Podcast Summary:

How to Be Anything – Episode 9: How to Be a Doctor in the Arctic Circle
Hosted by Emily McCrary | Guest: Dr. Jen Pond
Air date: September 3, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode profiles Dr. Jen Pond, a physician practicing remote medicine in Nunavut, deep within the Canadian Arctic Circle. Through a narrative interview, Dr. Pond discusses her unconventional career journey, what day-to-day life and medicine look like at the planet's edges, the social and mental health dimensions of Arctic medical care, and the personal evolution that has kept her in extreme, challenging environments. Embracing the practical and the philosophical, the episode highlights both the challenges and rewards of delivering healthcare in the world’s most remote places.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Finding a Place in Remote Medicine

• Career Beginnings
  • Dr. Pond contrasts “making a living” with “making a career,” suggesting she stumbled into her now-unusual path by seeking something more than routine family medicine ([01:16]).
    • “I finished my postgraduate training in family medicine... I just remember seeing the next 40 years spread ahead of me and thinking, is that it? And it terrified me...” — Dr. Jen Pond ([01:16])
  • She emphasizes the serendipitous nature of careers: doing one job, meeting new people, and following open doors.

2. Life and Logistics in the Canadian Arctic

• Setting & Challenges
  • Nunavut: sparsely populated, isolated — only accessible by plane, boat, or dog sled in some cases ([02:15]).
  • Dr. Pond describes extensive travel, bringing her through multiple cities and small aircraft to reach her post in Tuloyoak ([03:20]).
    • “On that milk run, you’ve gotta be reasonably well prepared. It’s cold, there’s a lot of wildlife, including polar bears.” — Dr. Jen Pond ([03:48])
  • The health center serves both as home and workplace, is minimally equipped — basic x-ray but no lab, with most medical tests flown to larger centers, leading to delays.
  • Only two physicians rotate monthly, with a small team of nurses and paramedics offering the only continuous care.

3. Early Global Experience: India and Nepal

• Formative Years in Rural Medicine
  • Dr. Pond’s first taste of remote work came in rural India. She lived simply, worked with little infrastructure, and focused on education and sustainable impact:
    • “There were people who worked for scraps of food. And I’d never been exposed to anything like that... A lot of our work there was trying to create prenatal care.” ([04:57])
  • She learned from — and contributed to — local knowledge systems, also acquiring life skills not strictly medical.
  • She later worked in Nepal at the Himalayan Rescue Association.
    • The model: Western trekkers paid for treatment, financing subsidized care for Nepali locals and Sherpas ([07:03]).

4. Medicine at the Boundaries: Everest ER

• Practicing at the Roof of the World
  • Through her work in Nepal, Dr. Pond connected with Dr. Luanne Freer, who established the world's highest ER at Everest Base Camp ([07:26]).
  • The realities of extreme altitude medicine: treating altitude sickness, frostbite, broken bones, and widespread GI bugs among a semi-transient population at Base Camp.
  • The psychological toll is also immense; helping climbers make or accept decisions to stop climbing is as critical as physical medicine.
    • “There’s the very black and white kind of issues, and then there’s the gray where you’re helping someone work out whether it’s the right path for them, whether they need you as the excuse…” — Dr. Jen Pond ([10:45])

5. The Central Role of Mental Health

• Not Just Physical Care
  • In both expedition and Arctic medicine, mental health is deeply intertwined with overall care ([11:40]).
    • “A huge amount of it [remote medicine]… is mental health care.” — Dr. Jen Pond ([11:40])
  • Dr. Pond identifies significant challenges in Nunavut: trauma, poverty, and the legacy of residential schools affecting community well-being and trust in Western medicine.

6. Social Determinants and Systemic Disparities

• Historical and Ongoing Inequities
  • The episode details Canada’s residential school system and its lasting effect on Indigenous health, culture, and trust ([13:37]).
  • Nunavut’s tuberculosis rates, suicide rates, and life expectancy lag far behind national averages; Dr. Pond highlights these as results of social (not just medical) factors.
    • “TB, some would call it a social disease with medical consequences.” — Dr. Jen Pond ([14:32])
    • “The life expectancy of someone who lives in Nunavut is 10 years less than that in southern Canada... A 10 year difference in life expectancy within the same country, it’s massive. It’s... huge.” — Dr. Jen Pond ([15:53])
  • Dr. Pond, herself an outsider, reflects on slowly earning trust and the fine balance of working within — instead of imposing upon — Indigenous knowledge and practices.

7. Personal Motivation: Seeking the Edge

• Why Practice in Extreme Places?
  • A desire for challenge, avoiding complacency, and personal growth drive Dr. Pond’s career choices ([18:16]).
    • “I like to take myself out of a comfort zone. I don’t want to be in my comfort zone. I want to be challenged.” — Dr. Jen Pond ([18:16])

8. Medicine as a Calling and Evolution of Identity

• Integration Into Selfhood
  • Dr. Pond sees medicine as a vocation and a part of her identity, not merely a career ([18:39]).
  • She voices the perpetual self-assessment required in medicine: the need to question, to seek feedback, and to never stop learning.
    • “There are days where you feel you’re really good at your job, and there are days where you feel you’re just good enough. And there are days where you think, I wish I did that differently... What makes a physician good at their job is when they constantly question their decisions. When you stop doing that... I would no longer be doing my job well.” — Dr. Jen Pond ([18:39])

9. Balancing Adventure and Family Life

• Dr. Pond met her partner, Bruce (a mountain guide), at Everest. They now have a family ([20:17]).
  • Arctic work provides the boundaries she struggled to maintain in earlier, constantly on-call roles: focused service during her stint up north, then the ability to “be off” and present at home ([20:53], [20:57]).
    • “I needed to find a way to be able to go and do my job and only have to do my job and then come away from it and be off. That’s what Nunavut brings to me.” — Dr. Jen Pond ([20:57])

10. Continuous Learning and Humility

• Dr. Pond credits both her peers and her patients as her greatest teachers, noting mistakes as crucial points of growth ([22:07]).
  • “I think the most influential parts in medicine are when you get it wrong... because you learn how you don’t want to feel and you learn how to do it better...” — Dr. Jen Pond ([22:07])

11. What Makes a Life Well Lived in Remote Medicine

• Dr. Pond shares her hope that, by career’s end, her work is marked by continual learning and patient trust ([23:01]).
  • “I hope that I get to look back and know that I never stopped learning and that I always try to do my job to the best of my ability. I think it’s a beautiful career that never gets dull.” — Dr. Jen Pond ([23:01])

Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On career uncertainty and seeking purpose:
  “I remember seeing the next 40 years spread ahead of me and thinking, is that it? And it terrified me.” — Dr. Jen Pond ([01:16])

• Describing arrival in Tuloyoak:
  “It’s cold, there’s a lot of wildlife, including polar bears.” — Dr. Jen Pond ([03:48])

• On humility in India:
  “I pretty much lived in a mud hut for a year, attempted to practice medicine. I was very early on in my career. It was very humbling.” — Dr. Jen Pond ([04:57])

• On Everest’s lessons:
  “You are at her mercy with the Himalayas, those huge mountains. You are just a dot on her horizon. And I love how humbling that is...” — Dr. Jen Pond ([08:24])

• On the challenge and beauty of her work:
  “Medicine is a vocation and not a job. It’s definitely a part of you, and it’s a part of your life, and it’s a way of life.” — Dr. Jen Pond ([18:39])

• On trust and legacy:
  “To have someone trust you without knowing you and open up to you that way is phenomenal.” — Dr. Jen Pond ([23:01])

Important Segment Timestamps

• [01:16] Dr. Pond describes her early doubts about traditional medical paths
• [02:15] Introduction to remote medicine and Nunavut’s unique setting
• [03:20] Describes the arduous journey to reach her post
• [04:57] Experience living and working in rural India
• [07:03] Model of care in Himalayan Nepal for trekkers and locals
• [08:24] Lessons from Everest, both physical and philosophical
• [10:06] The psychological side of expedition medicine
• [11:40] Mental health care in remote medicine
• [13:37] History and impact of Canada’s residential schools
• [14:32] Tuberculosis as a “social disease with medical consequences”
• [15:53] Health disparities in Nunavut
• [18:16] Why Dr. Pond prefers extreme settings
• [18:39] Medicine as part of identity, perpetual self-questioning
• [20:57] Work-life balance, boundaries, and family
• [22:07] Continuous learning and the importance of mistakes
• [23:01] Hope for lifelong learning and patient trust

Overall Tone

Curious, reflective, and candid—Dr. Pond shares both the romance and reality of her path, alternating between awe for her environments, clear-eyed acknowledgment of social injustice, and genuine love for the art and craft of practicing medicine where most wouldn’t venture. The host matches this with empathetic, insightful questions, drawing out the human stories behind a life lived at the world’s extremes.