Jason A. Webb, MD
This week’s faculty spotlight shines on Jason A. Webb, MD. Webb talks to us about providing an integrated approach to palliative care and psychiatry, his travels through Kenya, and his home life as a father, green thumb and poet.
How long have you been at Duke? How long have you been at the division of General Internal Medicine?
I have been at Duke since essentially 2006. I came as a 4th year medical student to do a Sub-Internship on the Inpatient Medicine/Psychiatry service which led to my love for the Duke Combined Training Program in Internal Medicine and Psychiatry where I began my internship in 2007. I completed my five-year residency in 2012. I then had a amazing opportunity to serve as the Chief Medicine Resident at the Durham VAMC where I joined the Division of GIM. My chief year was by far one of the most challenging years, but also the one year that I remember most fondly since my time at Duke. I then stayed on to complete a fellowship in Hospice and Palliative Medicine in 2013. Since starting faculty in Palliative Care in 2014, I have now been with the Division of GIM going on two years.
What are your responsibilities within the division? What does a typical day for you look like?
In my clinical role I work in the division within Duke Palliative Care. Clinically, I don’t really have a “typical day!” I rotate every other week on an inpatient service, generally the combined Palliative Oncology service on 9300, Duke Hospital Palliative Care Consultation, Duke Regional Palliative Care Consultation, and the Inpatient Hospice Unit at the Hock Family Pavilion. My other clinical time is divided in our outpatient palliative care clinics in the Duke Clinic 2B/2C and the Cancer Center Clinic 3-2. I also spend about an eighth of my time in the Mental Health Service at the Durham VAMC where I work as the embedded Psycho-Oncology practitioner in the Oncology Clinic 1C, where I care for our veterans mental health needs while they undergo cancer treatment.
In my educational role I am the Director of Undergraduate Medical Education for Duke Palliative Care. I serve as the course director for our Palliative Care selective and electives, which are hugely popular with the Duke medical students. I was also recently promoted to be the Associate Program Director for the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship Program, where my primary roles focus on curriculum development, educational innovation, and recruiting. I am currently working on updating our social media outreach for Duke Palliative Care and am managing our Twitter feed @DukePallCare.
You completed Duke’s internal medicine and psychiatry in 2012, and then completed a palliative care fellowship. What sparked your interest in each of these areas? How do you see these topics complementing each other?
My interest in combined training in internal medicine and psychiatry grew out of a hope to be able to deliver patient-centered care. I did not see the mind-body experience as dichotomous and thus did not see how I could be the type of physician I wanted to be at the end of a residency training without knowing and being able to apply both skill sets. It was during my residency training at Duke, specifically experiences in the MICU and Oncology that forged an interest in palliative medicine. I then began to see that patients with serious illnesses such as advanced cancer and heart failure needed a more integrated focus on their overall care. Thus, my interest in integrated palliative care evolved out of the training I received here at Duke.
I learned that my skill set as an internist-psychiatrist afforded me a unique ability to connect to patients with serious illnesses, and that I could harness my training to address complex symptom management needs such as depression in patients with advanced cancer and refractory nausea and vomiting in patients receiving highly emetogenic chemotherapies. In general, it is hard to fathom caring for a patient with advanced cancer without being able to integrate care for a patient’s physical and psychological health. Physicians tend to underestimate the degree to which a life limiting or serious illness can cause psychosocial distress, and thus, I feel privileged that I can integrate care for my patients to address the entire spectrum of quality of life challenges.
The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine listed you as an “inspiring leader under the age of 40.” Can you tell me more about what led to that award?
To be honest, I am still a bit in shock to be listed with this prestigious group of early career physicians in hospice and palliative medicine. Physician members of the AAHPM as well as my colleagues within Duke Palliative Care nominated me for the award. The nomination was spurred on by my developing role at Duke in integrated palliative medicine, medical education, and some work I have done in Kenya to try and develop more palliative care services in the developing world. Additionally, I have been active nationally within the AAHPM having served as Chair of the Early Career Professional Special Interest Group and spending time on capital hill as a AAHPM representative advocating for policy changes to increase funding for the palliative medicine physician workforce.
You spent a summer in Kenya during your medical training. What was that experience like? Have you had a chance to revisit or travel internationally since then?
I had the gracious opportunity to travel to Kenya for three months as a part of my Medicine-Psychiatry residency experience, which was sponsored by the Hubert-Yeargan Center for Global Health at Duke. It was during my time in Eldoret that I became deeply aware of the significant disparities in pain and symptom management for patients in Africa suffering from life-limiting illnesses such as HIV/AIDS and cancer. I worked for a month on the palliative care service, which at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital focuses principally on the end-of-life care for oncology patients. It was because of my global health experience during residency that I became much more devoted to trying to return to Kenya to continue to provide palliative care services and education to our Kenyan colleagues. I was able to return to Kenya as a palliative care fellow in March of 2014 due to the support of Dr. Ralph Corey, Dr. James Tulsky, and Dr. Katja Elbert-Avila. I was able to catalogue my experience providing palliative care in Kenya through a blog entitled Kilemba in Kenya http://kilemba-kenya.blogspot.com/2014/03/meeting-team.html .
Webb with his wife, Maria, and daughter Elaina Jean enjoys some holiday time in his hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada.
Have you recently read any books, articles, blog posts or other material that would be of interest to the division?
Most recently I finished reading Atul Gawande’s book “Being Mortal,” a well-written journey exploring what it means to live and die in the US, and a book that I highly recommend to any clinician within the Division. I also enjoy stimulating both hemispheres of my brain and in addition to reading medical focused literature, and I recently finished a book of poems “Blue Horses” by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver. Digitally, I am a rabid follower of two palliative care focused Blogs: GeriPal http://www.geripal.org/ (@GeriPal) and Pallimed http://www.pallimed.org/ (@Pallimed) which may be of interest to other members of the Division.
What passions or hobbies do you have outside of the division? Do you have a photograph of yourself in a non-work setting that we can share with the rest of the division?
I often joke with my wife that my hobbies include work, work, and a little more work. But truly, my self-care outside of work is spent enjoying the amazing things Durham has to offer to my family. My wife Maria and I have a 23-month-old daughter Elaina Jean and we enjoy visiting the Museum of Life and Science on the weekend exploring the exhibits and riding the train. My wife and I love to eat out in Durham and often spend our Saturday mornings at the South Durham Farmer’s Market. I can often be found flexing my green thumb in my yard and find mowing a good time to conjure research ideas.
I enjoy college sports and especially the San Francisco 49ers during the NFL football season. I am also a bit of a novice poet, and will occasionally be found posting some of my poetry on my other blog Limbic Music. (http://limbicmusicjw.blogspot.com/). I am a developing social media darling and Tweet about palliative medicine via the handle @JasAWebb. Though, most of all, I enjoy sharing a nice glass of pinot noir with my wife on our back porch, while we watch our daughter playing in the perfectly manicured yard.
Watch Jason A. Webb, MD, discuss his approach to integrative palliative care in his Duke Medicine profile video.
