DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast

“If we want culture change, we need to bring a new top leader and they are going to kind of drive culture change from the top down. That's not really how it works. It has to be at least a top-down and a bottom-up effort combined.”

We're excited to bring back international coach and consultant, Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken. She's a public thought leader and coauthor of the book, “Between Power and Irrelevance: The Future of Transnational NGOs”, published by Oxford University Press in 2020. Tosca is an international expert on leadership and has many insights into physicians and leadership. In fact, she's recently developed a course along with us at DocWorking on remote leadership for physicians, and the course is available to international leaders in sectors outside of healthcare.

Our thoughtful conversation includes Tosca’s opinions about organizational culture, the culture of medicine, and how her knowledge of cultures in other sectors intersect with the culture of medicine. We discuss the various problems that we have in our culture, especially the systemic problems that we know need to be fixed, and how that can influence individuals within the culture. The good news is that we as individuals, even in a broken culture, have agency. We know enough about organizational culture and what makes something healthy or not healthy, sometimes even toxic or broken, regardless of whether it’s the healthcare sector or another. If you’re a team leader, you have agency through the modeling of healthy habits, daily practices, and behaviors that you want your team members to demonstrate as well. You can support them by encouraging them, giving them positive feedback, and creating a culture of accountability.

Tosca shares her thoughts on the importance of honoring each other as vulnerable human beings and how to best support each other as we move through the workday. We talk about some of the unique challenges in virtual environments as well as within the healthcare community, especially those barriers to setting aside time to connect with team members outside of the day-to-day work with patients. Tosca also provides her insights into how organizational cultures can change from the bottom up.

What’s Inside:

• Why it’s important for teams to see each other as vulnerable humans.

Mentioned In This Episode:

• DocWorking.com

Find full transcripts of DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast episodes on the DocWorking Blog

The past few weeks have been busy at DocWorking! We have been working behind the scenes to add even more CME credits to the THRIVE memberships.

Let your CME budget help you prioritize your own wellness so you can get on with living your best life on your own terms, as defined by you, with DocWorking THRIVE.

You can take the first step today by taking our 2-Minute Balance to Burnout Quiz! Where are you on the Balance to Burnout Continuum? Take the quiz and find out today!

DocWorking empowers physicians and entire healthcare teams to get on the path to achieving their dreams, both in and outside of work, with programs designed to help you maximize life with minimal time.

If you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5-star review, we would be extremely grateful!

We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, Stitcher, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, and Podbean.

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in payments to DocWorking. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!

“One thing I do want to point out to investors is when we look at investments, the first thing we look at is the return. I’m guilty of it because that’s the whole point of the investment to see how much my money can grow. And then maybe the last thing we’ll look at is, oh, who is running it? But I think the more you invest, the more you really look into these, it should be the other way around. It should be who is running the property.”

- Dr. Cherry Chen

Although Dr. Cherry Chen specializes in internal medicine, she’s also an expert in real estate. Dr. Chen is also the founder of The Real Estate Physician, a business she created in 2018 to empower her physician colleagues in commercial real estate investments. Dr. Chen received her M.D. at Texas A&M College of Medicine with honors and completed her training at Oregon Health Science University. She has experience with commercial real estate investments across multifamily, self-storage, manufactured home parks, and as a limited passive investor, as well as raising private equity capital.

After contributing to her 401k and IRA, Dr. Chen grew curious about other investment opportunities outside of the stock market. She was also curious about the potential for early retirement, financial independence, and growing her net worth, even though she was fairly young in her career. Although she loves being a physician, Dr. Chen began wondering what her alternatives would be if she decided to stop practicing medicine and how to make her money work hard on her behalf. This inspired her to pursue real estate and share her wisdom with other doctors through The Real Estate Physician. Through her business, she helps others grow their wealth independent of the time they put in as doctors.

Dr. Chen shares what the process of diving into her first real estate investment was like and how to make intelligent investments. She also highlights the important characteristics investors should consider if they’re interested in passive investments, one of them being a thorough assessment of the property management company. Dr. Chen also explains how syndications work and the advantages they provide to investors. We wrap up by discussing the difference between multifamily investments and commercial investments like self-storage and mobile home parks.

What’s Inside:

• How Dr. Chen became interested in real estate and why she started The Real Estate Physician.

Mentioned In This Episode:

• DocWorking.com

Find full transcripts of DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast episodes on the DocWorking Blog

The past few weeks have been busy at DocWorking! We have been working behind the scenes to add even more CME credits to the THRIVE memberships.

Let your CME budget help you prioritize your own wellness so you can get on with living your best life on your own terms, as defined by you, with DocWorking THRIVE.

You can take the first step today by taking our 2 Minute Balance to Burnout Quiz! Where are you on the Balance to Burnout Continuum? Take the quiz and find out today!

DocWorking empowers physicians and entire health care teams to get on the path to achieving their dreams, both in and outside of work, with programs designed to help you maximize life with minimal time.

If you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5-star review, we would be extremely grateful!

We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, Stitcher, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, and Podbean.

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in payments to DocWorking. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!

“Learning how to position yourself to impress admissions committees and seeing that happen and then helping other people and then through word of mouth, someone telling someone else that they wanted to go into this field as well and really helping them, I think just further reinforced that my role was to help other people become wonderful physicians."

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian is the founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting. He's one of the world's foremost experts on medical school admissions, college admissions and graduate school admissions. For nearly 20 years, he and his team have helped thousands of students get into medical school and top colleges using his systematic and proprietary approach. A lot of our physician listeners may get questions often, but there also may be parents listening who have high-school-age kids thinking about where they're going to apply to undergraduate school. Or they may have kids who are pre-med in college applying to medical school. Here, Dr. Shemmassian shares his wisdom and gives us insights into the process, which can often be stressful and overwhelming.

From a young age, Dr. Shemmassian knew he wanted to go into healthcare. His immigrant parents were always talking about going to school and getting a job in a helping profession to earn a living. He really enjoyed science and was always drawn toward medicine. when I was in college, I was pre-med the whole time and taking all my courses, I did quite well. However, as someone who grew up with Tourette's Syndrome, over time, he was nudged towards psychiatry and mental health. When he graduated, Dr. Shemmassian decided to make a pivot and did his Ph.D. in clinical psychology rather than go to medical school. Even when he was in college, he was helping people get into medical schools and things like that. His parents didn't know how to navigate the educational system here in the states. Continuing to help others around him get into schools further reinforced that his role was to assist people in becoming wonderful physicians.

In this engaging conversation, we discuss whether a school’s status or prestige plays a critical role in getting accepted into a good medical school. We also talk about combined programs and the difference between an M.D. and a D.O. Dr. Shemmassian shares his opinions on choosing between traditional medical school and P.A. school and who it would benefit. We wrap up with tips for nontraditional students who are interested in becoming a physician and what that admissions process could look like.

What’s Inside:

• School prestige and its impact on getting accepted into medical school.

Mentioned In This Episode:

• DocWorking.com

Find full transcripts of DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast episodes on the DocWorking Blog

The past few weeks have been busy at DocWorking! We have been working behind the scenes to add even more CME credits to the THRIVE memberships.

Let your CME budget help you prioritize your own wellness so you can get on with living your best life on your own terms, as defined by you, with DocWorking THRIVE.

You can take the first step today by taking our 2 Minute Balance to Burnout Quiz! Where are you on the Balance to Burnout Continuum? Take the quiz and find out today!

DocWorking empowers physicians and entire health care teams to get on the path to achieving their dreams, both in and outside of work, with programs designed to help you maximize life with minimal time.

If you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5-star review, we would be extremely grateful!

We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, Stitcher, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean.

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in payments to DocWorking. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!

“If we are serious about this quintuple aim, this lofty goal of improved health outcomes at lower cost with better experiences for our patients, all of that in an environment of equity and physician wellbeing, then we really need a shift in health and healthcare. Because what I see is that patients are disenchanted with healthcare. They don't feel that their physicians have time for them. They don't feel heard. And I see physicians leaving healthcare because the system is really not conducive to either group.”

Dr. Iris Schrijver is a certified lifestyle medicine physician who also specializes in clinical pathology and molecular genetics. She's an adjunct clinical professor of pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine and a past president of the Association for Molecular Pathology. Dr. Schrijver has served as the medical director for a volunteers in medicine organization because she believes that health care is a basic human right. Together with her husband, an astrophysicist, she wrote Living with the Stars, a popular science book about connections between the human body and the universe. And more recently, she has written On the Path to Health, Wellbeing and Fulfillment.

Originally from the Netherlands, Dr. Schrijver eventually landed at Stanford to be trained in clinical molecular genetics and clinical pathology, or laboratory medicine. She then became a faculty member in the pathology department where her main purpose was to direct the diagnostic molecular genetic pathology lab. After a long and rewarding career there, she and her husband made a joint decision to step away and pursue new adventures. They moved from California to Oregon where Dr. Schrijver became involved in a free clinic and ultimately became its medical director. She also discovered lifestyle medicine and was so impressed with its urgency and the science behind it that it inspired her to become certified in it herself. Her experience also inspired her to write her latest book.

Dr. Schrijver shares just how important lifestyle medicine is and that it has a solid base in science. She explains the six pillars of health, well-being, and fulfillment and what they mean for both physicians and their patients. We discuss how to sift through all of the information that is out there and how small shifts add up to big, lasting changes. It can be challenging for physicians to “walk the walk” when it comes to lifestyle medicine, and Dr. Schrijver offers her advice. She also shares practical ways for physicians to integrate lifestyle medicine principles into their daily practice.

• How Dr. Schrijver became involved in lifestyle medicine.

Mentioned In This Episode:

• DocWorking.com

Find full transcripts of DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast episodes on the DocWorking Blog

The past few weeks have been busy at DocWorking! We have been working behind the scenes to add even more CME credits to the THRIVE memberships.

Let your CME budget help you prioritize your own wellness so you can get on with living your best life on your own terms, as defined by you, with DocWorking THRIVE.

You can take the first step today by taking our 2 Minute Balance to Burnout Quiz! Where are you on the Balance to Burnout Continuum? Take the quiz and find out today!

DocWorking empowers physicians and entire health care teams to get on the path to achieving their dreams, both in and outside of work, with programs designed to help you maximize life with minimal time.

If you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5-star review, we would be extremely grateful!

We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, Stitcher, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean.

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in payments to DocWorking. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!

“At one point in my career, I think I mentioned I was asking for a seat at the table. Now I build my own tables. I build them myself. I've literally built my own tables by putting things together for my properties. So I just love that, the freedom to be able to have my own path.”

Annette Forbes is a 26-year experienced nurse, military spouse, and mom who decided to embark on her short-term rental journey in 2022 after experiencing burnout in her work as a corporate nurse. She recently established Magnolia Accommodations as a hospitality company, providing short-term rental stays to the traveling community and those needing temporary housing. Annette began her nursing career as a volunteer at a local hospital and eventually attained a high-level position where she could impact healthcare from a whole new level. 

Eventually, Annette got the opportunity to work from home, but then realized it was difficult for her to get out of bed just to make it over to her home office. After 26 years as a nurse, she felt empty with nothing more to give, and she also wasn’t as appreciated for her hard work as she should have been. Annette decided to take a pause from her nursing career to regroup and figure out what to do next. She figured if she could work hard and save companies millions of dollars a year, putting that same effort towards her next move would be life-changing – and it was. After scrolling through Instagram one day, Annette discovered the world of short-term rentals, and she went all in.

Annette shares her wisdom regarding what it took for her to be able to take a much-needed pause from her career. Getting your finances in order should be your first step, and she shares how her family made it work by relying on one income. Annette also describes how she started Magnolia Accommodations and the concept of arbitrage, which is essentially subletting a leased property as a short-term rental for short periods of time. Starting up her real estate business has been challenging at times, but Annette has made great strides and is seeing massive success in a relatively short amount of time. 

What’s Inside:

• How Annette went from long-time nurse to a career in real estate

Mentioned In This Episode:

• DocWorking.com

----more----

Find full transcripts of DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast episodes on the DocWorking Blog

The past few weeks have been busy at DocWorking! We have been working behind the scenes to add even more CME credits to the THRIVE memberships.

Let your CME budget help you prioritize your own wellness so you can get on with living your best life on your own terms, as defined by you, with DocWorking THRIVE.

You can take the first step today by taking our 2 Minute Balance to Burnout Quiz! Where are you on the Balance to Burnout Continuum? Take the quiz and find out today!

DocWorking empowers physicians and entire health care teams to get on the path to achieving their dreams, both in and outside of work, with programs designed to help you maximize life with minimal time.

If you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5-star review, we would be extremely grateful!

We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, Stitcher, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean.

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in payments to DocWorking. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!

“It's very easy for all of us to say, I'm not a good ‘blank.’ We tell girls, “Don’t say I am not good at math. Maybe you haven't been good at math, but you can become good at math.”  Same thing I would say to physicians. Maybe you haven't been good at negotiating, but you can become good at it. And it's a skill set that no one is born with. And everybody can come to the table with good negotiation skills, even when the other party does not have them.”

- Dr. Sue Padernacht

The concept of negotiation can often make physicians uncomfortable, but negotiating is often necessary when it comes to self-advocacy and self-care. When we don’t ask for what we want or back down too easily, it can lead to burnout. No one is born a great negotiator, which means these skills can be learned and you can become stronger over time. Dr. Padernacht speaks in depth about the components of good negotiation so you can incorporate them into your life. Jill and Dr. Padernacht also discuss her five step framework for becoming a better negotiator in both your professional and personal life.

Dr. Sue Padernacht is the CEO and founder of Ncline Leadership Strategies. She brings over 35 years of experience and expertise in leadership and negotiation, coaching, training, and facilitation to multiple levels of physicians in various medical specialties, from frontline positions to chief medical officers. Dr. Padernacht holds a Doctor of Education from the University of Southern California in organizational change and her doctorate focused on physician burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic. She’s also an award-winning adjunct professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Business, and has taught dozens of leadership and negotiation courses to physicians returning to school, earning their MBAs.

Dr. Padernacht’s passion for negotiation began in the 1980s in New York City when the banking industry became deregulated. She was early in her career and needed to learn quickly how to help bankers learn to negotiate. During the 1990s, Dr. Padernacht worked at the L.A. Times where she was tasked with teaching negotiations to the sales organization. In the 2000s, UC Irvine retained her as a member of the faculty, where she taught a course in negotiations. Her students included both health care executive MBAs and MD MBAs and she’s gotten a lot of joy from teaching negotiations to and coaching the physician population.

What’s Inside:

• How a failure to negotiate for what you want and need leads to burnout.

Mentioned In This Episode:

DocWorking.com

Find full transcripts of DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast episodes on the DocWorking Blog

The past few weeks have been busy at DocWorking! We have been working behind the scenes to add even more CME credits to the THRIVE memberships.

Let your CME budget help you prioritize your own wellness so you can get on with living your best life on your own terms, as defined by you, with DocWorking THRIVE.

You can take the first step today by taking our 2 Minute Balance to Burnout Quiz! Where are you on the Balance to Burnout Continuum? Take the quiz and find out today!

DocWorking empowers physicians and entire health care teams to get on the path to achieving their dreams, both in and outside of work, with programs designed to help you maximize life with minimal time.

If you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5-star review, we would be extremely grateful!

We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, Stitcher, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean.

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in payments to DocWorking. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!

“Burnout is an occupational condition, right? So, to try and treat burnout like a mental health condition and tell us, ‘Okay, something's wrong with you, just go seek mental health care’ is just not enough. There's this whole bucket of work where we really need to be supported when we have mental health issues, but it's not enough just to have this 24/7 hotline. You actually need to help us stay well while we're on the job.”

- Dr. Tina Shah

A lot of things have happened in healthcare over the last decade that have made it one of the hardest times ever to practice medicine in a sustainable way without burning out. This drove Dr. Tina Shah and some of her colleagues to come together to create actionable steps that healthcare organizations can take now to do their part to reduce physician burnout. In this episode, cohost and Lead Coach Jill Farmer speaks with Dr. Tina Shah about these actionable steps, and what drives Dr. Shah’s work on burnout in healthcare.

Dr. Tina Shah is a pulmonary and critical care physician with over ten years of experience in clinical burnout, health policy, and digital health. She recently served as senior advisor to the U.S. Surgeon General, where she was the chief architect of the nation's first strategy to address burnout and the great resignation among health workers. She's also served in the White House over two presidential administrations and, as an operator during the pandemic, oversaw the launch of telemedicine across a large health care system. Dr. Shah also now advises health systems and technology companies on how to redesign care for better outcomes while continuing to practice on the front lines in the ICU. She's a founding member of the National Academy of Medicine's Clinician Wellbeing Collaborative and recently hosted the country's premier conference on clinician burnout.

Although she did well in residency in terms of well-being, Dr. Shah reached a point during her pulmonary critical care fellowship that made her feel that she couldn’t go any further. This is a relatable feeling for many in medicine. 

Dr. Shah developed what she calls a top five hit list of recommendations to help combat physician burnout and we dive into them in detail. Adjusting expectations is fundamental, and the pandemic has forced the field to practice medicine in a completely different way, with different pressures attached. Improving documentation and technology is also key to making physicians’ jobs easier and decreasing the administrative burden. We talk about the concept of GROSS (getting rid of stupid stuff) and how it can improve physician satisfaction as well as radically rethinking staffing and scheduling. A healthcare facility’s EAP (employee assistance program) is simply not enough to combat physician burnout, and Dr. Shah’s advocacy is exactly what we need.

What’s Inside:

• Dr. Shah’s journey and what inspired her to become an advocate for physician well-being.

DocWorking.com

Find full transcripts of DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast episodes on the DocWorking Blog

The past few weeks have been busy at DocWorking! We have been working behind the scenes to add even more CME credits to the THRIVE memberships.

Let your CME budget help you prioritize your own wellness so you can get on with living your best life on your own terms, as defined by you, with DocWorking THRIVE.

You can take the first step today by taking our 2 Minute Balance to Burnout Quiz! Where are you on the Balance to Burnout Continuum? Take the quiz and find out today!

DocWorking empowers physicians and entire health care teams to get on the path to achieving their dreams, both in and outside of work, with programs designed to help you maximize life with minimal time.

If you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5-star review, we would be extremely grateful!

We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, Stitcher, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean.

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in payments to DocWorking. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!

“So what Bolman and Deal end up saying is that managers live in the structural frame and the human resource frame. Basically, managers manage for stability and order, while leaders, yes, they are definitely performing in those four frames, but they can also switch the lens towards a political frame or a symbolic frame. So that is what makes them different from managers, because leaders lead for dramatic change, useful and dramatic change.”

Leadership is something that many physicians and health care professionals find important. So many of us want to learn how we can be a better leader and what it takes for the building blocks of leadership within an organization. We also want to understand leadership better, not only because we may want to step into leadership positions someday, but we want to know and understand how we can be led more effectively, by better understanding what it is that leaders do. Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken sheds some important light on that for us. 

Tosca is a consultant, coach, public thought leader, and author. Her focus is on nonprofit organizations, both domestic and international. She's also the host of the podcast NGO Soul and Strategy, and host of several courses on virtual team leadership, including a course built to include physician leaders. At the start of her career, Tosca worked as an international development practitioner for a European think tank, The World Bank, the U.S. nonprofit, and the United Nations. 

Over the last 30 years in her leadership development and coaching practice, Tosca discovered a particular set of concepts known as the four frames model. Tosca walks us through those four frames in detail. We also discuss organizational politics and how they play into leadership. 

Burnout is often tied to no longer feeling like our work has meaning or purpose, and one of the ways we can help our teams rediscover that sense of purpose is by using storytelling, a technique for leaders that ties into the four frames. Tosca shares some valuable wisdom around how to grow as a leader through expanding our horizons and thinking outside of our own confined boxes. 

If you liked this episode, you may also like:

What’s Inside:

• The four frames model of how we view leadership.

DocWorking.com

Find full transcripts of DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast episodes on the DocWorking Blog

The past few weeks have been busy at DocWorking! We have been working behind the scenes to add even more CME credits to the THRIVE memberships.

Let your CME budget help you prioritize your own wellness so you can get on with living your best life on your own terms, as defined by you, with DocWorking THRIVE.

You can take the first step today by taking our 2 Minute Balance to Burnout Quiz! Where are you on the Balance to Burnout Continuum? Take the quiz and find out today!

DocWorking empowers physicians and entire health care teams to get on the path to achieving their dreams, both in and outside of work, with programs designed to help you maximize life with minimal time.

If you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5-star review, we would be extremely grateful!

We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, Stitcher, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean.

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in payments to DocWorking. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!

“So I went to medical school and I kind of lost my way a little bit, which I'm sure we'll get into and got caught up on the treadmill of achievement. But then I had a wake-up call and that was what helped me to find my way back to my traditional value of freedom. And since then, I've just been designing my life to be more and more flexible in terms of my work schedule, in terms of location independence.”

Dr. Dawn Baker is a real-life role model in defining success for herself. She is the writer, speaker, and lifestyle design coach behind Practice Balance. Dr. Baker is a cancer and infertility survivor who lives her own blend of work and life by homesteading with her family on their off-grid mountain property, enjoying cities and beaches during the cold months, and traveling as a locum tenens anesthesiologist in between. Dr. Baker decided to go to medical school because she saw it as a way to gain more freedom, which was what she really valued. She wanted to marry science, service and traveling. When she went into medical school, Dr. Baker got caught up on the treadmill of achievement, but then had a wake-up call that helped her find her way back to her traditional value of freedom. Ever since then, she has been designing her life to be more and more flexible in terms of work schedule and location independence. 

Over time, the day-to-day grind of being a medical practitioner got really difficult for Dr. Baker. After turning 35, she realized it was time for her and her husband to start a family. After a host of complicated health issues, Dr. Baker realized she needed to step back and redefine what was most important to her. Her health issues put her in a vulnerable place, and vulnerability is a hard concept for medical professionals to embrace. She also realized that many of her health symptoms were burnout in disguise, which put her back on the path of moving towards a life of freedom and simplicity but still marrying science and service.

Failure is not always a bad thing, and we tend to have a lot of negativity around that word. As physicians, we have this expectation of perfection, which is not possible. Every one of us fails every day- some in larger ways and some in smaller ways. Dr. Baker shares how her vulnerability helped her show up more authentically in her life and practice. She also gives us a look into how she works with her coaching clients and how she helps them carve out their own paths to career and financial freedom. 

What’s Inside:

• Dr. Baker’s journey and how she landed on the path to career and financial freedom.

Mentioned In This Episode:

DocWorking.com

If you liked this episode, you may also like:

Find full transcripts of DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast episodes on the DocWorking Blog

The past few weeks have been busy at DocWorking! We have been working behind the scenes to add even more CME credits to the THRIVE memberships.

Let your CME budget help you prioritize your own wellness so you can get on with living your best life on your own terms, as defined by you, with DocWorking THRIVE.

You can take the first step today by taking our 2 Minute Balance to Burnout Quiz! Where are you on the Balance to Burnout Continuum? Take the quiz and find out today!

DocWorking empowers physicians and entire health care teams to get on the path to achieving their dreams, both in and outside of work, with programs designed to help you maximize life with minimal time.

If you like our podcast and would like to subscribe and leave us a 5-star review, we would be extremely grateful!

We’re everywhere you like to get your podcasts! Apple iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Pandora, Stitcher, PlayerFM, ListenNotes, Amazon, YouTube, Podbean.

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Some links in our blogs and show notes are affiliate links, and purchases made via those links may result in payments to DocWorking. These help toward our production costs. Thank you for supporting DocWorking: The Whole Physician Podcast!