Making Your Practice More Inclusive

Kirsten Bunch: Know what your stance is on how people are treated and what your values are in your practice or in your office. And do some practicing and training with your team as to how to respond to whatever it is.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Hi, I am Bethany Fishbein, the CEO of the Power Practice and host of the Power Hour Optometry podcast. And I’m speaking today with an old friend, Kirsten Bunch. Kirsten uses she/her pronouns. She’s a Professional Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation. She’s trained in neuroscience-based coaching and inter-relational trauma. And Kirsten in her work, helps young LGBTQ+  professionals be loud and proud at work so they can become authentic managers and leaders in traditionally heteronormative workplaces. She works with clients from Google to Atlantic Healthcare and her work has been featured in O! Oprah Magazine and Forbes. Kirsten, it’s been such a long time. So thank you for doing this and congratulations on all of the successes you’ve achieved. I love seeing it.

Kirsten Bunch: Well thanks, Bethany. Yeah, I feel like we’ve come a long way since our triathlon days. Riding bikes up mountains and swimming in strange places. So it’s really good to connect with you in this way.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: It is. Those things feel like another lifetime ago, right? I had a guest who is a marathoner and she was talking about her experience, and I thought, “Oh, we used to do that.” And it’s hard to imagine that the person that I am right now was that same person but I followed your career through things you post. I think I’m on an email list. I see you on Facebook. I see you on LinkedIn. And so you really seem like a great choice to reach out for the topic that I was interested in. The purpose of doing this is we’re getting more and more questions from our clients. And our clients’ email lists are people asking our consultants and coaches. Or just seeing them on some of the social media sites where optometrists and practice owners are asking each other questions about some of these topics that you coach in. We’re starting to, I don’t know if starting is the right word. I guess the awareness is increasing that people want to make sure they’re taking good care of all of their patients, including patients who are LGBTQ+ or employees. And situations come up that practice owners don’t necessarily know how to deal with and it feels complicated and they’re not sure who to ask. And so I’m hoping that today I can ask you some of these questions that they’re asking out there. And you can share some insight from your perspective.

Kirsten Bunch: Yeah, absolutely. And I’m really excited to be here and talk about this topic. But I do want to say this from the get-go. I mean. The experience of being LGBTQ+ is diverse. It’s different for every person and so some of the things we’ll talk about today are coming from my experience and my perspective. And sometimes I can get it wrong. And I think maybe that is a theme that we could use throughout our conversation today that we’re okay to be wrong and it’s okay to ask for help when we need it. So yeah, I’m happy to be here to talk to you about this. 

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Good. Thank you for saying that because one of the things that I’m feeling is just, you know, wanting to get it right. And not wanting to look stupid or ignorant and, you know, say something wrong. So I was actually a little bit nervous coming into this conversation. Just so wanting to do the right things here. So I appreciate you saying that. I might not but it’s ok.

Kirsten Bunch: Totally okay. How about we agree and pinky swear we both get to be wrong?

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Fair enough. Here’s my pinky there. So, before we get into it, talk a little bit about your career and kind of what you’re doing, and how you ended up working in the specific area that you’re working in now.

Kirsten Bunch: Yeah, so I have two parts of my career at this point in time. So I have my private practice which I’ll talk about in a moment. And then I also am a mental health coach through Lyra Health. So in my private practice, I work specifically with LGBTQ+ professionals, young professionals for the most part, who are either starting off in their career or are at the midpoint in their career. And they’re struggling with how to be their authentic self at work, and fit in, and get promoted, and make the money that they want to make. And it is a question that I find, really. With a lot of curiosity, I find that it’s a question that younger people are asking more than people my age. I’m 52 almost 53. People my age aren’t asking those questions as much. They’ve already decided how they want to show up. And younger people I find are asking, “Okay. Is it okay if I talk about you know, my partner?”, “Is it okay if I wear the clothes that I would wear when I’m outside of work?”, and “Is it okay If I bring my wife to the corporate event?” And so this is a lot of these questions being asked. And what it is. What I’m finding is that it is putting a burden on LGBTQ+ professionals that more heteronormative professionals don’t have to deal with. It’s like that extra level of stress, that extra level of worry, that extra level of work that goes into showing up in the workplace as your authentic self. Yeah, so in my work, I work with people to help them basically. I could talk forever about this but that’s not the purpose of us being here today. But basically, I help people figure out who they want to be so they can get promoted and make more money. My overall purpose for this work is because I want to see more diverse representation in the corporate world, in the business world, in education, and all the different worlds where people are working. And I think that makes us better as a society overall.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Thank you. So I mean for us, as most of the listening audiences, eye doctors, and practice owners. And so let’s talk about just with patients first, because staffing is a whole different issue. Some of the things that you’re discussing come up when we’re thinking about our staff. But just for patients, for staff, or somebody that we’re putting a job out there and we just want to show that this is an okay place, right? This is a safe place. Is that important to do it? It feels like you want to, I don’t know. I feel like you want to do that.

Kirsten Bunch: Yeah. Well, that’s the first step. Right? So if we’re talking about your patients or with people coming in for the service that you’re providing them. Yeah, the first question is how do you want your patients to feel when they walk in the door no matter how they identify? Whether they identify as trans, or they identify as fat, whether they identify as 90 years old, you know? How do you want your patients to feel when they walk in the door?

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I mean, given that we’re talking about LGBTQ+ patients, in particular, just the topic of the day, what can we do or what should we be doing to make them feel comfortable? But I appreciate your thought. That really, it’s about what can we do to make sure everybody who walks through our doors feels comfortable being who they are.  Right? Whatever that is. Whether it’s having a seat that is high enough for them to get up out of or wide enough to accommodate them. For but you know, in this case, what specifically can or should we be doing?

Kirsten Bunch: Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, keep in mind that for many members of the LGBTQ+ community, for many reasons, going to the doctor any type of doctor can be really stressful. When you go to a new doctor or even a doctor you’ve seen for a long time and something has changed in your life, you may have to come out or you may have to come out again if the doctor doesn’t remember that you are lesbian or you are trans. You may have to explain changes in your life. And you may also have to field questions that are hard to deal with or that you may not know the answers to. So keep in mind that, you know, as soon as somebody walks in the door or even before they walk in the door, that experience can be more stressful for somebody from the LGBTQ+ community. And what I see from personal experience, but also from working with clients, if you walk in the door or if you know when you’re calling to make an appointment or making an appointment online, you see evidence that the company or the office is at least trying to be inclusive, trying to feel or trying to make you feel like you’re welcome and you know, “Hey, I see you.” that can help ease the stress. So an example of that might be. I have an example from my town, it’s not a doctor’s office but I live in a really small town in New Jersey. There’s every year. There’s an argument over whether they should put the pride flag up during Pride and blah, blah, blah. This past June, I walked into the local bagel shop and they had a rainbow flag or a pride flag on the wall and I was so blown away. I felt like this is my bagel place. I don’t get bagels very often but when I do, like this is my place. I felt really. This is when I told the owner that and I said, “By the way. Like great job on that flag.” and he was totally taken away. They even gave me some free coffee or something like that for telling them that. So I think, you know if you can do things that make people when they walk in feel like they are represented there. So it could be something like paying attention to the images you have on the wall. So if you have all the images on your wall are of happy straight couples, for example, or people who look a specific way. Think about how you might be able to change those images to reflect, you know, a lesbian couple. Or somebody who looks a little or looks more non-binary which I don’t know. That’s hard to describe how exactly what that would be. But if you look on any of, you know, like Adobe Stock photos and all those and you do a search for different types of photos. You might be able to find something that resonates with you and that might be helpful. I think the other things that you can do are ask people what name they prefer. So some people will go, you know. There are, especially when you’re dealing with medical issues and insurance and stuff like that, I imagine there’s a difference. I imagine you have to deal with like the legality of names and stuff like that. So some people might have a legal name that they use on legal documents and then they have a preferred name that they use all the time. So just asking somebody, “What name should I use for you or with you?” Or “What name would you like me to call you while we talk today?? And that’s something that’s so simple. And you can ask that to anybody because somebody might say, you know, you might see on the forum that somebody’s name is Benjamin. And they might like, “Oh yeah, I really like to be called Frank.” You know, so it could just be something completely neutral that you could ask somebody.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: That is something that’s nice to ask everyone. And we actually started that in our office a couple of years ago and it was so interesting. At first I’m thinking, “Yeah, I’ve been seeing this patient for 10 years” or like I’ve been calling them the same name for 10 years. But we made a commitment to ask and when we would ask, sometimes people would say something different than what I was expecting. And it was like, “You’ve been letting me call you the wrong name this whole entire time.” And they said, “Well, yeah. It’s only once a year. No biggie.” But for whatever reason, whether it’s a nickname or a generational name that they’ve never related to, or whatever it is, it led to a lot of good conversations by just talking about what somebody wants to be called. So we like that. That was a good one. 

Kirsten Bunch: Yeah. Yeah, I like that too. And it makes you feel seen and makes you feel like the person who’s asking cares. Who cares what your name is? Who cares about you? And I imagine as somebody in practice or in the medical field, that’s kind of important that your clients feel like they’re cared for.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: For sure. But Kirsten like the question that we get, and it’s a hard one to answer. Right? But you talked about your bagel shop and how you saw the flag and you walked in and you said, “Oh, this is for me. This is my bagel shop.” And there’s probably somebody in your small town who walked in, saw the flag, and felt less comfortable like, “This is not my bagel shop.” That’s kind of the nature of a lot of questions we get is, “I did this thing.” Whether it’s, it could be anything, but like you said a flag, a same-sex couple picture on the website, asking for pronouns on a form, or whatever it is because I wanted to make everyone feel comfortable. And then I started to get feedback that that made someone feel uncomfortable. How do you navigate that?

Kirsten Bunch: Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s a really good question. And I have a lot of empathy for you in asking that question and I’m also going to say that I’m not interested in talking about the politics of treating people like human beings. And as a business owner, it comes down to your values. What is important for you and your business? If it’s important that everybody is treated the way you know like a human being does like asking somebody their pronouns or having a picture of a same-sex couple on the walls. Does that impede or does that treat the person who’s not LGBTQ+ less like a human being? So I think it really just depends on your values, what, how, and who, you know, who you want to attract in your business. And I would say, you know, the second part of that is to be clear on what your practice’s values are and how you respond. If somebody asks you a question or says, you know, “I’m uncomfortable with that picture.” You know, know what you’ll say. And it might be, “Okay. Well, we’ll talk about taking that down.” or it might be, “Well in our practice, this is what we believe and this representation is really important for everybody who walks in here to be able to see themselves represented in the picture on the wall.”

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I think having those conversations with the owners of the business, if there’s more than one owner, right? If it’s just you, you can figure all this out. And then having those conversations with some of the people who might be likely to get those comments, positive or negative, right? To know how you feel as a business and what you want to put out there or what you’re willing to tolerate and what you’re willing to not. And I don’t want to get into politics either. But I’m thinking about all of the questions and issues that people had to go through. This with the mask and the no mask thing and what were they saying by wanting people to wear masks or not requiring it? And so there’s a precedent, I guess for making a decision. This is what we believe and having those conversations and giving staff members. It’s not even so much the tools or the words to say but just knowing what they can say and knowing that the business owner is behind them. Right? Because they may not know if they can say, you know, “It’s important to us to know that all of our patients can see some representation here.” Somebody who just started work two months ago may not know they can say that even if they feel it. Or they may not know if they’re supposed to say something like, “Oh, maybe we should look into taking that down.” So there’s thought that goes into it not just on the ownership level, but on what you’re putting out and sharing with your team.

Kirsten Bunch: Yeah. And that sounds about right. You know, as a leader in your practice, you have to know what you stand for. And you have to train your staff on what you stand for just the way you would train your staff on all the other things that you have to do in your office and that you know all the policies and procedures. And it really is also up to you what conversation or how you want to bring your staff into that conversation of how you do respond. There’s no easy answer here, right? Like I can’t tell you what you should do, or like, “You should do this.” or “You should do that”, or like you have these criteria, then you should. You should act a simple way. It really does come down to what’s important to you and your business. And, you know, being a business owner myself, I understand also what is going to help make my business a viable business.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: We talk about values, you know. We talk about core values of a company and kind of who you are at the heart.  Like obviously you’re doing what you’re doing. But who are you when you’re doing it and it’s part of that conversation? So I mean, when you do have somebody come in and I appreciate what you said about just the additional stress that someone might feel calling to make an appointment if they’re a woman on their wife’s insurance plan or if their insurance card says one name and they go by a completely different name. So when our staff encounters somebody where that’s the situation, you know, maybe they have a traditionally masculine name on the insurance card and they prefer to be called by a much more traditionally feminine name or whatever it is, what’s the conversation in the office? What are the next questions that give you the information that you want to know? Or that you need to know to take good care of this person?

Kirsten Bunch: Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m not really knowing what it’s like to do your job, or not knowing what it’s like to do your job or even doing the billing for a medical practice. I would say you know, the first thing is, on a human-to-human basis, be clear about how that person or what name the name is that that person wants to be called. Make sure they know how you want to be addressed. You want to be you know, called Dr. B. You know, how do you want to be addressed? Make sure they know also. And that’s as simple as saying, “Hey, my name is L. I like to be called this. What name should I use when I interact with you?” And I know one of the questions that we talked about briefly offline was around pronouns. You know, pronouns can be important to ask on the information intake form. But when you’re addressing a person in your office, just use their name, and then you don’t have to worry about the pronouns. So then in regards to the information that you need in order to treat a patient and bill for a patient, I would explain or I would suggest explaining to the patient what you need to know and why. And treat the patient as an ally in helping you serve them. And ask when you’re in doubt. So for example, if billing is not going to go through and you’re not going to be able to treat them at a later date if you don’t have the right information, just say what is the information that your insurance company needs? What is the information your insurance company has as far as your name and gender and all of that? And explain to them why because you’ve got to bill the insurance company and they’re going to reject this if they don’t have the right information. And people know this is not going to be like, “Oh, what a huge surprise.” like people know that.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Right. That’s something that they’ve dealt with before. That’s probably. Any medical office that they go to because it does, right? You have to. There’s boxes that you need to check and billing that have to match how that person was signed up by their HR department which could have been 2,5,8, or 10 years ago and may or may not reflect what they are choosing. Like if they have a different name that they want to use. But their insurance has to match their insurance card. So it’s kind of a separate box.

Kirsten Bunch: Right. And they know that you know. So just like I said, use them as allies don’t assume. Don’t assume that you’re just like oh, you know, this is what this person how this person would be on their insurance and stuff. Just ask them and tell them why you know. People aren’t naive. They’re not stupid. They know why you’re asking and when you give them the power to help you. It makes all the difference in the world. Another situation and I don’t know if this applies to what you’re doing. You know, if you were treating somebody where their treatment might be different depending on medications they’re on or something like that. Or the chromosomes they have in their body. I know nothing about medical science and stuff. So forgive my ignorance. But it would be important to say to the patient, “I’m going to ask you these questions because it makes a difference in how I treat you and from a biological standpoint.” So an example might be and again, I don’t know if this is the case in what you do. But if a medication or treatment might interfere with gender-affirming hormone therapy, you know. You should know in your practice if there are medications that you might be prescribing that might interact with that medication or the hormone therapy. And ask that question and have it as one of the questions that you ask all your clients because you never know.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, I think that’s helpful just to know that it’s kind of expected and okay to ask questions. Because I feel like sometimes people are so afraid to offend that they don’t ask. And I’m guessing that that silence is probably really obvious and more awkward than the questions would be. I mean, there are examples like some of the things that I can think of in our industry is like a dry eye is very much linked to hormones. And so it helps when someone has certain complaints to know if they’re having a menstrual cycle. That’s helpful information. So I think knowing or just having the confidence that you can ask all of the patients if they’re having natural cycles. Or you know, of someone has disclosed that they’re a transgender man, knowing what’s going on hormonally is important for us for treatment and he’s probably used to those questions having to be asked at times. It’s okay to ask. 

Kirsten Bunch: It’s totally okay to ask. And I could get into some of the things you don’t want to do in a moment if you’d like. But you can ask. You can just say like, “Some of these questions might sound odd to you. But these are questions we have to ask everybody.” So like, “Do you get a period?” or “Do you get oh, whatever.” And you know, some a 90 cis. Somebody, who you think is a 90-year-old cis male in your office might be like, “Why are they asking me these questions?” But if you just say, “Oh, we have to. It’s a standard procedure. We ask everybody these questions.” Then it’s just like, “Oh, okay. Cool.” And you know, move on.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah. All right. So talk about some of the things that we shouldn’t ask because I know we all know the feeling of putting our foot in our mouth at certain times. Somebody had posted a cute picture that was a post-it and their technician left on their patient chart that said, “That’s his wife, not his daughter.” You know, we’ve all asked, “When are you due?” or “How far along?” And so talk about some of the things that really shouldn’t be said or shouldn’t be asked?

Kirsten Bunch: Yeah. Well, first of all, I would say, try not to make assumptions. Like, make it a game for yourself not to assume, and instead of assuming be curious. Be curious in a way where you’re asking open-ended questions. And you can ask questions like, “What’s important to you in your life right now?”, “What’s important to you about being able to see well,?”, and “Who in your life do you want to look good for in your new glasses?” If a couple comes. If two people. Now see I just did it.  If two people come into the office, “Hey, how do you two know each other?” You’re gonna get the answer, right? And then you could just you know, if you’re still not clear, you could just ask a follow-up question. And I would say, also really important to keep in mind is apologize if you make a mistake. “Oh, I’m sorry if I got that wrong. I want to do better. How would you like me to ask you about XYZ? or talk to you about XYZ?” And then I would say don’t make it that person’s job to make you feel better. So like, if you’ve got something wrong, don’t be like, “Oh my god. I’m so stupid and I can’t believe I got this wrong.” and “Oh my, you know,” That just is like putting it. Don’t make. Don’t. Just apologize and move on and get curious as to how you can do better. And I would also say, I think one of the things that is hardest to take sometimes is when people expect a gold medal because they’re being inclusive or they’re trying to be inclusive. Or if they are giving you an opinion that you didn’t ask for. So for example, sometimes when I talk to people and I’ll talk about my wife, they’ll say, “Oh, you know, I think that gay marriage is the best thing ever. And I’m so happy for that.” And honestly like I’m thinking, “Well, thank you for your permission but I don’t care what you think about my marriage.” So just keep in mind that nobody needs your opinion about whether you think gay marriage is great. Whether you think being transgender is great or nobody cares. We don’t need to know your opinion about anything. Especially in a doctor’s office where we’re about, I would say about our identity, especially in a doctor’s doctor’s office when we’re there for specific reasons and then for a specific treatment. Does that cover it or are there more questions there?

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I mean, I think that covers it. The thing that stands out for me is maybe it’s not about how you’re treating LGBTQ+ people. It’s about how you’re treating all of the people. And so, for me as I’m listening, I realize that if you go in curious instead of making assumptions about anyone, right? How do you two know each other? And that’s for any two people that come in. Because they could be sisters. They could be mother-daughter. They could be wives. They could be a neighbor who just happened to drive them here. They could be college roommates. They could be anything. And same for a male and a female coming together. Like, so I think I. When you frame it, which I totally did, of how do we talk to certain people? Then it’s like okay, “There’s two women, okay.” It like raises the whole level and makes it feel like much. It makes it feel like kind of a loaded interaction that doesn’t need to be friendly in a sense.

Kirsten Bunch: Yeah. And you. In doing that you’re, whether you mean to or not. you’re othering people. You’re putting them in a separate category. And that’s exactly unless there’s a medical reason to be doing that, it’s not going to make anybody feel good. You or the person that’s sitting in your chair.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, I think that’s solid learning for me and hopefully, for somebody else who is just thinking about what we’re asking everybody and the assumptions that we’re making about any patients or guests that we have in the office. And what background those assumptions are coming from? Like what’s in us that’s making those assumptions happen and what more you can get to learn about people by not making them and just asking. So yeah, thank you so much for that. I want to talk about your work a little more because another area where we get questions is with people who have staff members. Who maybe they have somebody who’s worked for them for a couple of years and then comes out as transgender. Or somebody who, maybe, I mean, I’m thinking about employees and I’m thinking of somebody I’ve worked with who said exactly like you did at her previous job. She was afraid to bring her girlfriend to the office holiday party. From an HR perspective as well as a human perspective, if an employee comes out as transgender and asks for a change to the name that you’re using for them, and asked you to use different pronouns. Is there anything beyond saying, “Oh, okay.” that you need to do?

Kirsten Bunch: Yeah, I would say get curious. Ask the person so how, you know, “What can we do to make you feel as comfortable as everybody else here?” Or “How does this impact your work here if at all?” They might say, “No. No way. In no way.” They might say something like, “Oh, it’d be really cool if we could do like, an office party and I can explain to people what the process has been for me.” They might say, “Yeah, everybody else knows. You’re the last person to know.” or something like that. Who knows what they would say? You know, I think there’s that part. I think there also is the legality of protections for people under you know, under law. I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not gonna go into that because I’ll probably get it wrong. But I would say as a business owner, definitely educate yourself. There’s lots of resources on the web that you can find. The National Centre for Transgender Equality has a lot of information on their site around workplace rights, and discrimination against transgender people, for example. But I would say just, you know, again, it’s just with your patient, like with your patients, ask people what they want and how they want to be seen. And then also be clear as to like to what is work critical? What needs to be done according to their job description and what doesn’t? Right? Like just be clear you know. Nothing has changed. We still expect you to do your job. Right? But if, for example, somebody is going through a transition, where hormones are. You know, they’re taking different hormones. So they might not be used to and there might be some physical things, you know. Be open to them saying like, “There might be a couple of days where I’m gonna have to take sick time because of this.” Or just, you know, just ask them, “What would you like me to know about your experience?” And be open and leave the door open for them to come to talk to you or somebody in your office or in your organization. So that they know there’s somebody they can go to talk to if they’re struggling or if they’re having a problem.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: The thing that I’m thinking about also, and obviously everybody is different. But I think one of the things that we feel responsible for is making sure that we’re ensuring a safe workplace for all of our employees. And so, you know, any issues of perceived threats to their safety, whether it’s from another employee or from a patient. It comes up in a lot of areas, right? You think about what we would or wouldn’t tolerate from a patient who didn’t like a staff member because they were a particular race, or because they were a particular age, or weight, or height, or anything. And so, this is the same in that regard of again, what as a business owner, what’s okay and what’s not in these kinds of situations, right? And it’s tough. We have been brought up with “The customer is always right.” mentality. So we had a situation where it bothered one of our patients that one of our male employees wore nail polish, and so similar to the picture like they say it and you just have to have a little bit of practice, I guess in what you want to say back. We love that he wants to express himself and we love it. And if they don’t want to come back, then they can go to a different place and grace them with their presence. But it’s just things that people kind of think about, or maybe it’s that they don’t think about until they come up, and that’s the problem.

Kirsten Bunch: Yeah, and I think you know, I really like what you’re saying is to know what you would say in those circumstances. Know what your stance is on how people are treated and what your values are in your practice or in your office. And do some practicing and training with your team as to how to respond to whatever it is, right? And another thing that you can do. It is. So it’s more of an offensive move instead of a defensive. Instead of feeling like you have to explain why it’s okay for somebody to wear nail polish or whatever. You can do an offensive move by saying, “Oh, what’s important about that to you?” And, you know, let the person talk and be like, “Okay, well. Let’s look at your eyes or whatever.” Like this, you know, be like, “Okay, you said what you had to say.” You know and so it really does depend on what or how you want to show up in your practice and how what your values are there.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah. And I think the lesson that you shared before on curiosity, is that a different person on the staff might want something different from you than someone else. Right? So one individual might love that you were standing up for them and, you know, “We’re going to be the champion” And that might make someone else really uncomfortable. Who says, you know, “Just not.” and move on? or “I don’t want to talk about it.” So I think the big take homes for me here are one, that we’re not going to be right about everything. And we can try and when we screw up and I say when and not if because it’s going to be a when. That the appropriate responses are “Oh, I’m sorry.” and move on. And not making that moment about you. And not putting the on another person to make you feel a certain way. So I think that’s one for me. The second for me is that it’s okay and fine to ask questions about the things that you need to know either medically or want to know, kind of relationally. How do you two know each other? Because that helps you get to know your patients. And just like any other patient, who’s uncomfortable with any kind of answer to a personal question, any patient who’s well yeah, it’s a long story we’re not going to share with you today. Fine, let’s look at your eyes. And if it’s a lovely story about how they met online six years ago, and didn’t like each other’s profile, and then came up again with the Mets like, then that’s what they want to share. But it’s okay to ask and it’s things that you can ask and should ask probably to everybody the same. That to really look at some of the assumptions that we’re making and looking at where we can replace those with curiosity. And then thinking about how human issues factor into our core values as businesses as business owners and making sure that as we’re talking to our teams about all of our other values, that those are included. And that we’re not necessarily like ready and prepared for but that we know them well enough to not be uncomfortable in situations where they’re challenged. 

Kirsten Bunch: Yeah, that all sounds about right. 

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: So those are learnings for me here. And I appreciate the time you spent to give me personally these and if we did something for someone else. That’s even better. Anything that you would add? Any final thoughts you want to make sure that we put in here? 

Kirsten Bunch: Yeah, I mean, I would just think a little bit more of the same of you know, we’re all humans. We are all gonna make mistakes. We don’t. There’s no way we can know everything. I don’t know, a quarter of the things that I probably could know about the LGBTQ+ community and the experience and stuff like that. Like I learn stuff every day. And so treat yourself as human. Forgive yourself and use Google to find out more information. I mean educate yourself. There’s lots of resources out there and it’s okay to be curious. It’s okay to ask questions. Just don’t make it somebody else’s job to educate you.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Thank you. And thank you for allowing it to be your job to educate me for the last 40 minutes or so.

Kirsten Bunch: Oh, that I don’t mind. Yeah.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I’m curious and I shared with you that the first person that I mentioned to you that we were recording this happened to be interested in your coaching services for her son. If someone hears this and is interested in learning more about you or what you do, how do they get in touch with you? 

Kirsten Bunch: Yeah, definitely. So you can reach out via my website, which is simple www.https://kirstenbunch.com/ And I’m assuming you’ll provide a link or something so that people. My name is one of those names that people get wrong all the time. So just to keep that in mind. And then I’m on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn, sometimes on Twitter. So you could reach out via social media. And I’m happy to have a conversation with anybody who has more questions or you know, has somebody in their life that thinks they could benefit from some coaching around these topics. Yeah, I think that’s about it.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: All right. Thank you. Thank you for your education, your kindness, your honesty, and for being willing to help me learn and put this content out there and hopefully, teach a little bit as well. So, thank you. And for more information on power practice, you can find that at our website www.powerpractice.com Thank you for listening.