Shadowing Practice: Doctors Reveal What They Wish Everyone Knew - Learn English Speaking with Video
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We are promised this life of continuation.
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You know, unfortunately they all died when they were sick enough to come to the hospital because we had no treatment.
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People have a lot of regrets about, you know, not following up, not taking their health in their own hands.
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My specific specialty, I'm one of two people in the entire province.
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Guys, we're at Vancouver General Hospital, which is the main referral hospital for all of British Columbia.
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I'm going to be chasing down physicians and surgeons to ask for advice
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that they could offer you so that you can optimize your health.
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Let's get to it.
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Hey, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. Are you a doctor?
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What kind of doctor are you?
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I'm a neurosurgeon.
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Damn, neurosurgeon.
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How long did it take you to become a neurosurgeon?
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Four years of undergrad, four years of medical school.
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I did a combined PhD residency and that's nine years plus a fellowship.
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Can I borrow you for one second and ask you a couple of questions?
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I promise it'll be worth your time.
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Is there one area of neurosurgery that you specialize in particular?
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Yeah, I specialize in an area called functional neurosurgery.
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This is a very sub -specialized area.
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Mostly we're putting electrodes in people's brains to help them with their movement.
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Is that for like movement disorders?
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Movement disorders like Parkinson's disease, mostly.
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Okay, Parkinson's disease.
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Okay.
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What are some things that people should do and should stop doing
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so that they don't end up a patient of yours? in my general practice
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which is trauma there's a lot of things you can do yeah
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and i'm sure you know tell me about it yeah
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you know like wearing a helmet it's number one
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you're just seeing some really bad injuries from e -scooters are
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you yeah e -scooters exactly man uh wearing a helmet on
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an e -scooter is probably like a single biggest thing you can do staying away from alcohol
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and especially combining
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that with the e -scooters blood pressure you know like getting your blood pressure under control
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because we see a lot of people who have uncontrolled high
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blood pressure end up having a bleed in their brain and
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so that's something that people can do to prevent coming and seeing us at work.
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That's one thing that I think the general public does not truly understand.
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They just think of the numbers
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and they think of it as this very abstract things
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but there's a reason that high blood pressure is actually nicknamed the silent killer in the medical world, right?
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Yeah, I think at the end of the day, you know, getting your blood pressure under control, whether it's behavioral modification through diet exercise that helps
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or you know some of these medications the risk in having
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high blood pressure is way higher than any negligible risk of
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taking a medication to get the blood pressure under control
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and honestly like we see such horrible conditions like intracranial hemorrhage from high blood pressure once
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you see something like this life -changing altering uh you know events
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we understand blood pressure is important to get under control
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so i recently turned 40 which means
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that i'm paying a lot more attention to things like my blood pressure
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and i've also noticed that after sports i'm definitely more sore than i used to be
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so recovering properly and staying on top of my health has become a much bigger priority for me
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Being a neurosurgeon is a very, very specialized type of medicine and actually a very specialized type of surgery.
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What I can say is in my specific specialty,
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I'm one of two people in the entire province who specifically do the kind of surgery that I do.
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And there's only, you know, less than 20 in all of Canada, right?
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So it's extremely specialized.
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So you were talking about like putting probes and is it electrodes inside people's like can you like explain what that is?
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Sure, they're electrodes, it's like a pacemaker for the brain that's how I describe it.
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So it's a very small thin metal wire that goes deep into the brain that's why we call it deep brain stimulation.
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Very precise you know we have to put it in the right spot
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or doesn't do anything but
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when we get it in the right spot for the right condition it can stop someone's tremors for example
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and it can help people move a lot smoother
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so with Parkinson's disease people have a lot of tremor
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they might move very slowly they might be very stiff the medications can only do
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so much after some time the medications stop working
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and putting this electrode in a very precise area in the brain can help them to get back their movement
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and stop the tremors.
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Yeah, you must have seen some absolutely crazy things.
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I mean, like you're seeing things that even me as an emergency room doctor, I would like not really see.
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I don't see people's skulls open and like people's brains like in front of me.
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Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely remarkable to see someone's brain, right?
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This is a organ that's inside of all of our bodies.
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That's essentially controls your personality, you know, your thoughts, your memories, a lot of respect for the brain.
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Do you feel like that's really like changed your perspective in any way?
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And if it has, how has that changed your perspective
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and what kind of piece of advice could you offer to anyone that might be watching this?
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You know life is very fragile right I don't think many people understand
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that we see
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that in our specialty
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I would say talk to your loved ones talk to your
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family members about what you would want in the case that's something really horrible
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and unfortunate happened to you and you couldn't make decisions on your own we see
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that often in the emergency rooms you probably do as well
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but it's very difficult as someone who doesn't know the patient to try and make these
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decisions in the heat of the moment
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and sometimes having those conversations with your family gives us an
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idea about what they would want us to do for them in these kind of drastic situations.
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Well I ask every doctor that I interview
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if they would be willing to share their expertise with the general public to live a longer and healthier life.
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Could I get your contact and would you be willing to teach the general public about things about neurosurgery?
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There you go comment health if you want to learn more thank you yeah I appreciate it
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thank you I appreciate
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it excuse me are you a doctor no excuse me are
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you a doctor yeah what kind of doctor are you can I everything everything
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that I share is for public education can I ask you a couple questions it'll only be a moment
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I promise it'll be over with your time.
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Come on over here.
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So you're a nephrologist.
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How long did it take you to become a nephrologist?
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So after my bachelor's degree, I did four years of medical school and then six years of residency training, fellowship training, before becoming a nephrologist.
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What are some things that people should start doing
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and should stop doing so that they don't end up with kidney failure or other kidney issues?
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One of the things I would say is get your blood pressure checked regularly, exercise, you know, typical recommendations,
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120 minutes a week, get monitored for diabetes
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if there's blood in your urine or if you get unexplained swelling go
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and see your doctor right away
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and try not to take too many over -the -counter medications
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without kind of seeing somebody to figure out what you're taking them for
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because maybe there's something else that would be better
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so in your practice as a nephrologist you must have seen some things
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that have actually really changed the way
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that you've lived your own life what are some of those things the ways
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that you've actually changed the way that you live your life
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because of what you've seen in practice
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so actually one of the things I do is I drink a little bit more water
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so I'm also a little bit dehydrated and
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and drinking water just actually helps the kidney function better control your blood chemistry or electrolytes
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and one of the things was taking over -the -counter medications
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you know whenever I had a like a little injury like a broken finger
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I would take some you know Advil and things like that
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and over the long run they can cause problems
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and actually just getting myself screened for those things like checking
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my blood pressure knowing a bit more about my family if anything runs in the family.
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Those would be the main things.
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So would you recommend just plain water or electrolyte water?
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For most people they just need water.
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Water and a regular diet.
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Even if you exercise, most of us don't really exercise at a level where we need to really replace electrolytes.
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People like electrolytes just because it makes the water taste better.
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So if it actually encourages you to drink water, it's okay to use electrolytes.
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What is the quantity that people should be aiming to drink on a daily basis?
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Two and a half liters a day.
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Two and a half liters.
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And that's outside of the food that we're eating?
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Correct.
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Okay.
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In your practice as a nephrologist, you've probably seen some really devastating things.
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People who have to go on dialysis, people who die of kidney failure because of all the electrolyte abnormalities and toxins that accumulate.
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If there's one thing that has changed your perspective about life or the world, what would that be?
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What kind of advice could you offer to people that might be watching this?
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I mean, unfortunately in my practice, I see people at all stages of kidney problems and disease and at the final stages.
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People have a lot of regrets about you know not following
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up not taking their health in their own hands taking their medications regularly
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and perhaps not even asking enough questions to understand their health condition really well
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and I think it's because they perhaps don't ask questions
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or don't feel comfortable asking questions that things can get missed and because of poor understanding their health doesn't actually get optimized.
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Hey I ask every physician that I interview
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if I could get your contact and if you would be willing to educate the public on regular things.
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Would that be okay?
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Awesome thank you so much.
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Oh yeah excuse me are you a doctor?
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Yeah what kind of doctor are you?
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Can I chat with you for a sec?
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I don't need to be on Instagram.
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I'm sorry man.
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Thank you.
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Are you a doctor by any chance?
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You're not?
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Okay, yeah, thank you.
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Hey, excuse me.
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Excuse me.
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Are you a doctor?
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Yeah.
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Yeah, what kind of doctor are you?
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Internal medicine.
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I'm a physician with 800 ,000 followers on social media.
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I teach people how to improve their health.
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Can I ask you a couple questions?
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It'll be just a moment and it'll be totally worth your time.
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Sure.
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Yeah, awesome.
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How long have you been in practice in internal medicine?
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40 years.
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40 years in total, I think.
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44 years.
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Yeah.
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You must have seen at all, really?
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Like, what kind of things do you see on a daily basis?
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It depends on whether I'm doing inpatient or outpatient.
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When I'm doing inpatient, you know, all the stuff you see in the emergency room.
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A lot of addictions, related issues, but heart failure, lots of cancer.
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But we see lots of cool stuff, too.
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We see lots of really weird diseases here because we're the Quaternary Referral Center for the province, right?
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So, you know, autoimmune stuff and all those sort of things, yeah.
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What are some things that people should start doing and stop doing
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so that they don't end up in hospital under your care?
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Stop drinking, stop smoking, and stop fentanyl, basically.
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That would cut my business in half, probably.
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You must have seen some really devastating injuries throughout your career.
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What are some ways that that has changed your perspective of life in the world
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that you could share with people that might be watching this?
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I don't know about injuries, but I guess I'm either fortunate or unfortunate enough to have my career expanded pre -HIV to through COVID, right?
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So I've dealt with, you know, some pandemics that over the course of things,
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and I think it's just a matter of adapting to those and being flexible and learning lots of new things, right?
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From a physician standpoint, what was more stressful and chaotic, the HIV and AIDS epidemic or COVID?
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Oh, HIV by far, right?
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Science was very primitive then, right?
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Like, we didn't know what was going on.
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When I was a third -year medical student, there were no cases of AIDS.
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By the time I was a first -year medicine resident, half our admissions to the hospital were for AIDS -related patients.
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They were all young men like we were, right?
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And they were dying these absolutely horrific deaths, and we had no idea why, and we had no treatment for them.
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So it was way, way worse.
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We didn't know how it was transmitted.
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Everybody was petrified.
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Quite honestly, the attendings, we refused to see the patients the infectious disease doctors wouldn't go anywhere near the patients
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because they were afraid of getting sick and
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so the first year residents took care of all the aids patients were you a resident during
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that time or in a time no i was i was a resident in those days yeah
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so you must have been terrified for your own health too yeah no no absolutely yeah yeah
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i mean we were terrified but it didn't matter right like they were really sick
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and we tried to do what we could for them right like you're the man right
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but we all did it wasn't just me right you know unfortunately they all died
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when they were sick enough to come to the hospital because we had no treatment what
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What is the greatest piece of advice that you received throughout your career?
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The guy that used to be the department head of medicine here, and he learned this from a famous cardiologist,
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Eugene Braunwald, is that N of one equals zero.
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You can't accomplish anything by yourself, right?
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Like you at least need one collaborator to really get anything done, but trying to do things by yourself is a recipe for disaster.
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So I think that's probably the best advice.
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If there's one piece of advice or a piece of wisdom that you can share with anyone that may be watching this, what would that be?
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I'm very much, and it's not, much of it is no longer politically correct,
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but I grew up in the age of this book called The House of God.
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Yeah.
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Have you ever heard of it?
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Yeah, the gomers and like a neurosurgeon.
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But the one part that's, you know, not so controversial is that the patient is the one with disease, right?
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And so I try to teach the medical students residents not to get too involved with the patients
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that it affects their own health or particularly their own mental health.
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So the patient's the one with the disease, you're not the one with the disease, and you have to separate those things.
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How would you balance having empathy
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and really being able to be there with the patient
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and allow them to be seen while also protecting yourself as a physician?
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I'd say it's much easier for me to do in the outpatient setting where I have a longitudinal relationship with patients, right?
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I don't profess to have done a great job of
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that in my career in the inpatient setting because we're so busy and there's so many people that we're responsible for.
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It's hard to sit down and kind of develop that same relationship in the hospital,
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which is not good, but it's just the reality of things, right?
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It's kind of doing the best you can for a larger number of people
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but in the office like where I you know follow people sometimes for
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Now 25
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or 30 years right like it's much easier to do I run a webinar series where I bring leading physicians
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and surgeons in to teach the general public on different hot topics in health
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Could I get your contact?
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Would you be willing to share your expertise at some point?
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Thank you so much.
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Yeah, I appreciate it.
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Yeah.
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Thank you so much.
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Excuse me.
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Are you a doctor?
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Okay, thanks.
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Do you okay?
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Oh, thank you, man.
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I appreciate it.
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Excuse me.
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Excuse me.
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Are you a doctor?
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Yeah.
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Yeah what kind of doctor are you?
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Intensive care, ICU.
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Damn, ICU doctor.
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How long did it take you to become an ICU doctor?
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It took a bit of a longer route than most people.
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I think after medical school, I started in cardiac surgery, actually, and then went into emergency medicine.
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After that, did a master's during that, an ICU fellowship, and then an ECMO fellowship.
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So all in all, I think I was an R10 when I finished.
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Wow.
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So 10 years of residency.
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I'm a physician with 800 ,000 followers on social media.
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I teach people how to improve their health.
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Can I ask you a couple questions?
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It'll be totally worth your time. Of course.
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So what are some things that you think people should start doing
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and should stop doing so that they don't end up on life support under your care?
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Yeah, it's a good question.
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It's one I think about, especially with some experiences I've seen throughout the years.
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I think for me, it's a scientific term, it's physiologic reserve.
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So I think a lot of people say we save lives in the ICU
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and I feel like I have to correct them.
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I don't think I save or we save lives.
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We don't save lives.
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We support organs.
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And if we can support the organs well enough in their state of, you know, being in total disarray, then the body can start to recover.
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You know, we have to stop the insult.
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And I think that recovery is fully based on your reserve, your physiologic reserve.
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So for people in the ICU and in life, I feel like it's all about building reserve.
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You know, look at you, muscle strength.
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Muscle is not just visual.
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It's not aesthetics it's your it's your power to have your
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ability to have reserve your vo2 max as we know is probably the single best predictor of longevity right now
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and your ability to have resilience against disease against anything
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that insults your body and even your mind your ability to actually stay alert
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and cognitively alert anytime you go into the hospital as you know
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you set back from a mind from a body from a reserve perspective
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and what i think about in the icu is
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that again we don't want to just keep people alive what we're thinking about more
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and more is keep people alive and well to leave
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and lead a life that they can actually enjoy again right
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so quality of life as we all talk about is i think what you're asking yeah
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so you see really the sickest of the sickest patients especially
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if you're doing ecmo which most people don't actually know what ecmo is
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but it's like the highest form of life support where you're actually like bypassing the lungs
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and the heart and supporting people to get through these crazy illnesses, that must have changed your perspective of life in the world.
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There's one way that has changed your perspective.
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What is that?
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That's another good question.
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Your question is the answer.
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It's perspective.
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I think for me, what's changed what I see and how I live is being able to apply perspective.
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So I look over there and I see a flower and I'm reminded that we get told, smell the roses.
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Well, we stop when we smell the roses, trying to remind ourselves of a moment or of life
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or perspective but I kind of turn it on its head I think we have to think about
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and what we see every day in the ICU is
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that we are promised this life of continuation you think we're going to have another moment
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or another day and when we actually grapple with and understand
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that concept that continuation itself is never promised and we can have perspective
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and with perspective we can smell the roses
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so don't smell the roses to get perspective get perspective so
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that you look around right now i have a breath
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i'm having a moment with you that's perspective that's enjoying each moment
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but from a reverse perspective take some ordinary thing
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that in your life your ability to talk or breathe
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or connect or speak these are things i see every day
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that people lose in an instant totally there's one piece of advice
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that you could offer anyone
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that might be watching this what would it be stop pause reflect get perspective
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I mean that's what we talked about that
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that continuation is not a guarantee in the minute you appreciate
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that in your life the ordinary things become very special yeah
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I run a webinar series where I bring leading physicians
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and surgeons in to teach the general public on different topics
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in health could I ask you to share your expertise at some point yeah absolutely fantastic thank you so much yeah
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Doctors Reveal What They Wish Everyone Knew”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: doctor, perspective, blood. This video has 353 sentences and 3930 words to shadow. The speech runs for 19:21. The speaker talks fast, about 203 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start. 60 of its 353 sentences are questions, so it is good practice for question intonation and short answers.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| physician noun | /fəˈzɪʃən/ | A practitioner of physic, i.e. a specialist in internal medicine, especially as opposed to a surgeon; a practitioner who treats with medication rather than… |
| medication noun | /mɛdɪˈkeɪʃən/ | A medicine, or all the medicines regularly taken by a patient. |
| kidney noun | /ˈkɪdni/ | An organ in the body that filters the blood, producing urine. |
| eligible adjective | /ˈɛl.ɪ.d͡ʒɪ.bəl/ | Allowed to and meeting the necessary conditions required to participate in or be chosen for something. |
| fellowship noun | /ˈfɛl.ə.ʃɪp/ | A company of people that share the same interest or aim. |
| continuation noun | /kənˌtɪnjʊˈeɪʃ(ə)n/ | The act or state of continuing or being continued; uninterrupted extension or succession |
| scooter noun | /ˈskuːtə(ɹ)/ | A kick scooter or push scooter; a human-powered land vehicle with a handlebar, deck and wheels that is propelled by a rider pushing off the ground. |
| province noun | /ˈpɹɔv.ɪns/ | A region of the earth or of a continent; a district or country. |
| resident noun | /ˈɹɛzɪdənt/ | A person, animal or plant living at a certain location or in a certain area. |
| organ noun | /ˈɔːɡən/ | The larger part of an organism, composed of tissues that perform similar functions. |
| surgeon noun | /ˈsɝd͡ʒən/ | One who performs surgery; a doctor who performs operations on people or animals. |
| expertise noun | /ˌɛkspɜːˈtiːz/ | Great skill or knowledge in a particular field or hobby. |
| specialty noun | /ˈspɛʃ.əl.ti/ | That in which one specializes; a chosen expertise or talent; bailiwick. |
| residency noun | /ˈɹɛzɪdənsi/ | The condition of being a resident of a particular place. |
| impatient adjective | /ɪmˈpeɪʃənt/ | Restless, short of temper, and intolerant of delays. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. | |
| come on over verb | to visit someone's home or other location. | |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| follow up verb | To take further actions remaining after an event; to continue, revisit, or persist; especially, to maintain communication or verify. | |
| get back verb | Return to where one came from. | |
| get through verb | /ɡɛt ˈθɹu/ | To overcome; to endure. |
| look around verb | To inspect a building or area. | |
| look over verb | To check quickly; to make a brief or cursory visual inspection of. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- What kind of doctor are you?
- Can I chat with you for a sec?
- Are you a doctor by any chance?
- Can I ask you a couple questions?
- You must have seen at all, really?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to be |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have uncontrolled · i've also noticed · has become |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are promised · is actually nicknamed · are actually covered |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | Hospital, which is · people who have · checkout which means |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 81 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: thin /ˈθɪn/, smooth /smuːð/, breathe /bɹiːð/, empathy /ˈɛmpəθi/, aesthetics /ɛsˈθɛt.ɪks/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: physician /fəˈzɪʃən/, medication /mɛdɪˈkeɪʃən/, fellowship /ˈfɛl.ə.ʃɪp/, continuation /kənˌtɪnjʊˈeɪʃ(ə)n/, specialty /ˈspɛʃ.əl.ti/
- Long words — get the stress right: medication /mɛdɪˈkeɪʃən/, eligible /ˈɛl.ɪ.d͡ʒɪ.bəl/, continuation /kənˌtɪnjʊˈeɪʃ(ə)n/, residency /ˈɹɛzɪdənsi/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like physician, medication, kidney.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.