and I did not see the University of Michigan there on the page, I had matched up the University of Iowa, a wonderful ophthalmology program, but it wasn’t my first choice.
So what did I do?
Well, I did what we all do. I celebrated. You know, I hugged my family and friends. I celebrated my successful match. And then I swore revenge on the program that passed over. But you know what? I’m standing here now. It all worked out.
Memories of Graduation
So no hard feelings, you guys. Graduates, 11 years ago, I sat where you sit today, excited, a little bit terrified to begin my medical career. I still remember a lot about that day, celebrating with my classmates and my friends and family on that beautiful spring day.
The one thing I don’t remember is the commencement address. I think it went a little long. Now, I have no preconceived notion that what I’m going to tell you today will remain encoded in your long-term memory.
Like the Krebs cycle, coagulation cascade, or those of you going into ophthalmology, anything below the nasal bridge, my words will fade with time. And decades from now, when your grandchildren will ask you who spoke at your med school graduation commencement, you’ll fall silent. You’ll look off into the distance before saying, “I think it was from TikTok.” To which your grandchildren will respond, “What was TikTok?”
The Feeling of Graduation
I may not remember the words delivered to my graduating class by the speaker that day, but I do remember how those words made me feel, excited, hopeful, proud, with a healthy dose of imposter syndrome. It’s that feeling that someday, very soon, somebody is going to figure out that you have no idea what you’re doing. We’ve all had that feeling, even the dean.
You see, here’s the problem with these commencement addresses. People like me stand up here and tell you about the enormous responsibility you’re taking on as physicians, how it’s up to you as the future of medicine to help lead us toward a more equitable, a more compassionate, a more humane health care system. I can tell you all those things, which are all true, by the way, but I know what many of you are thinking right now, “Dr. G, that’s all great, like I’d love to save health care. Can I just get through residency first?”
The answer is yes, of course. In fact, you can think of residency as a prerequisite for saving U.S. health care. So allow me to give you some advice to help you survive residency so that you can get on to the business of saving health care.
The Road Ahead
Okay, here’s what’s going to happen over the next few years. You ready? All right. Today, you’re going to graduate. Obviously. Tomorrow, you’ll sleep in. I know how taxing fourth-year med school is. You need a break.
A few weeks from now, you’ll receive your first request in the mail from the University of Michigan asking for a donation. You’re broke. There will be plenty of opportunities for donations later, okay? Even as you move across the country throughout your career, Michigan will find you, all right? They have a team dedicated to finding you.
Now in July, you’ll begin your intern year, and one of the first things you’re going to do is make a mistake. But despite your best efforts and the world-class education that you’ve received here, you will make mistakes. Some will be small. You’ll order the wrong lab test, or you’ll sleep through a page, or you’ll forget to check a patient’s vision before calling an ophthalmology consult.
Learning from Mistakes
Other mistakes will be big, mistakes that will shake your confidence, that will make you question whether you have what it takes to do this job. Please don’t keep those mistakes to yourself. Talk about them. Tell your co-residents. Tell your attendings.
When you talk to people about your mistakes, you realize something very important, that you’re not the only person who’s ever screwed up. When I was an intern, every time I’d make a mistake, I would say, “I bet Atul Gawande also accidentally ordered a suppository.” That helps. You do your best to avoid mistakes, but when they happen, you learn from it, and you realize that you’re still a good doctor.
You’re just also human. Now in December, it’s going to start to get dark. You may not see sunlight for days or weeks or for your future radiologist years. Order one of those sad lamps. Put it in your car. It really, it does help. It does help. But also throughout those dark days, throughout residency, maintain a connection to your creative side.
All of you have a tremendous amount of creativity. All of you have something in your life outside of medicine that brings you joy, that tickles a different part of your brain. Medicine in the year 2024 does not value creativity. It values efficiency, standardization, protocols, templates, smart phrases, see more patients, write more notes, but do it efficiently.
As a result, we lose our connection to our creative sides, especially when we need it the most, when burnout, moral injury, and depression among physicians are more prevalent than ever. Hold on to your creativity. Nurture it. Carve out minutes or hours in your schedule to sing, dance, write just about different specialties in medicine and record yourself alone in your bedroom.
We all have a thing. Make time for it. Since 2020, I’ve been making these little like silly comedy videos on if you’ve seen them.
The most common feedback I received over the last few years is that those videos help people get through the pandemic. Which is awesome because how else is an ophthalmologist supposed to help during a respiratory pandemic? So don’t discount the impact that your creativity can have on your own mental health and the mental health of those around you.
Relying on Each Other
Now by the end of intern year, you’ll come to understand this time next year that the The key to surviving medical training goes beyond knowing where all the free food is in the hospital. It helps. It does. That’s not it. It’s relying on each other. Your co-residents, the people sitting beside you, the people in the trenches with you.
There will be stretches of time during residency when your co-residents will be the closest family that you have. When I was a fourth year resident, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. This was an interesting turn of events for me as an ophthalmology resident, because those aren’t typically the kind of balls we treat.
That diagnosis turned my world upside down, you guys. Suddenly I was facing cancer treatment and oncology appointments when I should have been celebrating the end of residency and looking for my first job out of training. It was too much for me to handle alone, but my co-residents were there for me.
They took call for me. They filled in for me in clinic when I was recovering from surgery, all without the expectation of reciprocity. We built that culture of support and compassion for one another. Residency is one of the most rewarding, but also one of the most difficult things you’ll ever do. You can’t do it alone. You can’t.
Advocacy in Healthcare
You can’t go through a career in medicine alone. Help each other and let other people help you. Create that culture wherever you go and sustain it throughout your career.
Eventually residency will end, even for you future neurosurgeons. It will end. And you know what that means? That means that you have completed your prerequisites for saving healthcare.
It wasn’t until I was out in practice when I really started to understand the world in which we practice medicine. I started to see how the healthcare system is failing us and our patients. A system that devalues the clinical decisions that we make through automated claim denials, prior authorizations, endless peer-to-peer reviews. It’s a system that leaves our most vulnerable members of society without access and the ability to afford the medications, the treatments that they need.
That is the system you are graduating into. It’s a system that prioritizes profit over patient care. I tell you this not to scare you or make you regret any decision in life, but to make sure that you’re ready to help make it better.
Fighting for Change
Maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but before long, we’re going to need all of you. There is no shortage of injustices, misinformation, and billion-dollar corporations threatening the health and safety of our patients and our profession. It’s up to us to fight for meaningful change.
The opportunities for advocacy are endless. Health insurance reform, cancer screening, gun violence. Get involved in national organizations, lobby on the state and federal levels, get active on social media, turn your passion into positive change.
It works, but only if we do it together. In the past decade, we’ve seen the No Surprises Act, prior authorization reform, PBM reform, restrictions on the corporate practice of medicine. We’ve seen all these things. Advocacy works. We need to continue stacking up wins, and we will.
We will. I know we will. We owe it to our patients, to the public, and to ourselves.
Your Voice Has Power
I want you always to remember this. As a physician, your voice has weight. Your voice has power. Together, our voice is overwhelming.
My final words of advice for you all, the class of 2024, while you’re out there crushing residency and saving health care, try to have some fun along the way, okay? We are always focused on the next stage in life. “I can’t wait to finish med school. Only one more year of residency.”
“I just need to get through fellowship,” or for some of you, you’ll do like three or four fellowships for some reason. I don’t know. I don’t understand that. Every now and then, it’s okay to stop focusing on where you’re going and appreciate where you are.
Look at this. Look at these people. You did this. You should be so proud of that.
Conclusion
There’s going to be highs and lows throughout your medical career. Medicine will hand you some of the worst days of your life, but you’ll also do extraordinary things that you never thought were possible, and you’re going to help a lot of people. It’s a long road. Try to have a little bit of fun along the way.
Congratulations, University of Michigan, class of 2024.
