Interested in our retreat to Norway? Get on my calendar for an interview here.

What does it really take to survive and succeed in a system that wasn’t built with you in mind?

In this episode, I explore that question with orthopedic surgeon Dr. Sonya Sloan. We talk about the hidden curriculum of medicine: the unspoken rules, the power dynamics, and the strategies required to navigate surgical training, especially as a Black woman in a historically white, male-dominated field.

From early inspiration in the operating room to enduring microaggressions, bullying, and even physical assault during training, Dr. Sloan shares what she learned, how she protected herself, and why resilience alone is not enough.

This episode is not just about survival; it’s about strategy, leadership, and rewriting the rules for the next generation.

We talk about:

• How her early experiences sparked a career in orthopedics
• What it was like being one of the only Black trainees in a surgical program
• The reality of bias, microaggressions, and exclusion in medicine
• The difference between mentors and true advocates
• A moment of physical assault in the OR, and how she handled it
• Why documentation and strategy are essential for protecting your career
• The hidden “rules” of medicine no one teaches you
• How surgical culture impacts women
• The critical importance of leadership and communication skills
• Why “soft skills” are not optional but essential
• How humor and tone-setting can transform the OR environment
• The emotional toll of training, and the importance of narrative processing
• Why so many trainees feel isolated, targeted, or unsupported
• What needs to change in surgical education right now

Takeaways:

• Resilience isn’t enough. You need strategy, awareness, and support
• Documentation is power in environments where bias exists
• Mentors advise. Advocates act. You need both.
• Microaggressions shape careers, even when they seem subtle
• Leadership skills are not taught, but they are critical to survival
• You don’t have to silently tolerate inappropriate behavior
• Processing your story is part of healing and reclaiming your voice

Learn more about Dr. Sonya Sloan and get her book, The Rules of Medicine here.

Follow Dr. Sloan on instagram here.

Check out Hardball for Women here.

Check out White Fragility here.

Join us inside Empowered Surgeons Group here.

Join Empowered Surgeons Group here.

Learn more about what's inside ESG here.

In the perfectionist surgeon's mind, either we get a perfect outcome or we fail. But in the realm of humans, perfection is impossible. And we don't always have full control over the final surgical result.

Instead of thinking in terms of surgical "success" and surgical "failure", what would it look like to categorize circumstances into mistakes, complications, and missed expectations? That's what I explore inside this episode.

What does it mean to stay grounded in your identity and your humanity inside a system that often asks you to override both?

In this episode, orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Brian Nwannunu, shares his journey from being the son of Nigerian immigrants to building a career in surgery rooted in purpose, faith, and service. Brian knew from a young age that he was called to medicine, but his path wasn’t linear. After not getting into medical school on his first attempt, he pursued a master’s in physiology, eventually gaining admission and thriving - reinforcing a powerful truth: test scores don’t define clinical excellence or future success.

We talk about the realities of surgical training, where Brian faced criticism, microaggressions, and the pressure of being one of the only Black residents in his program. Despite external narratives that questioned his performance, he had objective evidence of his excellence and mentors who helped him stay grounded. His story highlights the disconnect that can exist between perception and reality in training environments, and the lasting impact of bias, labeling, and unequal protection among trainees.

Brian shares how these experiences shaped the way he practices today. As an attending, he’s intentional about bringing humanity back into orthopedic surgery: slowing down, listening deeply, and recognizing that every surgery affects not just a patient, but an entire life system. We also explore the difference between operating from service versus ego, and how that distinction changes both outcomes and fulfillment.

The conversation expands into the broader realities of modern medicine: insurance barriers, loss of autonomy, and the growing influence of private equity. Brian explains why he chose private practice, why physicians need an exit strategy, and how models like direct care may shape the future of certain specialties.

Finally, we talk about identity beyond medicine. Brian shares how he’s diversified his life through teaching, speaking, and financial literacy, which all creates a sense of purpose and stability that extends beyond the OR.

This is a conversation about resilience, integrity, and choosing how you want to practice, both as a surgeon and as a human being.

Follow Dr. Brian Nwannunu on instagram here.

Join us inside Empowered Surgeons Group here.

What do physicians actually need when they find themselves on the receiving end of a malpractice lawsuit?

In this episode, I have a conversation with emergency physician, educator, speaker, coach, advocate and legal expert Dr. Gita Pensa about the reality of medical malpractice from the physician defendant’s perspective. We explore why getting sued can feel like being dropped onto another planet. Also why shame, fear, and avoidance often keep doctors from learning how the system actually works.

Gita explains how the malpractice landscape has shifted dramatically in recent years. Public trust in medicine has eroded since COVID, nuclear verdicts are increasing, and third-party investors are now funding lawsuits in pursuit of massive payouts. Meanwhile, physicians often stay silent, leaving the narrative about medicine to be shaped by media outlets, documentaries, and plaintiff attorneys who are highly organized and strategic about influencing public perception.

We also unpack a crucial misconception: a verdict or settlement does not necessarily mean bad care. Medicine operates in a world of uncertainty, yet the public expectation of perfection has never been higher. Complications, missed expectations, and true mistakes are very different things, but in courtrooms and headlines, they’re often treated as the same.

Gita shares practical insights into the litigation process, including why the deposition is one of the most important moments for a physician defendant. She also discusses the work she does helping physicians prepare for these high-stakes conversations so they can show up with clarity instead of fear.

Finally, we zoom out to the bigger picture. From legislative advocacy to improving how medicine talks publicly about risk and error, physicians need to become more informed, more strategic, and more willing to speak openly about malpractice and its consequences.

Because the truth is: if we want the system to change, we have to be willing to understand it and talk about it out loud.

Learn more about Dr. Pensa's LEAP course here.

Listen to Doctors and Litigation: The L Word podcast here. Season 3 episode 4 features Dr. Nirav Patel, the radiologist who is an example of what is possible.

Join Empowered Surgeons Group here.

In 2019, two patients complained to the Board of Registration in Medicine about me.

At the time, it felt deeply unfair. I felt hate. I felt indignation. I felt like a victim. I even fantasized about horrible things happening to the people who complained about me. They were my villains.

But, through my own coaching journey, I began to understand that pain is not individual; it is inherited, relational, generational, and cultural. These two complaints were sources of clean pain, but they were not the source of my suffering; my decision to indulge in drama was the real cause of my suffering.

In this episode, I'll teach you the important lessons I learned from that year.

I now feel immense gratitude for experiencing what it's like to be investigated by the Board, and I'm so happy I can bring these lessons to all of you.

If you want to take this work deeper and master the lessons I now teach, you're going to want to join us inside Empowered Surgeons Group here.

Not ready yet? Definitely get on my email list here so as not to miss any free or paid offerings.

Sign up for the webinar, "Mistakes, Complications and Missed Expectations" on March 26th at 5 pm EST here.

Surgeon-writer, Dr. Cornelia Griggs joins me this week.

Check out her article with Dr. Andrea Merrill, The Hidden Reason Women are Leaving Surgery: They're Being Pushed Out here.

Check out her book, The Sky Was Falling here.

The first physician in a family of writers, artists, and communicators, she grew up surrounded by people willing to speak openly about medicine’s vulnerabilities. A former theater kid, she found early inspiration in Atul Gawande’s Complications and the patient safety movement—so much so that she wrote her senior honors thesis on its history. After college at Harvard and medical school at Columbia, she developed a deep interest in health policy and the cultural forces shaping modern medicine. She reflects on how differently she writes when her “research hat” is on—passive voice, sterile, stripped of self—compared to the personal writing she uses to metabolize the hardest moments of her career.

We talk about what it was like to be a young surgeon in New York City when COVID hit—what was meant to be the crown jewel of her training. Following intensivists on early medical Twitter, she became convinced by February that disaster was coming. What frightened her most wasn’t ventilator shortages but the prediction that hospitals would run out of staff as clinicians fell ill. She felt dismissed, even gaslit, when others minimized the threat. Yet she knew—capital B Bad was coming. When the surge hit, it felt dystopian: inadequate PPE, mounting loss, the emotional toll of watching a system strain and fracture. That experience deepened her commitment to nurturing the softer, intuitive, vulnerable parts of herself—and to helping others do the same.

Cornelia also speaks candidly about women’s attrition from medicine, including her co-authored work with Dr. Andrea Merrill examining why so many are leaving. From differential treatment in the OR to referral streams quietly diverted to younger male partners, from pay disparities to the subtle “thousand paper cuts” of heightened expectations, she describes the cumulative mental load women surgeons carry. She has a unique vantage point watching how OR staff treat her husband compared to how they treat her and her female colleagues. Meanwhile, medicine offers few of the perks seen in tech and other industries—despite the time, sacrifice, and invisible labor the profession demands.

We explore the erosion of public trust, the ways academic medicine has ceded ground to the wellness industry, and how rebuilding credibility will require more than data—it will require humanity. For Cornelia, the path forward means reinjecting compassion into the profession, setting boundaries, and redefining what it means to be a powerful physician in today’s world.

Follow Dr. Griggs on TikTok here.

Check out Dr. Frances Mei Hardin's book, Surgeon on the Edge here.

Sign up for "When you Can Cut the Tension with a #10 Blade: Anxiety, Performance, and the Surgical Nervous System" here.

Join us inside Empowered Surgeons Group here.

Join us inside Empowered Surgeons Group here.

Life is more fun when your career path isn’t linear. Dr. Raymund King knows this well. From performing magic to practicing medicine, from the courtroom to the screen, Raymund’s life reflects a deep willingness to evolve and follow his inner knowing.

We talk about witnessing tragedy, bucking the norm, the mindset of a doctor vs lawyer vs creative, reinvention of self, becoming a good steward of service, and the importance of trust, even when things are scary and uncertain.

For physicians navigating burnout, or identity shifts, Raymund’s story is a reminder that your path does not have to be singular to be coherent. Reinvention is not failure. And sometimes the most powerful next step is the one that makes the least sense on paper.

Find Dr. Raymund King on IMDB here and Linkedin here.

Join us inside Empowered Surgeons Group here.

”It makes you feel crazy as a patient,” Tiphany Kane.

As physicians, we have more influence than we realize over how patients feel and how they perceive us (and the profession in general). Whether or not we diagnose them or operate on them, patients want—and deserve—to be treated humanely.

At its core, our job is simple: serve the patient.

But that becomes profoundly challenging inside a dehumanizing healthcare system rife with moral injury and burnout. I get it. It’s easy for physicians to slip into a transactional mindset when the system itself is transactional.

And still, both things can be true.

We can humanize ourselves, humanize every patient we see, and work to change the system at the same time. In fact, I believe everyone wins when we choose this path.

In this episode, you’ll hear one patient’s journey. Tiphany Kane is an entrepreneur and a medical mystery. She shares what it was like to be gaslit for years by her primary care physician, cardiologists, nephrologists, and endocrinologists. It wasn’t until she independently enrolled herself in a clinical trial that she finally received the care she had been searching for.

And it wasn’t easy. Despite surgical complications and unexpected setbacks, Tiphany speaks with gratitude and deep respect for the surgical team who cared for her.

Her story is a powerful example of what becomes possible when physicians make compassionate, patient-centered, service-based care their highest priority.

Follow Tiphany and her medical journey on instagram here.

Join us inside Empowered Surgeons here. Subscribe to Stitches here.

What happens when the skills that make you a great surgeon begin pulling you toward a different kind of impact?

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Ivan Capobianco, who trained as a hepatobiliary and transplant surgeon and whose career journey spans Italy, Germany, global health work in Angola, academic research, AI, entrepreneurship, and medical publishing.

Ivan shares a deeply honest account of how he moved from the operating room into startup life and research, not because he couldn’t handle surgery, but because he began asking a bigger question:

How else can I serve?

We talk about:

-Growing up in Italy in a creative family, and why medicine wasn’t always the obvious path

-Training at the University of Padua, one of the oldest medical faculties in the world

-Key differences between European and U.S. surgical training systems

-How a year “off” before residency led him to Angola and permanently changed how he saw medicine

-Why pediatric surgery culture felt different, and what that revealed about surgical identity

-Burnout that didn’t announce itself until it did

-A pivotal moment during parental leave that forced a reckoning between career, family, and self

-Attrition in surgery, particularly for women

-The unfortunate truth that productivity and profit override patient-centered values in modern surgical systems

-The realization that helping healthcare workers may help more patients than operating alone

Ivan also shares how his love of research, data, and prevention led him to:

-Learn coding and machine learning

-Found the healthcare documentation startup Briefly

-Create STITCHES, a daily newsletter that curates and summarizes the most relevant surgical literature from hundreds of papers published each day

We explore:

-Why most “AI in surgery” papers miss the mark

-The value of small case reports and practical technique papers

-Why knowing open surgery still matters in a robotic era

-The loss of discussion and collaboration in modern academic medicine

-The myth of “I don’t have time”

-How essentialism can reduce cognitive and bureaucratic burden for surgeons

This is a conversation about agency, courage, and redefining service and usefulness in a system that often narrows our sense of who we’re allowed to be.

Dr. Ivan Capobianco leads the Surgical AI anda Digital Phenotyping Group at the Department of General Surgery, University of Tübingen. His research focuses on machine learning and artifical intelligence, Big Data in medicine, with a a particular emphasis on natural language processing methods applied to clinical data. He is the founder of the healthcare startup Breeflee, and creator of the surgical research newsletter STITCHES, which reaches over 5,000 readers daily. His work focuses on improving working conditions for surgeons and other healthcare professionals through better data, automation, and access to meaningful research.

The Pain to Power Workshop is the foundation upon which your self-concept is built. You can't step into the next version of yourself until you heal old wounds and rewrite your past. We start this work Feb 2nd, 2026. You have access to the content until March 2nd, 2026. Sign up here.

If you are catching this episode outside the window, no worries! You can still join us inside Empowered Surgeons group here.