Prakash Chandran: One on one with Regional One Health is your inside look at how we're building healthier tomorrows for our patients and our community. Join us for expert insights that empower you to achieve a lifetime of better health.

I'm Prash Chandran, and today we're getting to know Dr. Neil Hayes. Dr. Hayes is a medical oncologist with Regional One Health Cancer Care.

Dr. Hayes specializes in the treatment of lung head and neck. Dr. Hayes, thank you so much for joining us today. I truly appreciate your time. I wanted to get started by asking what exactly sparked your interest in the medical field and led you to specialize in medical oncology and specifically, your focus on the treatment of lung head and neck cancer?

Neil Hayes, MD: Well first thanks for your interest. Before I was a cancer doctor, I was an internal medicine doctor in Boston and I saw a lot of patients with the kinds of problems you see in internal medicine. Problems of heart disease, diabetes Problems related to what I felt were issues like smoking, weight gain, or weight loss and other lifestyle factors like that. And I was personally a little frustrated by some of that because, many of the diseases the patients had were ones that were, were difficult for me to help them with diseases of poverty in some cases, or addiction. And it was frustrating for me personally as a physician, but when I considered some of my options, including cancer, just the lights went off.

And, one thing I saw was that we could help almost anybody with cancer So whereas we, some of the diabetes and cardiovascular stuff could be challenging, even patients with very advanced cancers, we almost always had something that we could do that would help the patient. I found that very rewarding. I also really loved the science part of things. There's so much science in cancer because you really need to understand both the normal function and the way in which normal function is disturbed to treat cancer and with the sort of revolution in genetics and modern medicine, we have so many new therapies.

It's just a very exciting place to be practicing right now. So, many things drove me towards towards cancer as a field and, within cancer you might not think of it this way, but you know, most diseases have a personality. in, in that patients with that disease are generally of a certain age or maybe gender and tend to attract people at different stages of their lives. And lung cancer and head and neck cancer tends to be older patients. The average age is 16 and above. And it's a lot of men who might have, especially who had smoking related conditions, although not exclusively. And I just found myself connecting with that group. I worked at the VA a pretty good bit, and so I like that group of patients.

And then on the science side In my lab, I was working with these diseases, head and neck cancer and lung cancer in the lab. So a lot of things came together and it's just been a real natural fit for me.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah. Thank you for that explanation. I can definitely understand wanting to have that direct impact the scientific implications and also working with people that you can relate with. So I kind of understand why you went down this path. Tell me what are some of the most rewarding aspects of caring for patients at Regional One Health?

Neil Hayes, MD: Oh my gosh. Every day I wake up, I always feel like I have a purpose and my purpose is to serve. The patients of our community, of western Tennessee and and surrounding communities. I mean, it's great to be able to cure people of cancer. That's one of the fun things about head and neck cancer is that almost everybody I see , head and neck is where I spend most of my time. I do lung cancer as well, but a lot of head and neck, almost everybody I see when I, when I first see them, the patient is eligible for potentially curative therapy.

So, I get to really work with the patient and try to put together a plan that you know, to the extent possible tries to cure the cancer. But that it's also a treatment plan that they can tolerate. Some curative treatments can be more aggressive which is the right thing to do if you're trying to cure cancer. But you need to also think about the patient, and where they are in their life and in their health to understand what treatments a person can tolerate and what they can't.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, just kind of regarding that care in itself, I know one of the things you're responsible for is helping to establish a new oncology service at Regional One Health. What's that been like?

Neil Hayes, MD: It's been fantastic actually. It's been you like so many things in life, it really just comes down to the people. I mean, that's where you start. Cause anything, you're almost anything worth worth building is worth doing in a group. And we just have found incredible partners at Regional One Health for. For building doesn't mean they say yes to everything that we wanna do and when we wanna do it, but I've just generally found that when they are when they're working with us and when they're pushing back, they're really thinking about what's going to work for the patients.

They're very mission driven around patient care and they're not trying to cut any corners. They're, they wanna do the right thing for the patients and if it's require. Time and commitment to do it. They've been willing to do that, and it's just been a great dialogue with the administration and the other medical faculty. So, it's been very rewarding.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah, no, I can definitely imagine. And you speaking earlier just about the ability to cure cancer and how most patients are eligible for that curative therapy. I know it makes a, a really big difference, but I know that you are dealing with a range of different patients with this multidisciplinary team. But I'd love to learn about your personal patient care philosophy and how you approach both physical and emotional needs of the patients that come in.

Neil Hayes, MD: When you've got a patient in front of you've really, you've got more than one thing going on, you have the disease and so, making sure that you understand the disease correctly so that you can bring whatever standard of care or creativity is needed for the disease. You've got a person and the person is not the disease. So that person may have, specific goals or challenges or, Other medical conditions that are going on at the same time as their cancer. Or it may not just be medical, it may be social issues, for related to job or family or frankly, even pets.

I mean, people. Plan, the start of their treatment sometimes related to how they can, deal with all these issues, including, making sure the dogs are taken care of. And so you have to work with the disease, the patient. And then, patients come in the context of a community which may be their family or maybe something else. If there is no family, they may be in a healthcare situation like, Long term care facility or something like that, and so you have to work with all of these things together to put together a plan that works for the patient.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah, I kind of love that holistic view that you take and understanding that the patient is not the disease and the patient doesn't come by themselves at. There's kind of a support system and a set of things that kind of, they need to be responsible for as they're getting treatment. So having a provider that has that empathy for them and can work with them, I think is so, critically important.

Neil Hayes, MD: Well, part of that comes from, maybe this is part of my philosophy, which is I regularly, I won't say I do it every day or with every patient. I do try to put myself in this situation where, I just imagine what if I were on the other side of the divide, and I was the one receiving the care, or if it was my family member. And I think, if I can sort of look in the mirror and say that I treated the patient the same way that I wanted to be treated, then I think I've done my job.

Prakash Chandran: Absolutely. I, I feel like sometimes there's a disconnect when we see doctors, and I can speak as a layperson, we kind of sometimes are like, they see such a high volume of patients that maybe sometimes they get desensitized. So just hearing that your care approach is one where you truly try to put yourself in their shoes and provide empathy is certainly reassuring to me.

Neil Hayes, MD: Well, let me just add to that, that you just because you see a high volume of patients doesn't mean you can't be empathetic. Patients sometimes wanna get out of the clinic too. So you know, you can, if you know that they're. They're just there for a blood check and, they may be in the middle of something difficult, but today it's just a blood check. You can get patients in and out. But if it's that first visit and they're really, trying to figure out who you are and what you're about. If you don't take the time to make that connection, it's gonna be hard to recover some of that down the road. And I think you trying to understand who the patient is and where they're coming from is, is really key at certain moments in the disease process.

Prakash Chandran: Yeah. I'd love to get to know a little bit more about you just outside of work. Can you talk to us a little bit about, your interests your family life and what you do when you're not working?

Neil Hayes, MD: Well, , unfortunately, I'm a little bit of a workaholic. And I'm in the clinic about 25% of the time, and the rest of the time I'm running a lab. I run the cancer center, so over here I'm responsible for development of scientific programs, including clinical trials and population sciences. We have drug development program and basic sciences. So there's a lot that goes into trying to have a program for cancer. And having those programs for cancer is part of our patient care because we know that the best outcomes come in the context of programs that have good science and good clinical trials because they attract the best doctors who are committed to the science.

Whose lives are committed to, making things better. So, that the science side of things really goes along strongly with the patient care. My wife is also a scientist. In fact, our office is right next door to me. And we're going through a period where, She is having particular success in all of her grants. And so she's, she's, she's also got a very rich scientific life right now. We have three kids together, so, between work and the three kids who are nine, that's Ruby, 15, Nathan, and 17, that's Lincoln. There, there's not a lot left over. At this point in my life I do try to exercise. I, before I had kids, I ran the Boston Marathon a couple of times and, I was a little bit of a distance runner. But I'll have to get back to that after we get a couple of them in college.

Prakash Chandran: I thought I'd end by, just doing kind of a quick fire round asking you a couple questions just about yourself and then having you answer them, is that okay?

Neil Hayes, MD: Yeah. Yeah Great.

Prakash Chandran: Okay, awesome. What was your very first job?

Neil Hayes, MD: I worked at a movie theater.

Prakash Chandran: Awesome. Were you just doing a concession stand or?

Neil Hayes, MD: I was at the concession stand. That's right.

Prakash Chandran: Alright. Who is a hero or someone that inspires you?

Neil Hayes, MD: I'm inspired by the cancer center director at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, A guy named Shelly. Who took a state program like the University of Tennessee, although that's in North Carolina from its inception to being one of the greatest, programs in the country. And so I often ask myself, what would Shelly do? In my daily activities,

Prakash Chandran: Awesome. What's your favorite food or drink?

Neil Hayes, MD: I love free food. So that's pretty high on the list. But we like, we like Memphis Barbecue.

Prakash Chandran: If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go first?

Neil Hayes, MD: well, I'll give you the place that I've never been, that's kind of on my list. I'd really like to go to Iceland. I just sort of like, those stark scenery of volcanoes and the ocean and, moonscape kind of things. I'd like to go there.

Prakash Chandran: And finally, if you weren't practicing medicine, what would you be?

Neil Hayes, MD: You know, I have fantasies of being a carpenter or, working in a trade like that. Just creating. So I like the idea of building and I'm not very good at it, but I like working with my hands in that kind of way.

Prakash Chandran: Dr. Hayes, it's been awesome getting to know you a little bit today. Thank you so much for joining us and for your time.

Neil Hayes, MD: Oh, thanks for your.

Prakash Chandran: You can learn more about Regional One Health Cancer Care by visiting regionalonehealth.com/cancercare. one For an appointment, you can call 9 0 1 5 1 901-515-4673. Hope That's 9 0 1 5 1 5 4 6 7 3.

Thanks for making one-on-one with Regional One Health, part of your journey to better health. Join us next time as we cover another topic to keep you on the path to a healthier tomorrow. My name's Prakash Chandran. Stay well.