An Early-Career Leap of Faith: From Academia to Community Oncology with Dr. Suzanne Cole

Guest host Dr. Miriam Knoll, radiation oncologist at the John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack Meridian Health, interviews oncologists about the decisions and extraordinary moments that have shaped their careers in this special podcast series. In this episode, Dr. Knoll speaks with Dr. Suzanne Cole, director at University Hospital Simmons Cancer Clinic at UT Southwestern Medical Center, about her early-career leap of faith to move from academia to a remote community oncology practice.

 

TRANSCRIPT:

Dr. Miriam Knoll: Welcome to the ASCO Daily News Podcast. I'm Dr. Miriam Knoll and I'm delighted to be the Daily News guest host for a special podcast series that explores a full spectrum of oncology careers. I am an early career radiation oncologist. And in this series, I'll bring you interviews with a wide range of oncologists to hear about their diverse experiences, greatest challenges, and the unforgettable moments that shaped their careers.

 

Dr. Miriam Knoll: In today's episode, I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Suzanne Cole, a medical oncologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center. She serves as a director of the University Hospital Simmons Cancer Clinic at the UT Southwestern Medical Center at Richardson/Plano. Dr. Cole and myself report no conflicts of interest relevant to this podcast. Full disclosures relating to all Daily News Podcast can be found on our episode pages. Dr. Cole, welcome to the podcast.

 

Dr. Suzanne Cole: Thank you so much for inviting me.

 

Dr. Miriam Knoll: So I'm so excited to have you here. You and I met on social media, which is becoming way more common nowadays. Would you agree?

 

Dr. Suzanne Cole: I totally agree.

 

Dr. Miriam Knoll: So I'm going to ask you about the HEME/ONC women's Facebook group a little bit later. But right now I first wanted to ask you about your career trajectory. Because I know that you first started off after you completed your training working in the community and more recently joined UT Southwestern.

 

Dr. Suzanne Cole: That's true.

 

Dr. Miriam Knoll: How did that come about for you?

 

Dr. Suzanne Cole: So I think that my story is not unlike other women who may be considering, you know, various options coming out of fellowship as far as what do they want to do or where do they see themselves. But I think I also had some kind of just normal life family pressures that pushed me in a certain direction. So I did my fellowship at MD Anderson.

 

Dr. Suzanne Cole: And when I went there, I thought I might be a stem cell transplant doctor. And I spent my first year in clinic kind of embedded in a transplant clinic and doing a lot of inpatient. And, you know, I kind of learned during that time that transplant probably wasn't the right fit for me. And I really didn't love any particular other tumor type enough to kind of then switch gears and dedicate my life to like one specific type of cancer.

 

Dr. Suzanne Cole: And so I told my program that I thought I was probably going to end up being a generalist and go back into the community. Most of my family is in Dallas. And that's where I was kind of hoping to land eventually. And I focused the last couple years of my fellowship on just really getting a very broad education in all of the tumor types.

 

Dr. Suzanne Cole: And then also, I think that this is important for women and men, but I'm the breadwinner of my family. I have four children. My husband is a musician. And when I was coming out of fellowship, I was probably about $250,000 in debt. And my oldest son was kind of getting close to needing to go to college.

 

Dr. Suzanne Cole: And, of course, like, I'd been in training and med school and residency for most of his growing up. And I had nothing set aside for his college. So I really needed to be in a place where I could be in a situation where I could pay off my loans and also save money for college. And, to be quite frank, a lot of the entry level academic positions just would not allow me to financially get my loans out of the way and also prepare for college, which was coming in a very short period of time for my oldest son.

 

Dr. Suzanne Cole: So I ended up taking a job in Charleston, West Virginia, where I was able to kind of get a loan payment situation taken care of. And I worked in this underserved area and was able to, basically, get financially straightened out within the first four years of my career. And it was a really fantastic place to cut my teeth as an oncologist.

 

Dr. Suzanne Cole: Because I was working for a very large hospital system called CAMC. And they have this network of hospitals in Charleston that basically serves the entire southern half of West Virginia. It's a huge patient population that filters into this kind of safety net hospital.

 

Dr. Suzan...