We recently connected with Ian Taras and have shared our conversation below.

Ian, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear stories from your time in school/training/etc.

From the tales of the, “if at first, you don’t succeed try try again” files: Confessions of an OB/GYN, at my first delivery!

It was 1990 and I was a third year medical school student at Chicago Med. While I was going through different specialty rotations, looking to figure out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, I fancied being an OB/GYN. There I was at Cook County Hospital, on a 12 hour labor and delivery shift. I was in the grand labor room which had many women laboring away with the only curtains for privacy. This was before OB ultrasound routinely allowed gender determination before birth.

When you were about to deliver, they took you back to the delivery room and one of the residents looked back at me and said, “Taras come on back!” My job basically was simply ‘fly on the wall’; just observe. The patient continued pushing, but when her water broke, she had meconium, earliest stool of an infant resulting from materials ingested in-utero, which meant that when the baby was delivered, it would be set on an isolate for the pediatric neonatal ICU and respiratory therapists to clean it out.

Her husband was by her side and they told us they had three daughters at home and apparently many family members outside in the hallway. The baby was delivered, and per protocol immediately whisked over to the side of the room for the NICU to do what needed to be done to save the neonate from aspirating.

All eyes were on the baby, including resident and attending physicians. The mom kept on asking: Is it a boy or a girl? Is it a boy or a girl? Is it a boy or a girl?

Either because of the commotion or intense focus, nobody seem to be answering her!

This one didn’t seem to take very much medical knowledge, and I certainly felt bad that nobody was answering. With nothing else to do I walked over to the isolate, peaked between the doctors, and saw that it was a boy! I couldn’t wait to turn around and walk three steps back to the bed and tell them. Excited, I return to the bedside and gave the proud parents this breaking news: it’s a boy!

The dad hugged me, and then yelled out to the crowd in the hallway, who started cheering! Then, one of the doctors said, who said it’s a boy? It’s a girl!

If looks could kill, the patient’s husband would’ve been booked for murder!

I apologized, but to no avail! I went back to the labor room, slouched in the corner where I stayed for the next 11 hours. If I couldn’t even tell the sex, how was I going to do this job for the rest of my life? Slowly, when everything got back to normal in the other room, one by one doctors, nurses, and even custodians came by to tell me that it’s an honest mistake to make because when they’re newborns, their genitalia is swollen.

I went home at 7 AM the next day, and as I was brushing my teeth, and looking in the mirror, asked, is this my chosen path?

Well, I rallied and over the course of the next six years delivered or was involved in over 5000 deliveries! Bringing me full circle to, if it first you don’t succeed try try again; I’m sure glad that I did!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

It might be oversimplifying but what sets me apart is TLC: A Tradition of LISTENING & Caring! In the healthcare landscape where insurance companies dictate 8 minute visits with patients I want to be there for as long (or short) as you need! Many of my patients are casualties of the war on patients where they have been dismissed for not fitting into some 8 minute-box of one size fits all approach! If life is how you handle plan b, then while they are talking, I’m formulating plan b, c & d!

At the same time, 818GYN is not just about me but my amazing team AKA my office-family. We all care about you and our biggest payment comes in hugs and smiles!

Have you ever had to pivot?

I came out into private practice in 1996. During my first year, I took a total of one day of vacation. I was working nights and weekends. Each subsequent year I took an additional cumulative one day off so by the ninth year I was taking nine days off in a year (though certainly not in a row)!

My wife, young daughter, and even younger son and I all drove down to San Diego for a long weekend. On the way back home, while I was driving, I decided to play cheerleader because everybody seemed sad to leave. With an upbeat tone, I asked everybody to tell me their favorite part of the vacation! I asked my wife and she said she loved the San Diego Zoo! Yay, I exclaimed! Then I asked my daughter, and she said Sea World was the best! Yahoo, I yelped! Then it was my son’s turn, and he said, “I just loved spending time with you, dad”! As my heart sunk and my wife held my hand, for the next 30 minutes, there was a continuous stream of tears, running down my face! It was, then that I had the realization some thing had to change!

I knew the obstetrics part of OB/GYN what is the most time consuming! I had an option to join a call coverage group, or merge businesses with other OB/GYN‘s, but I felt that would compromise the TLC: Tradition of Listening and Caring that I brought to the table. Instead, with a jaundiced eye, I noticed that the gynecology patients in the office, especially the Peri-menopausal women, seemed like they were treated inconsiderately to their deficit and the benefit of the obstetric patient. I was going to pivot and stop delivering babies and focus on the gynecology. Turns out, I wasn’t the only one thinking that as I started finding there were many women neglected in the system and yearning for somebody who would focus on their problems. It was truly a blessing in disguise, and although I have no regrets about the hours I spent developing amazing relationships with the thousands of women I delivered, it was time to turn the page into a new chapter! I’ve never looked back!

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

There’s a difference between cost and value. Cost is an absolute number whereas value has emotion! I always thought that if the cost of seeing me went down, patients would see my value go up! It was a friend who was in the automotive industry that showed me this was not necessarily the case. He had an amazing product as I too thought that I had (me). But when he raised his rates his sales went up and it allowed him to invest time and money back into his business. When he had previously lowered his rates he saw that people were less interested in HIS product and just wanted the cheapest product for even less. What I knew is that there are people who cost (price) shop but I did not know that there were people who value shopped and those are the ones who value what you do for them even more!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://818gyn.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drtaras/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drtaras
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrTaras
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/_-bNzC8if14
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/ian-taras-md-woodland-hills-3