Faith & Medicine: Dr. Robert Kayal’s Journey

Dec 17, 2024

31 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

The operating room is his happy place. Doing God's healing work with the audio backdrop of Contemporary Christian music and an occasional Bible quiz with his surgical staff. Dr. Robert Kayal has build a "one stop" orthopedic care empire. The 20 Kayal Orthopedic Centers in New Jersey and New York were born out of his love of God, love of people, gifted hands, and an innate desire to "fix things".

It was Dr. Kayal's pastor, who helped to ignite his life long career in medicine by encouraging him to use his God given gifts as his mission field. Doing what he does to glorify God. It is on that foundation that he has built his practice. His staff of over 100 health care professionals are blessed with the deep rooted culture of Christianity at his clinics.

Listen to the podcast right here right now:

Watch the oodcast righ here right now:

In his recent book, "Mastering the Business of Medicine & the Doctor-Patient Relationship" Dr. Kayal articulates his 7 C's philosophy and shares that with us in this episode as well.

Everyone has a unique faith journey...and you'll hear how Dr. Kayal's was as, thoughtful, intense and mindful as his journey to become a surgeon.

Enjoy the amazing, God--centered career path of this inspiring guest on this episode of Amazing Greats.

DR. ROBERT KAYAL AT A GLANCE

Orthopedic Surgeon • Entrepreneur • Author • Christian Leader • Christian Testimony

Topics: Christian faith • Medicine • Orthopedic surgery • Business • Leadership • Doctor-patient relationship • Faith at work • Christian values • Entrepreneurship • Family • Prayer • Evangelism

His Faith Journey: Byzantine Catholic upbringing → Growing in understanding of Christianity → Finding a spiritual home at Hawthorne Gospel Church → Developing a deeper personal relationship with Jesus → Discovering his medical practice as a mission field → Seeing himself as a steward of God's gifts → Integrating faith into medicine, leadership and business

This Episode Explores

Building a one-man orthopedic practice into 20 clinics
Why Dr. Kayal believes his practice is God's practice, not his
The moment his pastor told him, “Your work is your mission field”
Bringing Christian values into medicine and leadership
Using the operating room as an unexpected mission field
His approach to patients facing devastating cancer diagnoses
The Seven C's of healthcare and the importance of character, compassion and commitment

Questions Answered

What is Dr. Robert Kayal's Christian testimony?
How did he develop a personal relationship with Jesus?
How did faith change the way he viewed his medical practice?
What are the Seven C's of healthcare?
How does he integrate Christianity into medicine?
What does he mean by “The practice is His, not mine”?
How did he build his orthopedic practice?
What is Mastering the Business of Medicine about?

Podcast Transcript:

Dr. Robert Kayal on Faith, Medicine and Building an Orthopedic Empire.

Amazing Greats with Ric HansenGuest: Dr. Robert Kayal — Orthopedic Surgeon, Entrepreneur, Author and Christian Leader

From a One-Man Practice to an Orthopedic Empire

Ric Hansen:Hey, hey, hey! This is Ric Hansen with Amazing Greats. Thank you for joining us today.

You know, I've always been captivated by the amazing world of medicine, and I'm a huge fan of doctors and surgeons and healthcare professionals of all kinds. But I had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Robert Kayal. He's an orthopedic surgeon in New Jersey who started out as a one-man show and has built it to 20 medical clinics all throughout New Jersey and New York. And he's done it on the back of his faith and his love for Jesus.

So I'd love to take some moments and take a listen to Dr. Kayal as we talk on Amazing Greats.

Well, it is my distinct pleasure to have an opportunity to talk to this amazing guest today. It's Dr. Robert Kayal. He is an orthopedic surgeon, started out as a one-man show, and then as an entrepreneur grew his business to now—you have like 20 clinics all over New Jersey and in New York.

And so you've taken this little seed of who you are and what you do and made it just blossom. And that's kind of the whole exciting story about your career. And on top of that, you've just written a book in this last year that's called Mastering the Business of Medicine and the Doctor-Patient Relationship.

It's a short little book, but it is just jammed with content. And what I love about all of this is your faith story and how it integrates with this amazing kind of career story that you're going to share with us today.

So let's start with that. When did you get interested in medicine in the first place? How did all that start?

Dr. Robert Kayal:Yeah, well, if you ask my mom, she'll tell you that it's all I ever wanted to do, dating back all the way to elementary school. She'll tell you that the only thing I ever really wanted to do is be a physician. So here we are.

Ric Hansen:Really? Wow. And you don't know what implanted that? You didn't have a relative or a mentor or anything. It was just like that was what you were gonna be?

Dr. Robert Kayal:Right. Yeah, no family members were in healthcare at all, actually. And it's just something I've always liked to do—take care of people. And I'm pretty good with my hands and fixing things, building things.

I love to fix things that are broken in general, whether it be body parts or personal relationships as well. I like to fix problems. I don't like problems; I like addressing them and moving on.

Ric Hansen:Wow. And so now you're fixing body parts like crazy. And this kind of orthopedic surgeon empire you have built. So now how many physicians are working with you in all of this?

Dr. Robert Kayal:Yeah, there's probably close to 100 healthcare providers in the practice. It's a multidisciplinary musculoskeletal facility.

So we have not only physicians, we have nurse practitioners, physician assistants, chiropractors, physical therapists. There are a lot of different healthcare professionals in the practice.

Ric Hansen:Well, a one-stop shop to get yourself fixed, it sounds like.

Dr. Robert Kayal:We've always gone by the mantra, Kayal Orthopedic Center: a one-stop shop for all of your orthopedic needs.

Ric Hansen:Oh, really? Okay, that is your motto. That's great.

Finding a Spiritual Home

Ric Hansen:So let's start with your faith background too. Did you come from a religious family?

Dr. Robert Kayal:Yeah, it's interesting. I was born and raised Byzantine Catholic. I'm Syrian by background, but I'm a Christian.

I was born and raised as a Byzantine or Melkite Catholic, very similar to Eastern Orthodox. When I got married, I married someone who was Lutheran, and so we were trying to figure out the best type of church to attend.

Driving home from my clinic every night, I would always pass this incredible facility on Route 208 North in Hawthorne, New Jersey. And there's always this very positive, encouraging sign along the highway.

And what was interesting to me was that every day the parking lot was absolutely filled. You just couldn't pack another car in the parking lot every day of the week. It wasn't just like what I was accustomed to on Sundays, and I always wondered what was going on in that facility.

My wife and I, when we were contemplating where we should attend, we decided to give it a shot. And the rest is history. I've never been to another church since.

I was completely attracted to the message, the Word that the pastor was preaching. It was an unbelievable experience.

And since then, we've been attending Hawthorne Gospel Church in Hawthorne, New Jersey.

And you'll probably learn soon that I have six children, and every single one of them has attended the Hawthorne Christian Academy, which is the private Christian school on the campus of Hawthorne Gospel Church.

Very involved in the church. Love the church, love the pastors, love everything about Hawthorne Gospel.

Ric Hansen:Is it a particular denomination, or is it non-denominational?

Dr. Robert Kayal:Yeah, it's a non-denominational, Bible-based Christian church, and amazing pastors that just preach the truth and the Word every single Sunday. It's just a great place to be.

Ric Hansen:Absolutely. You found your home. That's incredible.

We have some similarities in that. My background—I'm also Syrian.

Wow. My grandfather was from Syria, and he migrated to New Zealand and then to Seattle, which is where the family kind of grew at that point. But I was raised Catholic as well, so there's some similarities.

And now I go to a non-Catholic church, which I also love. So it's kind of got the same faith story.

But I don't have six kids.

Dr. Robert Kayal:Not many people do.

I came from a big family. I'm one of six myself. My mom had nine brothers and sisters, my dad had nine brothers and sisters.

You know how those Middle Eastern families are—very family-oriented, big families in general—and I came from that. It's in my blood.

So my wife wanted 10. She's Irish and German. She wanted 10 when we first met, but ended up having six.

Ric Hansen:Compromised with six. My gosh.

I had to count. I saw the picture of your whole family, and I had to start counting how many there were there.

But that's crazy. And probably never a dull moment around the Kayal family house.

Dr. Robert Kayal:Always something going on here, and I love it that way.

The Business of Medicine

Ric Hansen:I'm talking with orthopedic surgeon Dr. Robert Kayal about his practice, his faith, and his book.

And so the book is called Mastering the Business of Medicine and the Doctor-Patient Relationship: From Solo Practice Entrepreneur to Orthopedic Empire.

The idea behind the book—the subtext says it all—is help to physicians who are looking to build a business. And sometimes, most times, that's not taught.

And so you felt that there was an opening there. Is that what the motivation was to write this book in the first place?

Dr. Robert Kayal:Well, I think primarily because physicians aren't educated formally in the business of being a physician, which is obviously—being a private-practice physician is a business in general.

But we're notorious for being poor businessmen, I guess, and women in general.

But it's not just about the business. I think being a great physician and having a successful practice really should go hand in hand.

Otherwise, a lot of physicians, unfortunately, are doomed to failure, and you don't ultimately end up being able to succeed as a physician and really do all the things that you set out to do by choosing the field of medicine in general.

So I think you have to treat it seriously as a business.

And unfortunately, it's just something that's not taught in medical school or in our residency training programs or anything like that. We're sort of just left to figure it out for ourselves and flap our wings and fly, and we just get thrown in with the wolves.

And unfortunately, just like most businesses in general, a lot of doctors fail and they end up having to sell out or choosing careers that they didn't really want in order to just make ends meet.

And it's very unfortunate.

“Your Work Is Your Mission Field”

Ric Hansen:The book itself addresses that there were undertones in the book about your religion, your faith, and that became even more crystal clear in the 11th chapter, which is entitled “Faith.”

So how did you integrate the concept of your faith into this kind of secular idea of business and building a medical practice?

Dr. Robert Kayal:Well, as an orthopedic surgeon, in general, I've always been fairly successful. It's just because of my personality, I guess—my hardworking and old-school work ethic.

I was successful at being a physician, always good with people, treated them well. My patients, fortunately, I think, liked me. And because I have a decent set of hands, I think I had good outcomes.

But it always bothered me that I was successful financially, and so many other people suffered in this world. It just bothered me. I almost felt guilty about it.

And attending Hawthorne Gospel Church, one day I was doing a Monday evening Bible study with my head pastor, Pastor John Minima.

After Bible study, I approached him and I said, “Pastor John, I think I want to give up my whole practice. I want to become a missionary, and I just want to serve the Lord in that capacity.”

It was fairly early in my walk with Christ, becoming a born-again Christian, attending the non-denominational church, Hawthorne Gospel Church.

And I remember Pastor John looked me straight in the eye and he said, “Rob, Rob, your work is your mission field. You're a physician. God blessed you with these gifts, these spirit-given, ordained gifts, divine intervention. This is your gift in life. This is your mission field.

“You don't have to go to Africa to serve the Lord. You can serve Him here in Paterson, New Jersey, and in your practice. Think about all the patients you take care of, the lives that you support, all the employees you have.”

And I never ever considered my profession like that.

And I just felt that all of a sudden, all that guilt that I felt by being successful was really not a comfortable position to be financially successful while other people would suffer. It bothered me.

It just felt like the weight of that was lifted from me.

And ever since that time, I've always considered the Kayal Orthopedic Center His practice, not mine.

Prior to that, I never looked at it like that. It was never explained to me like that. It never struck a chord with me like that.

And I sort of always took credit for the hard work and the building of the practice, and everything I touched turned to gold.

And I would say, “Thank God, thank God,” but really it hit home that it's truly God's intervention that's blessed me with this practice.

I'm a steward of His practice.

And everyone in my practice knows that now. All my employees know that.

This is probably 20 years ago this happened. And we have a practice like that where we all know that this practice is God's practice, and we come to work every day and all that we do, work at it as if working for the Lord.

We're working for the Lord, not for human masters.

So my staff know that, and it's just really relieved a lot of guilt that I've felt, and it's given me the opportunity to really consider my practice as a blessing that I can use to honor and glorify Him and to help so many other people.

Whether it be financially, if they need financial help, or if somebody needs a donation, or if somebody needs their knee fixed or their ankle fixed, whatever I'm doing, I'm working for His honor and glory—just being basically a vessel, an instrument to serve and glorify Him.

Building a Christ-Centered Culture

Ric Hansen:So is the entire staff Christian, or some more than others? I'm guessing you don't just hire Christians to do the work. How does that all work with your staff?

Dr. Robert Kayal:It's become a little bit of a dicey situation in this environment that we live in, and we are in corporate America.

But for the most part, my inner circle—my administrative team, my directors, my managers that I'm very close with—they've known me for 20 years, 15 years.

And we end up very frequently, if not weekly, having conversations and giving honor and glory to God and different themes, different meetings.

It's sort of a practice that has just molded itself, and the people that fit in with this culture end up staying, and the ones that don't end up either being terminated or leaving because it just weeds itself out.

And everything has to trickle down from above.

So I think it's for the most part very deeply ingrained in everyone's DNA that if you're gonna work for Kayal Orthopedic Center, ultimately it just trickles down and people understand that it's part of this culture.

And if you go to our website, the first thing that pops up is a mission statement, a vision statement about our culture.

It doesn't necessarily say we're honoring and glorifying God, but there are so many undertones in this practice, whether it's the marketing and there's a little bit of a Bible verse, or what I do in my personal life that people see on my personal pages, maybe not necessarily my corporate social media pages.

It just has become our culture. That's the best way, I guess, to describe it.

And when people ultimately realize—and another administrator, another director, another supervisor, a manager starts having these kinds of conversations, Christ-like conversations, or serving the Lord without blatantly saying, “I'm a Christian,” but acting like Christ—it speaks for itself.

And people ultimately want to know more about your spirituality.

When Faith Becomes Personal

Ric Hansen:It's Ric Hansen here with author and surgeon Dr. Robert Kayal. He's our guest on Amazing Greats, and you'll love the story and his love of Jesus.

You mentioned earlier on in this conversation, and this is a question I always like to ask our guests, is at some point you were brought up as a Catholic, but at some point your faith became real, or that you really met Jesus and He became real and a key part of your life.

Was there a pivotal moment like that in your life?

Dr. Robert Kayal:Yeah, I've been asked this a lot. I've thought about it myself a lot.

And the fact of the matter is, I feel like I've studied church the way I studied medicine my whole life.

Like when I went to church, even Sunday school every week, I really paid attention to the Gospels and the sermons that the priest would give.

It's something that was always important to me. It always resonated with me, and I've always felt like I've had a strong relationship with Christ.

But when I would go through the prayers, the “Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy,” and just reciting prayers over and over again, I never felt like I had that deep, personal, intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.

And I never really felt the Holy Spirit to the point where I would weep just because of my love for Jesus Christ, or my gratitude for what He's done.

We're singing songs or something, and all of a sudden you just start weeping. You know what I'm talking about, right?

That never happened to me when I was younger.

But that being said, I was baptized as a child, as a baby. And I never really wanted—I always wrestled with the fact that I was baptized as a child, but as an adult, I wanted to be baptized in my church as a public profession as well.

And I never really wanted to take that away from my parents, what they did for me, because I never had one of those awakening moments.

But it was a gradual thing with me where I attacked Christianity like I attacked medicine.

Studying my textbooks and studying orthopedics, I studied Christianity hard and read the Bible.

And I talked about it in my book. My commutes—I spent so much time in this metropolitan area, New York City, in bumper-to-bumper traffic, going to my residencies and hospitals.

I listened to the Bible on audio on CD. Those are the days of CDs, when I just had all the CDs of the Bible, of every book.

And I really studied it very, very hard.

And it was a gradual relationship that developed with me.

That being said, I was invited to go to Israel with In Touch Ministries, Dr. Stanley. And when I went there, we were in the Jordan River, and I couldn't resist the urge to get baptized in the Jordan River, which I did as an adult.

But I didn't have one of those, you know, where all of a sudden I just—I always considered myself a Christian.

I just feel that I have a very much more deep understanding of Jesus Christ and the Trinity and God and the Holy Spirit and the Bible and the Word.

It's just a beautiful thing that I appreciate so much just by moving over to this church, listening to Dr. Stanley, Charles Stanley, In Touch Ministries, and going to my church, my pastors, my Bible studies, and studying the Word.

That's how I developed it.

It was more of a studying thing, a knowledge that developed from really trying to understand the Bible.

And it's the most magnificent textbook I've ever read. It's just unbelievable. It's hard to explain, right?

I'm a doctor. I read a lot of textbooks. It's hard to explain how perfectly executed the Bible is as a textbook to people.

It's just incredible.

The Miracle of the Human Body

Ric Hansen:Yeah. Okay, so now as a physician, there's so many things coming into my mind that I want to ask you about.

So as a Christian and a doctor, I've just read a book or am reading a book now by a guy named Mark Batterson. He's a pastor at National Community Church in Washington, D.C.

And he's written a lot of books, and I really enjoy his stuff. And the most recent book is called A Million Little Miracles.

He's not a doctor, but he must have done some pretty good research because he articulated the miracle of the human body.

And a part of it, he kind of took two approaches: the telescope, which he's looking at the stars and the magnificence of the universe, and then the microscope, which is the magnificence of this thing called the human body.

And can you address that as a doctor? You have a chance, an opportunity, to really understand the work of God in a human body?

Dr. Robert Kayal:Yeah, it is magnificent. That's a beautiful analogy.

I mean, if you consider the magnificence of the solar system and outer space and the universe, and looking through it, trying to look through it through a telescope, very much analogous to a microscope, looking at the incredible biology of the human cell and how they all interact.

It's just incomprehensible.

And so it's interesting when scientists try to explain everything and they feel that they have an absolute understanding of this and that, and to talk about evolution and stuff like that, as opposed to it being an absolute miracle.

It's just upsetting, you know, as a Christian, being a physician in science. I don't like to hear those kinds of conversations, even about the creation and the universe and the Big Bang.

It's very much analogous to evolution in the human body.

So that's a great analogy. I'd very much like to read that book. So if you don't mind, when we're done, maybe you can shoot me an email. It sounds very, very interesting.

Ric Hansen:From a one-man practice to 20 medical clinics throughout New Jersey and New York, over the past couple of decades, this man, Dr. Robert Kayal's story, is here for you on Amazing Greats.

And you know, for us non-scientists, non-doctors, we take all of this so much for granted, but you must, in your day-to-day work, just fixing people, you've got to see on a much more intimate scale how incredible it all is.

And so, yeah, I just wanted to ask you that.

So the book is called Mastering the Business of Medicine and the Doctor-Patient Relationship.

There's so much good stuff in there. And I know hopefully we're gonna have not just Christians listening to our podcast here, but Christian doctors or maybe seekers—doctors who are just kind of curious.

And one of the things, or I guess one of the backbones of your book, is what you call your Seven C's.

Is that something you can address, those Seven C's, just briefly here, or is that too much?

The Seven C's of Healthcare

Dr. Robert Kayal:No, I mean, in general, it's something I try to describe—the attributes of someone that should really be going into healthcare in general.

You don't have to be a physician. You could be a nurse, you could be a PA, you can just be a medical assistant.

It is, I believe, these are some of the generalized attributes that one should possess if you're going into a field that is caring for people and being empathetic.

So I talk about the Seven C's. I talk about character and conduct and conversation. We talk about being compassionate and caring and certainly conscientious and being committed as well to our profession.

You want to be trustworthy. Your character—you have to be a man or woman of high integrity and ethics and morals and principles.

Your conduct should be, I like to describe it as being consistent with Christ-like character and conduct and conversation, because we're professionals. We're in the business of caring and helping people.

And we should represent our field, our discipline, in that manner.

You can't be one way with patients and another way in your personal life. I think you should just always conduct yourself professionally.

It's a field, it's a profession that's traditionally been held in high esteem—relatively prestigious, respected.

I'm an old-school person. I'm 56 years old, but I'm very old-school and traditional in my values.

And I feel very strongly about we should conduct ourselves professionally—the way we interact with our patients, but not only the patients, all the stakeholders of our profession, our organization.

It can be our patients for sure, our colleagues, our staff. It could be the vendors, the insurance companies, the sales reps that are showing us equipment or utilizing different equipment in the operating room, sales reps representing pharmaceutical companies.

Everyone and anyone that we interact with, I think we should always try to maintain the reputation, the prestigious reputation of medicine, because it has always been a very highly respected field.

Patients trust us. Patients are very, very vulnerable, and we can't take advantage of them.

We have to not abuse our license, our profession, our degrees. We have to have conversations that are appropriate.

I don't swear. People don't hear me swear in the operating room. I don't swear around people.

People know me that if they swear around me, most of them say, “I'm so sorry, Dr. Kayal,” because it's not something I like to be around.

And I make it clear because that's not the way I would want to present myself or others to look at me. It's disrespectful, I feel. I don't like to be around that.

And so patients—not patients, but people that know me personally—seem to be always on their best behavior around me.

And I want it that way. I want it that way because they know I don't tolerate that.

We're not listening to certain music in the operating room. We're listening to Christian contemporary music, encouraging, inspiring music in the operating room.

And I'm the surgeon, I run the operating room. It's my music, and that's what I want to listen to.

And it becomes another mission field for me where I'm constantly evangelizing to people in the operating room indirectly.

We're constantly having Bible studies in the operating room. I'm joking around a lot with a lot of the Jewish employees in the hospital, and I do Bible tests, I do Bible, you know.

So I'm constantly trying to educate and teach the Word.

And we get into little—not arguments, but discussions about controversial issues. And it's a fun place for me to be.

It's my happy place, whether it be the Christian music or the conversations with the Jewish personnel or Muslim.

We're always talking about Jesus and Christianity and blah, blah, blah, but in a respectful manner.

And people don't—you know, it's surprising in the hospital, but nobody tells me you can't listen to that music or you can't have those conversations.

They respect the freedom of speech, but I'm not shoving it down anybody's throats.

It's just hard to argue when you're playing Christian contemporary music that's positive, uplifting, and encouraging to argue against that.

So it's been well received in every one of my facilities.

I think you have to be compassionate, obviously. How can you go into medicine taking care of patients without being empathetic and compassionate?

So it's something you have to do, and we speak about that.

You also have to be obviously a very caring individual. You have to care about your patients.

Conscientious—you can't miss things.

We can't afford to make mistakes in medicine. It's one of those fields. It's not one of those things like, “I'm sorry, I put your knee in backwards” or something like that.

We can't really make mistakes as a very, very small, if any, window to tolerate mistakes and errors.

They do occur. We're human, but they should not occur because of neglect.

They can occur, not necessarily mistakes, but complications can occur because of things that patients bring to the table, like obesity and smoking and cardiovascular disease and things like that.

They shouldn't be occurring because of us being lack of conscientiousness, like failure to follow up on that, failure to see your patient back regularly, forgetting to go over a test result, missing something on an X-ray.

We have to be like Type A, conscientious, Type A personalities. We don't miss anything.

I don't tolerate it in my practice. I'm crazy like that.

I'm just like, “I want detail. I want accurate information. Don't give me any misinformation. If you don't know, tell me you don't know.”

And they're accountable to me, and I'm hard on them. I'm hard on my healthcare professional staff because the downside of missing things is so tremendous.

God forbid you miss a cancer or somebody passes away or something like that.

So it's something that's very, very important to me. And I think that people need to know it going into it.

They can't choose this profession if they have a laissez-faire, lackadaisical type of attitude to caring for patients.

You've got to be committed to your profession.

You're gonna be missing personal things with your family, you're making sacrifices. Patients come first. You can't say no.

So I do talk about those Seven C's in further detail in the book, but that's the overall gist of it.

The Great Physician

Ric Hansen:I want you to be my doctor.

Dr. Robert Kayal:Oh, yeah.

Ric Hansen:Because that's what everybody wants. They want somebody who they can totally trust because we are at their mercy when we're on the operating table.

It is all about what they can do, not what we can do as a patient.

So I had a reverse—I was talking about—I didn't have a reverse knee put in, but I did have a reverse shoulder put in.

Dr. Robert Kayal:That operation has revolutionized the shoulder arthroplasty world. It's unbelievable, the success of that implant.

Ric Hansen:Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So along your journey, there has got to be—and sometimes I have to tax your memory a little bit to tap in on it—but along the way, there are probably some pivotal moments that you really saw God at work.

I mean, it was so clear and so distinct that it's like, “Oh my gosh. Thank you, God.”

Do you have one of those occasions or more?

Dr. Robert Kayal:I'm sure you have more, but well, look, the way—I have a specialty that it's pretty much elective surgery in orthopedics.

It's the fun type of surgery where we're taking care of relatively healthy patients. Things get broken because they're athletic or they fall, they trip, they have arthritis.

So these are relatively simple fixes in medicine: torn meniscus, ACL tears, arthritis that you would do replacements, broken bones we put back together.

So when I really experience God—and by the way, before I go into surgery, I'm the surgeon, I'm the vessel, I'm the instrument.

But that's when I really rely on God, the Great Physician, to guide and direct me with His wisdom, knowledge, understanding, judgment, truth, discernment.

Whereas I'm making decisions intraoperatively—to guide my hand or guide my brain, let me make the right decision.

To me, I mean, to be guided by the Great Physician and to just seek Him before, as I'm scrubbing my hands, and before I go into the operating room—to be with the nurses and be with the patient and be with me and guide my moves, my assistants, and also the anesthesiologist who's keeping the patient alive.

That's where I rely heavily on God.

And the other opportunity where barriers really come down is when patients get diagnosed with cancer.

And that happens in my office a lot. I'm not gonna say a lot, but it happens more than you would want it to happen.

In fact, right before this podcast, one of my PAs texted me an X-ray. It's a pathological fracture. It's someone that broke their arm yesterday, snowboarding out west, but there's a big lesion, tumor in the humerus, and it completely weakened the bone, causing it to really fracture pretty badly.

That's a pathological fracture. Fractures that occur in bones where it should not occur because the bone is pathologic from a tumor or an infection or something, metabolic bone disease, something like that.

In this particular case, there's a big tumor. I have to address it when I get out of here.

But the fact of the matter is, when I do have those conversations a couple of times a year, and they're the most difficult patient encounters I have, when I go into a room, the patient thinks nothing's wrong.

They're wondering why their shoulder hurts, their knee hurts, their hip hurts, and I have to break the news to them that we found cancer.

We weren't expecting it. The patient doesn't have a history of cancer, but the pelvis is filled with cancer, or this bone is just metastasized.

It's like, “Oh my, this is how we're—I have to break the news.”

I'm an orthopedic surgeon. I'm not like a primary care doctor or tumor doctor.

So on those opportunities when we know the patient is just terminal, I have to tell them that there's no cure for this. This is advanced.

“I'm so sorry.” You know, why their back was bothering or somebody—we finally got an MRI or something like that.

And that's where it's like, I just don't care where I am. I don't care that I'm in my practice. I don't care that I'm in corporate America.

That person needs to know Jesus.

At least I want to be the person to at least say, “Look, the only thing that matters here”—and I'll tell them, “Look, some people live a week, some people live till they're 15, some people live till 75. So we're all gonna die.

“It doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that from the second we're born to the time we die, you have to come to a point in your life where you understand and accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

“It's the only thing that matters. You have to believe in Him as your Lord and Savior.”

And that's when I'm like the most bold because I know the patient's terminal and somebody has to tell him, and the clock is ticking very quickly.

And I ask them, like, I'll say something like, “How's your relationship with God? Do you have any relationship with God?”

I just feel inclined to tell you right now that the only thing that matters—this does not look good—but what matters now is that you establish a deep, personal, intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.

He died for you, blah, blah, blah.

And that's where I don't really see those kinds of cases where somebody's heart stopped and then it can't—you know, in orthopedics too much, maybe.

But for me, that's how God—those two main reasons, I'd say: going into the operating room, praying as I'm scrubbing or driving to work that day on all the cases I have for my patients, that He'd guide me, direct me, and be with our team of healthcare professionals.

And also when I encounter the unfortunate cases of cancer.

Breaking Down the Barriers

Ric Hansen:And when you approach a patient with that information, with the gut-wrenching information, do you get pushback when you suggest that they know or love God?

Dr. Robert Kayal:Not at all.

It is so welcome at that time. And it's like all the barriers go away. It's just like they embrace it.

I think more people would embrace it than we have a tendency to think.

In general, you don't have to be dying of cancer. I think—and not enough of us have these conversations with ordinary people before it's, you know, not necessarily when they're on their deathbed.

But people tend, in my experience at least, even the ones that aren't Christian or Catholic, tend to be open to having these conversations.

So it's becoming easy.

You asked me before about in my practice. It's become—once that barrier is broken, or you break the ice and people know you're a Christian, you do your first social media post about Christianity or Jesus or praying, once that barrier is broken, I think it becomes easier and easier and easier in general.

And it's just well received.

And you're the guy that said that, and that's fine. We expect those kind of comments from you now. You know what I mean?

A Personal Story About Prayer

Ric Hansen:It's Ric Hansen here with author and surgeon Dr. Robert Kayal. He's our guest on Amazing Greats, and you'll love the story and his love of Jesus.

One of my close mentors in my adult rebirth in Christianity many moons ago, when I had kind of drifted—I was not going to church. I was, you know, I guess I thought I was a Christian, but it wasn't like it was a part of my life.

So I had this heavy chest. He happened to be in my place of business and in the lobby, this guy. I knew him, but I didn't know him well.

And he says, “Get in the car. I'm gonna take you to the emergency room and we're gonna just check this out.”

So we got in the car and he put his hand on my knee and he says, “Do you mind if I pray with you?”

And so it looked almost like, you know, those vulnerable moments are when it really has some impact.

And that made—I mean, this is probably 30 years ago—so it made that kind of an impact that I remember that to this day.

Dr. Robert Kayal:Right? He knew exactly what you needed—to give you that chest pain, to get you in that car with that person, to get you back on the straight and narrow path.

Ric Hansen:Yeah. It all works. It all works out, doesn't it?

Writing the Book in Three Hours

Ric Hansen:So this book took you—I’m just hoping that everybody has an opportunity, especially medical professionals, but you also say this is good information for anybody that's going into business and melds their religion and their ethics in business.

So it doesn't necessarily have to be a medical doctor.

But one of the things that I noticed: it's 115 pages, and you said you wrote it in two days.

Yeah. Is that true?

I hear people that have taken two years to write their book, but yours came quick.

Dr. Robert Kayal:Yeah, I actually wrote it in three hours.

The second day was just to do some tweaks, you know, grammatical tweaks. There was no additional content.

I wrote it in three hours, and I remember very specifically, it was last Christmas or Thanksgiving holiday. I was flying back from Turks and Caicos. That's my happy place. Besides the OR, I love being in the Caribbean with my family.

So flying back, there was no internet. I'm a man of lists. I go through my list constantly. I had no internet. I couldn't really do any work.

And so I'm like, “Let me pull up my things-to-do list.”

And one of the items that was on my list for the last five, 10 years: write a book about the business of medicine.

Because my practice is a little different—very, very different as a successful business than most other medical practices in general, let alone orthopedics.

And I knew I always had something very, very unique in this practice, and I always wanted to help other physicians really succeed in the business of medicine.

And so I had it on my things-to-do list, and I had three hours, I guess, to fly home.

And I'm like, “Let me at least put the outline together.”

So I put the outline together, just 11 different chapters, things I wanted to talk about, and that didn't take long at all.

And then I'm like, “You know what? Let me just start adding paragraphs to each one of these bullet points.”

By the time I hit home, the book was done.

Ric Hansen:Wow.

Dr. Robert Kayal:Because there was no research, and I write pretty quickly. Things just come to mind, it sort of flows.

And the book was done because I had no research to do. It all really came from my heart and my brain because I lived it for the last 25 years.

So it was really simple.

And these are principles and values that I live by every day that are so important to me, like your brand, your reputation, the way we treat people, conduct ourselves in life, traditional values.

So it's like I'm old-school. And for me to talk about that and say why I like those things is very simple.

And then it was so easy to go through my whole story of how I started and what I wanted to do and how it became more successful by keeping everything in-house.

And we had to brand the practice, and then we had to sort of scale it.

And I needed some ancillary revenue because I was in the operating room, my office would be empty, not generating any income.

So I would slowly add different revenue sources.

And finally, when I built it to the size, every year, obviously, I would keep my finger on the pulse.

I would talk to my billing department, and I would say, “What are reimbursements like in January? What's going on with the insurance companies?”

And every year it could get worse and worse and worse, whereas overhead would continue to go up and up and up.

People were wanting more money, better benefits, and the insurance companies are just continuing to squeeze us.

And then there's always these increasing costs, too, like investing in a health electronic health record, and you needed more people to run the practice.

Why He Wanted to Take His Practice to Shark Tank

Dr. Robert Kayal:And I said to myself, you know what? In December of 2021—it really started early in '21, and then ultimately it came to a head in December of '21—I remember one night watching Shark Tank with my wife, laying down.

We're watching Shark Tank at night.

And I said to her, “You know what? I want to take my practice on Shark Tank because it's a very unique orthopedic practice.”

It's a one-stop shop for all your orthopedic needs.

We have every division of orthopedics and every ancillary service and every type of field of medicine that complements orthopedics all in one house.

Patients don't have to go anywhere else.

Same day they can get their physical examination, they can get their X-rays, they can get their injections, they can get their MRIs or CAT scans, they can start physical therapy, chiropractic, acupuncture.

You're not scheduling things way out.

It was a practice that's based on like a concierge-type service where patients are treated like gold.

The second they come in, the whole venue is very upscale, really, because it's a reputation that I want to try to maintain.

As a surgeon, I want to be neat and orderly and present myself well, very professional.

And so they're all beautiful offices.

And patients are greeted and treated so respectfully and with kindness and all the fruits of the Spirit that I tell my employees about.

And it's so important.

Every single interaction, I tell my employees, is an opportunity to build or destroy the reputation and name that we've tried to work so hard to develop over the last 25 years.

And so I said, “I'm gonna take this thing to Shark Tank because it's a very unique model.”

The only thing we don't have is a hospital. We have everything else.

And so I did, in fact, take it to market that year, but not on Shark Tank.

I took it out to market because I needed a partner. I needed somebody to help support me with the insurance companies, give us better rates with insurance companies.

And you really have to be a giant to go to the table and negotiate with some of these payers like UnitedHealthcare and Aetna and Cigna and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

So I took it to market and I ended up getting a joint venture, developing a joint venture with the largest healthcare system in the state of New Jersey, Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health, and they're my partners now.

And I'm given the charge to continue to grow and expand the practice and keep doing what I love to do so much, and that's being an orthopedic surgeon and a businessman.

I run the practice.

I'm actually still a very, very busy orthopedic surgeon. I'm still running the practice, doing everything I would normally do.

But I'm also now at the NYU Stern School of Business. I went back to get my Executive MBA because I want to ultimately use that formal business education.

Over the last 25 years, I've sort of just shot from the hip, and I give all the thanks to God for allowing everything I touch to really turn to gold.

He's given me a lot of that guidance and wisdom and direction.

But at this point, I also want the formal business training that I've never really had to see if it'll help me even grow this thing even more so down the road in the future.

“The Practice Is His, Not Mine”

Ric Hansen:Well, I was hoping this was going to end up with you on Shark Tank at the end.

But I get that. Yeah.

So cool. Well, this is great.

I've taken a lot out of your day, and I was kind of expecting the motif to be the blue suit and bow tie on the front of your book, not the scrubs.

But this is much more authentic to have you in scrubs and, like you say, you just got done with work today, and you have to leave and go back and address some issues as well.

So I really appreciate your time and sharing your story because it is an amazing, amazing story indeed.

So thank you, Dr. Kayal.

Do you have a Scripture verse that you kind of would say is—and not everybody does, so if it you don't, it's okay—but a life verse that kind of says it all?

Dr. Robert Kayal:Yeah. I mean, now that I've done my book, I'm doing a lot of book signings.

And this Christmas, I've given out my book also to all my staff. And at Stern, I've given it to all my fellow cohort students.

And, you know, the Bible verse that I'm putting in that is Colossians 3:23 to 24:

“And all that in all you do, whatever you do, work it as if working for the Lord, not for man, since you know that you'll receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It's the Lord you are serving.”

But I also love James 1:17:

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights, who does not drift like casting shadows.”

So those Bible verses encourage me all the time.

It reminds me that everything is His.

And it just helps to keep me on that straight and narrow path, reminded to always live in His presence, commune with Him, fellowship with Him, and serve Him all the days of my life.

Final Thoughts

Ric Hansen:You are an inspiration and such a great guest. I really appreciate your time.

And we'll let you know when this is going to be published and if there's anything that we can do to help support what you're doing.

The fact that we don't live in New Jersey or New York makes it difficult for us to go to your clinic, but hopefully this podcast will get out there and some people will be able to take advantage of your great service and your great skills.

So thank you so much.

Dr. Robert Kayal:Thank you so much. It's truly been an honor, privilege, and blessing to be on this podcast with you.

I really, really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.