Surgeons, text topics you want me to cover here.

Going from trainee to attending requires a death and rebirth. One identity dies and another is born. Stepping into the identity of an authority, an expert, an attending IS the first step. If you are studying for oral boards or about to graduate, elevating your self-concept is the best thing you can do. Here are some self-concept qualities to consider for a trainee vs attending:

Trainee:

- In service to patient first, then program and self

- Surgery looks easy (it's not)

- Self-worth is detached from outcomes

- Striving

- Revere your mentors' ideas

- Say "yes" to everything for approval and popularity (sacrifice your own needs for success)

- World is small in a good way; it's a container you signed up for

Attending:

- In service to patient first, then self and practice/employer/institution

- Surgery might seem hard or scary, until you get to know your new environment and build muscle memory and confidence, then it can get easy to the point of boredom

- Self-worth is attached to outcomes (can shrink your world)

- Stagnation (unless you learn to strive for something you desire again)

- Revere your own ideas

- Say "no" more than "yes" knowing respect matters more than approval (unless you stay stuck in trainee identity, particularly the story that you have to sacrifice yourself for success)

- World can become big if you allow yourself to evolve or world can shrink from anxiety and experiential avoidance

Sign up for MASTERS CURVEBALLS IN THE OR (AND LIFE) IN 5 STEPS here. You are going to want to come live to this event! It will change how you approach challenges inside and outside the operating room forever.

Empowered Surgeon Group is enrolling. Modules available April 1st, 2025. First live call is April 30th, 2025. Secure your spot today!

Surgeons, text topics you want me to cover here.

From ambitious and intelligent young woman who fast-tracked through college and medical school to hard-working surgery resident to new mom in her chief year to attending trying to navigate life after training, Dr. Vassell tells us all about how she reinvented herself multiple times to create a career that aligns with her desires and values. Her story is an example of what is possible for all of us. We are NOT stuck. There are paths that allow us to help patients in meaningful and fulfilling ways without sacrificing our autonomy, freedom, or joy. We just have to get creative and learn how to feel comfortable with uncertainty. If she can find her happy place, so can you.

Dr. Rashida Vassell is the CEO and Founder of Safahla Medical PLLC, an integrative, cutaneous surgery and medical aesthetics practice. She is double Board-Certified in Wound and Hyperbaric Medicine and Anti-aging Medicine. Dr. Vassell spent years honing her clinical skills as a Medical Director at the teaching institution, Montefiore Mount Vernon, in Westchester County, NY; followed by Guthrie Corning Hospital.

Find out more about Dr. Vassell and Safahla Medical here. Follow her on instagram here.

Sign up for MASTERS CURVEBALLS IN THE OR (AND LIFE) IN 5 STEPS here. You are going to want to come live to this event! It will change how you approach challenges inside and outside the operating room forever.

Empowered Surgeon Group is enrolling. Modules available April 1st, 2025. First live call is April 30th, 2025. Secure your spot today!

Surgeons, text topics you want me to cover here.

We don't typically end up living the life we imagined we were going to live when we applied to our specialties. Dr. Amina Farooq shares her experience working as an academic interventional radiologist within a dehumanizing system. For many of us, this dehumanization erodes our sense of purpose. Healthcare is the one profession where institutions have normalized dehumanizing doctors and patients. If we want to humanize this profession, we are going to have to start with recognizing and stepping in to our own humanity.

Follow Amina on instagram here.

Sign up for MASTERS CURVEBALLS IN THE OR (AND LIFE) IN 5 STEPS here. You are going to want to come live to this event! It will change how you approach challenges inside and outside the operating room forever.

Empowered Surgeon Group is enrolling. Modules available April 1st, 2025. First live call is April 30th, 2025. Secure your spot today!

Surgeons, text topics you want me to cover here.

****SENSITIVE CONTENT WARNING*******

****This episode discusses suicide, which can be distressing for some. If this subject is triggering for you, please consider skipping this one. If you are going to listen, make sure to listen carefully and take good care of yourself. If you are feeling hopeless or suicidal, please find support, call the suicide and crisis lifeline 988 or click here****

In this episode, Dr. Blake Palmer's widow, Dr. Andrea Palmer, comes on to talk about Blake's life, his committment to his patients and profession, his struggles, the lack of support from his institution, and the circumstances leading up to his death. Blake's story highlights how the glaring lack of humanity in our systems and institutions leads to desperate measures, particularly for a surgeon who is empathetic and caring, who feels isolated, and who is poorly resourced. His story is unfortunately not unique. 

Consider supporting the well-being and mental health support of healthcare workers by donating to the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation here. Find an Internal Family Systems Practitioner near you here.

Find Dr. Andrea Palmer on instagram or email her at [email protected].

"Blake was a loving husband and father who enjoyed all things outdoors. From hiking mountains, to traveling, to running Spartan races with his wife and kids, he was a man who loved music, movies, good food and making people laugh with classic dad jokes.

Blake will be remembered as a skilled and caring surgeon who spent his working life devoted to his patients. Blake earned his Bachelor's degrees in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Colorado and went on earn his M.D. from the University of Oklahoma, College of Medicine. He completed his Urology residency and Pediatric Urology Fellowship at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. He was board certified through the American Board of Urology in Urology and Pediatric Urology and was an active part of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section of Urology Executive Committee as the Vice-Chair for Education.

Prior to arriving in Fort Worth, Blake was an Assistant Professor in the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center Department of Urology, Director of Pediatric Robotic and Minimally Invasive Surgery for the Children's Hospital of Oklahoma and was Pediatric Surgery Director in the Oklahoma Transplant Center. At Cook Children’s in Fort Worth he developed the kidney transplant program, the robotic surgery program and was Chief of Urology from 2018 until his death."

Excerpt from Blake's obituary.

Empowered Surgeon Group is enrolling. Modules available April 1st, 2025. First live call is April 30th, 2025. Secure your spot today!

Surgeons, text topics you want me to cover here.

"I think we need to stay relentlessly curious. And we need to understand what we're working in and recognize there is nobody who comes to work everyday and thinks I'm going to make somebody else miserable." - Dr. Wendy Dean

When service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan were not responding to PTSD treatments, it became clear that they were not dealing with the anxiety and experiential avoidance caused by PTSD but instead the shame associated with perceived immoral conduct. This specific form of distress is called moral injury: "perpetuating, bearing witness to, or failing to prevent acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations" (from If I Betray These Words: Moral Injury in Medicine and Why It's So Hard for Clinicians to Put Patients First by Wendy Dean, MD with Simon Talbot, MD).

Whenever the business of medicine gets in the way of our ability to provide care to our patients, we experience some form of moral injury. It's hard to escape moral injury when we have all the responsibility and all of the accountability but none of the autonomy. And that is the system we work in. None of us are completely autonomous. A whopping 78% of US physicians are employed by hospitals, health systems, or other corporate entities, and the meager few of us who are independent are still beholden to insurers for compensation. Because medicine has become corporatized and consolidated over the last several decades, we have slowly given up our ability to provide care efficiently and affordably. Sixty years ago, hospitals were locally owned and operated and decisions made by experts in healthcare--the physicians. In the 1970's, doctors formed groups and outsourced operations to administrators, entering an era of skyrocketing administrative growth and costs in a system in which executives do not see themselves as responsible to clinicians or patients but to shareholders, who have one goal: to maximize profit. 

But what can we do about it? In this conversation, I discuss the broken US healthcare system with Dr. Wendy Dean and Dr. Matt Ramsey and what we can do right now to make a dent in fixing this behemoth of a problem. We may have gotten into this profession to practice medicine and surgery, but it is part of our job to learn the bureaucracy and the business sooner rather than later. We have to understand where we are, and from there, maybe, just maybe, we can collectively come together to creatively solve this thing.

Sign up for MASTERS CURVEBALLS IN THE OR (AND LIFE) IN 5 STEPS here. You are going to want to come live to this event! It will change how you approach challenges inside and outside the operating room forever.

Empowered Surgeon Group is enrolling. Modules available April 1st, 2025. First live call is April 30th, 2025. Secure your spot today!

Surgeons, text topics you want me to cover here.

Nobody in your audience, including your patients, wants your CV shoved down their throat. They don't care. They want to know if and how you can help them. Steph Sheldon is a website designer, former architect, and master at helping people reconnect with their creative side.

Creativity is the emotion we generate to solve problems. We tell ourselves we don't need to be creative, or we say "I'm just not creative", and that works fine when we only encounter problems humans have previously solved. But what about the times we encounter problems that have no tried or true solutions? We are all going to find ourselves in unique and novel situations, and we need to use our creative brain to find the solution, which sometimes leads to incredible innovations.

If your website needs an update or you want to launch a side gig and aren't sure how to market or brand yourself, Steph can help you! Find her at her website and on instagram.

Sign up for MASTERS CURVEBALLS IN THE OR (AND LIFE) IN 5 STEPS here. You are going to want to come live to this event! It will change how you approach challenges inside and outside the operating room forever.

Empowered Surgeon Group is enrolling. Modules available April 1st, 2025. First live call is April 30th, 2025. Secure your spot today!

Surgeons, text topics you want me to cover here.

As a society, we are collectively dealing with an epidemic of anxiety. And no, we can’t just calm down.

In today’s episode you will learn 3 important characteristics of anxiety
1. Anxiety lives in the left hemisphere, which has been strengthened by cultural messages
2. Anxiety is contagious
3. Anxiety must be replaced, not erased

We are all born with a powerful force within us that we can use at any time to melt our anxiety and solve problems: creativity.

Creatively calming anxiety is a 2 step process:
1. Be kind to yourself (like really though)
2. Ask your brain: What can I create from this situation?

For more, check out Martha Beck’s book, Beyond Anxiety as well as Jill Bolte-Taylor’s book Whole Brain Living and Gavin DeBecker’s The Gift of Fear

Sign up for MASTERS CURVEBALLS IN THE OR (AND LIFE) IN 5 STEPS here. You are going to want to come live to this event! It will change how you approach challenges inside and outside the operating room forever.

Empowered Surgeon Group is enrolling. Modules available April 1st, 2025. First live call is April 30th, 2025. Secure your spot today!

Surgeons, text topics you want me to cover here.

Facial plastic surgeon, entrepreneur, and life coach, Dr. Dan Ward, comes on the podcast to share his story. He offers his insights on the struggles of parenting, what makes it difficult for surgeons to show up as our best selves, and the power of understanding our human brain and human emotions.

In this episode you'll learn:

- Thoughts are real but not true

- The two rules of CBT

- Why it makes sense that surgeons tend to act like toddlers 

- Drama is a symptom of cognitive distortion

- The problem with buying into all the stories our brain tells us

- The importance of taking care of ourselves and our tribe when we create big things

- It’s okay to downsize, seek help, and advocate for ourselves

- If we are going at a million miles per hour, we need to prioritize rest and recovery

- Masterminding is an incredible way for surgeons to support each other

P. Daniel Ward, MD, MS, FACS works to empower surgeons and physicians to unlock their full potential in both business and life. As the founder of multiple successful businesses, including Ward Institute, Form Derm Spa, FormRx Medical Grade Skin Care, and a Real Estate fund, Dr. Ward has demonstrated firsthand what it takes to build thriving enterprises while maintaining a focus on quality care and patient satisfaction.

Through his coaching programs, Dr. Ward has guided numerous surgeons in transitioning from being employees to becoming visionary business owners. He helps his clients master the principles of entrepreneurship, leadership, and personal growth, enabling them to build practices that not only reflect their values but also create financial freedom and personal fulfillment. 

Follow him on instagram here
Find out more about his upcoming mastermind in Hawaii here

Sign up for MASTERS CURVEBALLS IN THE OR (AND LIFE) IN 5 STEPS here. You are going to want to come live to this event! It will change how you approach challenges inside and outside the operating room forever.

Empowered Surgeon Group is enrolling. Modules available April 1st, 2025. First live call is April 30th, 2025. Secure your spot today!

Surgeons, text topics you want me to cover here.

***SENSITIVE CONTENT WARNING***
This episode discusses eating disorders and suicidal ideation. If these topics are triggering for you, please listen carefully or skip this episode all together. Take care of yourselves. And if you are struggling, please seek out professional help.

A person I consider my soul sister, Dr. Jillian Rigert, comes on the podcast to talk about how a life-threatening illness led her to leave surgery and shaped the person she is today. We talk about tying external validation to worthiness, the perils of unresolved toxic shame, anorexia and what it’s like to be stigmatized by the medical community, giving up on life, survival instincts, her path back to her essential self, the beauty of being witnessed in her vulnerable truth to begin her healing journey, and how important it is for all of us to have a community of support and unconditional love. We also touch on emotional manipulation, the problems with autocratic leadership, how surgical training culture and military culture compare, and finding compassion for your inner bully. Whether that inner bully wants you to numb out with substances, overworking, disordered eating or otherwise, your inner bully NEEDS your love and compassion. And if you want to help your patients heal, stay until the end and learn how to harness mindsight with “PARTS”.

Jillian is truly a one-of-a-kind human being, a beacon of truth and light, and a resource for all of you.

As Jillian said so poignantly, “Healing requires love not shaming”

Check out Jillian's Youtube Channel, A Life True to You, her TEDx talk, and her website. You can also find her on Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram.

Empowered Surgeon Group is enrolling. Modules available April 1st, 2025. First live call is April 30th, 2025. Secure your spot today!

Surgeons, text topics you want me to cover here.

Enjoy salient snippets from 2024. I left out episodes #1 and #2, which are foundational and need to be listened to from start to finish. If you haven't checked them out, go back and listen. Have a great New Year and see you all in 2025!

Sign up for MASTERS CURVEBALLS IN THE OR (AND LIFE) IN 5 STEPS here. You are going to want to come live to this event! It will change how you approach challenges inside and outside the operating room forever.

Empowered Surgeon Group is enrolling. Modules available April 1st, 2025. First live call is April 30th, 2025. Secure your spot today!