Join us for our 15th episode, an inside look with Dr. Rick Jaggi! Dr. Jaggi is a board-certified otolaryngologist with fellowship training in facial plastic & reconstructive surgery, and head and neck oncology. Don't miss out on this exciting episode with informative discussions!

Show Notes

Yousef: Hi everyone and welcome to the OtoApproach a podcast created by medical students for medical students to teach you about all things Otolaryngology. I’m your host Yousef and today we are joined by Dr. Rick Jaggi. Dr. Jaggi is an otolaryngologist head and neck surgeon, who specializes in facial plastics and reconstructive surgery as well as Head and Neck Oncology. He is also the medical director of the Face Institute here in Saskatoon. He completed medical school and residency at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He then left Halifax and completed a fellowship in facial plastics and reconstructive surgery, including microvascular reconstruction in Auckland New Zealand. At the University of Saskatchewan, Dr. Jaggi is an associate professor in the Department of Surgery and is active in graduate and undergraduate teaching. Currently Dr. Jaggi is the director of facial plastics and reconstructive surgery and the fellowship director of a new facial plastics and reconstruction program here at the University of Saskatchewan. 

So Hi Dr. Jaggi. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. To start we would love to just hear a little bit about yourself. 

Dr. Jaggi: Thanks Yousef for having me, it’s a pleasure to speak to everyone today and hopefully answer some questions. 

Yousef: Excellent, so what is it that originally drew you into Otolaryngology?

Dr. Jaggi: So what originally drew me to Otolaryngology was the fact that it's a regional speciality. I like that there's a medical aspect and a surgical aspect to the speciality and that you get to kind of deal with the issue as a whole, whatever the issue is. And whether they need medical treatment or surgical treatment you are the person. 

Yousef: Excellent. So it sounds like there’s definitely a good mix in ENT.

Dr. Jaggi: Yeah absolutely.

Yousef: So how did you decide to do a fellowship?

Dr. Jaggi: So when as I was progressing through my residency I just became more and more interested in the reconstructive component. We did a lot of free flaps, a lot of various reconstructions at Dalhousie. And I just gravitated towards that. During my fellowship, we had the opportunity to do a number of cosmetic cases, and that sort of began to interest me as well. So you know, kind of with experience I was attracted and just kind of followed what I was passionate about. 

Yousef: Yeah, that's really interesting. And so, can you explain to your listeners the difference between the cosmetic and medical practice? 

Dr. Jaggi: Yeah so there’s some obvious things, cosmetic practice is not covered by the government health plan, whereas medical is covered by the government health plan. So there are two very different parts. One is for individuals looking to improve their appearance or to fix something that they are concerned about. The other is usually a result of, you know, trauma, or cancer ablation, facial nerve palsy, congenital issues, things like that. And that’s all covered by your Canadian health plan. You know, that part of the practice is definitely a bit simpler in that way. Obviously, if you are doing cosmetics you have to have a way of explaining to the patients the cost of the procedure or the surgery and charging them for it and all those things. It complicates things a bit. You know with medical practice, as a specialist your referrals come from family doctors or emergency doctors generally speaking. With cosmetic practice, those patients are calling the clinic directly or reaching out to you through your website, so you just have to have the staff to deal with that influx of patients and deal with it appropriately. Obviously for operating, for public or medical patients, it’s at the hospital or ambulatory care. With cosmetic patients you either have to have your own surgical center or have a relationship with a surgical center at which to operate. At the face institute, we have rural and private surgical centers. So those are also obviously levels of complexity and you know, it takes time and effort to arrange all those things. 

Yousef: Yeah, no I can understand. I can’t imagine it was easy setting up the Face institute. And as you’ve mentioned before, you are the medical director of the face institute. Can you tell us about what that is and what role that plays here in Saskatoon. 

Dr. Jaggi: Sure, so the face institute is a center that has both clinical and surgical facilities. One of the only centers that offers facial plastic surgery, anything from rhinoplasty to facelifts and things like that. The patients really like it because it’s the same staff they meet when they come in for a consultation or things like that or the staff that know them are the same staff they are dealing with when they come in for their surgeries. There is a level of comfort. There’s a lot of people that don’t want to go to a big surgical center or the hospital because they want some discretion, and so it is nice that we can offer that at the face institute. 

Yousef: Alright. So what does a day in the life look like for you?

Dr. Jaggi: So my days can be very very different. That’s probably one of the hardest things, I don’t wake up and you know “I’m doing the same thing everyday,” I have to plan my weeks out and know exactly where I will be the following week. So there is some, I mean a little bit of continuity, repetition. So for instance, on Mondays in the morning we do an interdisciplinary thyroid clinic, with endocrinology. In the afternoon I do my skin cancer clinic at the hospital, where we do excisions under local anesthetic. Tuesdays and Wednesdays I’m usually operating at the Face Institute doing cosmetic cases and you know those can be rhinoplasty, face lifts, brefloplasties, all of those types of things. Thursdays I usually operate at the hospital, in the main OR. Those cases are usually facial reanimation cases or free tissue transfer, doing free flaps, thyroids, parotids, that type of thing. So those are Thursdays. And Friday is medical clinic, and so we do a big medical clinic on Friday’s and see all of our pre-op and post-ops and things like that. So that can change depending on numerous things but that’s kind of the goal of what the week should look like. So it’s a busy week. 

Yousef: Wow I can definitely understand, that sounds like quite the week you got on your hands there Dr. Jaggi. So seeing as this podcast is by medical students for medical students we wouldn’t let you get out of here without asking for a bit of advice. So first do you have any advice for medical students in general? And second, for those that are looking to get into the field of otolaryngology, any tips and tricks for them?

Dr. Jaggi: Yeah so, I get asked this question quite often, you become a medical student in September then a month later everyone is asking you what kind of doctor are you going to be, and you haven’t even been out of the classroom. I would say, and what I tell my medical students is, you know, in the first year try to decide “do I want to do family medicine or do I want to specialize?” And I think by the end of first year if you can answer that question, you are doing pretty good. By the end of second year, if you are going to specialize, try to figure out “Am I going surgical or non-surgical?” And if by the end of the year you will know I’m going family or specialty, and if I’m going specialty, you will know surgical or non-surgical. Those are big questions to answer. So for those people who decide to go surgical, you have to decide by the end of second year, because in third year you are trying to book electives and things like that. SO it is important to have some idea, try to even spend some time shadowing various different specialties that you are interested in, and try to make some ideas of what types of specialties interest you and really try to follow your heart. I think that any of these careers can be taxing and if you don’t truly enjoy and love what you do, at the end of the day it’s almost not worth it. My first love was ENT and I really enjoyed that and then I subspecialized in things that I enjoyed even more. And now, I’ve really paired my practice to the things that I really enjoy doing so it’s not taxing in that way. I think, you know when people talk about burnout and things like that, it’s especially easy to burn out if you are doing something that you don’t have your heart in. So that’s a long-winded answer, but I hope that helps some people decide. I think that deciding on a medical specialty is a really hard decision, you know it takes a lot of effort and thought, and some people fall into it really easy and for other people, it takes a lot more effort.

Yousef: Yeah, no I can definitely understand. Alright thank you so much Dr. Jaggi it has truly been really wonderful to hear you talk about your specialty and given us a little insight into your world.

Dr. Jaggie: It was a pleasure

Yousef: Thank you so much for tuning in and we will hope you will be back for our next episode.