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Dr. Dana Corriel (00:02)
Welcome to another episode of From Print to Pod. This is Dr. Dana Corriel. I’m the host. And today we’re going to be interviewing Dr. Drew Remignanti. And yeah, and it’s based on his interview called A Writer Interview with Dr. Drew Remignanti on The Healing Connection. Dr. Remignanti, welcome. Would you like to quickly introduce yourself?

Dr. Drew Remignanti (00:25)
Thank you. Thank you very much. I’m a retired emergency physician, and towards the end of my career, I was re-alarmed at the trajectory of the United States healthcare system, which is why I wrote my book.

Dr. Dana Corriel (00:36)
Okay, fantastic. Thank you so much for that. Okay, let’s dive right into the first question. And that’s about building a foundation. Your book is supported by over 280 scientific references. How did you curate and organize these resources to create a narrative that’s both rigorous and accessible?

Dr. Drew Remignanti (00:58)
I passed my emergency medicine boards for the fourth time in 2014. That’s when I thought, I’ve got to start thinking about an end game. Because when I needed to take the exam again in 2024, I was going to be 71. I thought that might be a hazard to my patients to be still practicing. So when I started thinking about an end game, I thought, well, gee, there’s a lot of things I’d like to pass on that I think I’ve learned about healthcare in the U.S.

So around that time is when I began to develop the idea of writing a book, and I started to collect articles of things I wanted to address. And as I wrote in the interview, I was still working — I wasn’t writing yet — but I was starting to gather materials. Anytime something came across my radar screen that looked like an interesting article that needed to be included, I would email that to myself. And then when it arrived the second time, I’d flag it as a resource for the writing process.

When I sat down to write — I retired in April of 2020 after 40 years of doing full-time emergency medicine — I opened up that folder with the flagged emails. There were over 5,000 flagged emails. So I had a lot of organization to do there.

Dr. Dana Corriel (02:15)
Amazing. All right, let’s move on to the topic of dual perspectives. So you draw from both your 40-year career in emergency medicine, which you just spoke about, and your personal experience as a chronic autoimmune patient. How did these dual perspectives shape the tone and content of your book?

Dr. Drew Remignanti (02:36)
One of the things I learned — I had my first GI deal over 50 years ago — I came down with a condition called ulcerative colitis, one of the inflammatory bowel disease conditions, which at that time was actually seriously considered to be a purely psychosomatic illness, not really having an organic basis.

Which turned out not to be true. It didn’t sound true. It didn’t feel right to me. And in the interim, they’re pretty convinced it’s an autoimmune process, triggered off by — I probably had a genetic propensity towards it — and that you can trigger that propensity if you have the right environmental exposures… or the wrong environmental exposures.

So I learned very early in life that not everything we do in healthcare is clear. There are very different degrees of certainty attached to what we do. And I learned that very intimately with the fact that there was no cure for my condition. There was no known cause.

Dr. Dana Corriel (03:35)
Okay, thank you for sharing such an intimate part of your life with us, and of course, with the readers of your book. The next question is going to focus on the balancing act. Working in the ED while gathering research sounds incredibly challenging. What strategies did you use to balance your clinical responsibilities with your writing and research?

Dr. Drew Remignanti (03:59)
Obviously, seeing patients and balancing the needs of the emergency department was always priority number one. But inevitably, you’re getting emails and things are coming across your desk. And I’d say, “That looks interesting. That’s something I probably should incorporate into what I want to say in my book.”

And as for the articles, I either made a copy of them and brought them home with me in physical form, or if they were electronic, I’d forward them to myself. So I didn’t let it distract from my work, because obviously, in the emergency department, that has to be priority number one.

Dr. Dana Corriel (04:31)
Thank you for that. The next question involves the transition to writing full-time, which a lot of speakers might find interesting. And just to quickly mention, we do have a writers’ conference — a second annual one — coming up May 1st through the 4th, and you can access it even after we’re done.

Once you retired from emergency medicine, you dedicated yourself fully to writing. What were some of the biggest challenges and unexpected rewards that you encountered during that transition?

Dr. Drew Remignanti (05:03)
Turns out I don’t really like the writing process, because it’s a solo process — you’re in a room by yourself. Though I managed to get some variation out of it. Thank God for cell phones and the access to the internet. I would often take my dog on long walks through the woods, and something would occur to me, and I’d say, “I better look that up.”

And I’d speak a search into my iPhone, and it’d come up with articles. Or I might even speak a memo: “Gee, when you get around to writing the book, be sure to write about this, that, or the other thing.” Notes to myself. So, you know, being in the current world where all that stuff is available electronically was a big assistance.

Dr. Dana Corriel (05:43)
Now about maintaining engagement — your writing is very direct and supported by data. How do you strike that balance between academic rigor and engaging storytelling to appeal to both professionals and a broader audience?

Dr. Drew Remignanti (05:59)
That was the— I wanted to get across these scientific aspects, you know, the fact that things are uncertain. And what do we do when we find ourselves as patients in a situation of uncertainty? How do we communicate that with our doctors? And as doctors, how do we communicate that and still maintain a level of trust with our patients?

So that was important to me. And during the thinking process of writing the book, I would be matching up patients I had seen — and things that went well or either didn’t or possibly didn’t go well — and how could I have done that better?

So I was trying to match up in my mind what cases that I’d seen went with what concepts I thought were important to address, and what articles I was coming across that seemed to address that.

Dr. Dana Corriel (06:43)
Okay, thank you. Now let’s talk about impactful feedback. Have there been any moments when feedback from colleagues or patients significantly influenced your writing process or perspective?

Dr. Drew Remignanti (06:57)
I didn’t share my writing with patients or physicians at the beginning. I did have an experience where I did a couple of volunteer trips with the World Health Organization and the CDC in Atlanta. They were during the polio eradication process.

And I made an overseas trip to—first to Pakistan, and then to Ghana for several months each time. And the whole process was how to eradicate polio worldwide by screening for potential cases and by encouraging immunization.

So during those two trips, I wrote some emails home to people, trying to describe the novelty of my situation—especially Pakistan, which was so different from any Western society.

When you walk down the street in Pakistan, you cannot make eye contact with a woman. You basically needed to avert your gaze, because that was considered insulting and inappropriate.

I remember once, I was with the local Pakistani public health person I was dealing with, I went, picked up my camera to take a picture of a landscape, and he immediately reached up and pushed my camera down. I said, “What?” Off in the distance, there were some figures on a camel—riding on a camel. It happened to be women. I couldn’t tell, it was so far away, but he knew. He basically was indicating to me, no, you cannot take pictures of women here in Pakistan.

So it was such an unusual experience for us, in such a different culture. I started writing some emails home to friends and family, trying to convey that. And I found it interesting—trying to put into words what I was experiencing.

So that’s what gave me the writing bug a little bit. I thought, “Well gee, people seem to appreciate what I was saying.” They said, “It sounds like I’m maybe someone who could put into words what I’m trying to say and get across.”

So I took that as a challenge. I didn’t like the writing process, but what I did like is—after having written something and putting it down on paper and rereading it—when you had that feeling, when you reread something you write and you say, “Well, that’s what I wanted to say. I really hit it that time.” So that was very satisfying—to be able to convey something in a way that, when you reconsidered it, it seemed to be communicating what you were trying to say.

Dr. Dana Corriel (09:16)
Wow. Thank you for sharing that.

So, navigating publishing—you shared with us that after sending out over 100 query emails, you chose a hybrid publishing route. What key lessons did you learn about the publishing process that you’d share with other healthcare professionals looking to write—especially ahead of that writing conference, where we’re going to congregate as many of us as hopeful writers?

Dr. Drew Remignanti (09:46)
One of the pieces of advice you get if you look—you know, the first thing I did was look up how to go about writing a book. And one of the pieces of advice you come across again and again is: decide who your audience is, and write to those people.

Which is pretty good—that’s pretty good advice. But I said to myself, “That’s not relevant to me. I’m writing about healthcare. Who am I not going to address that to?”

So I decided that was advice I’m just going to completely ignore.

I mean, if you’re writing a book that’s toward a specific audience, you should definitely pay attention to that advice. But I had bigger fish to fry, I thought.

I wanted to write something that got patients and physicians on the same page about what obstacles are there to us interacting in a way that’s healthy for you as a patient.

So I felt everybody— I did write to everybody.

You’re not allowed to say “my book is for everybody,” you’re just not allowed to say that. Well, I said, “Forget that—that’s what I’m going to say, and that’s what I’m going to try to do.”

Fortunately, I came across something different, which had much greater appeal to me. Someone had written that you should write what you know and write the kind of book you would like to read. So I said, “Well, I can go with that guidance.” So that’s the guidance I followed.

And when I sit down and reread my book after finishing it, I thought, “Well, I pretty much hit both of those goals. I wrote what I knew—or at least what I was learning. And I wrote the kind of science-based book that I like to read, with stories and relevant real-life episodes that bring things alive, I think.”

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