Ed Weisbart MD, CPE, FAAFP is a family physician in St. Louis and chairs the Missouri chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, a 32-year-old non-profit non-partisan research and education organization in support of providing an improved form of Medicare to all Americans. After practicing family medicine for 20 years at Rush Medical Center in Chicago, he moved to St. Louis in 2003 to serve as chief medical officer of Express Scripts until retiring in 2010. He is currently an assistant professor of clinical medicine at Washington University in St. Louis MO. He volunteers in a variety of safety-net clinics and other non-profits across the St. Louis area, and serves as vice president of Consumers Council of Missouri.
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Dr. Weisbart received his medical degree at the University of Illinois in Chicago in 1979 and completed his family medicine residency and a fellowship in family medicine education at Michigan State University in 1982. Dr. Weisbart is a national speaker with several articles published in both national medical journals and local media regarding the healthcare needs of the uninsured.
Dr. Weisbart’s Prescription for Success:
Number 1: Decide on your specialty or your career path based on what you could do with that specialty or career path, not based on what you’ve seen done with it.
Number 2: Move toward anxiety. When you feel a career decision coming up and one of the choices is making you particularly nervous, sit down and really think about it, talk about it with your friends or family, and noodle through what it is that’s making you nervous.
Number 3: Follow your passion, speak your mind, and have the courage to say the things you know are right.
Number 4: The more clearly you see where you want to go, the more likely you’ll wind up there.
Connect with Dr. Weisbart:
Website: Physicians for a National Health Program, Missouri Chapter: http://pnhpmissouri.org/
Notable quotes from Dr. Weisbart’s interview:
(on choosing a career in medicine) I really liked science. I really like information and data and numbers, but I also really like people. And so I was trying to think of careers that combine those things
My father was a dentist and I remember at one point when I was thinking about careers, he told me to not go into dentistry because you get too many phone calls late at night
I don’t come up with the ideas, but I do try to keep my eye out for good ideas and then try to amplify and support and go with them or criticize them if they’re not. So I don’t I don’t think of myself so much as a visionary but as an advocate for good ideas when they come along.
[With] every judicial decision, every legislative decision, you’re always balancing some degree of conflicting priorities and conflicting values. You’re always doing that. There are very few black and white situations.
If you’re thinking about changing your career. There should be two criteria: number one, you should want to leave where you are. If you don’t want to leave where you are, why are you even thinking about it; and number two, you should definitely want to go where you’re aiming.
When you’re in a position relatively high, in most organizations, it’s pretty hard to find somebody who’s willing to give you critical, constructive, but not necessarily supportive feedback.