The Burnout Recovery Podcast

Ever finish a full clinic afternoon and only notice your shoulders when you start the car? Your body was talking the whole time. In episode 207 of the Burnout Recovery Podcast, Dr Jo Braid explains why high-performing clinicians override their body's early burnout signals, and gives you a simple map to hear them earlier. A practical episode on clinician wellbeing.

IN THIS EPISODE -

• Interoception: your brain's sense of what's happening inside your body, and the insula, the dashboard to the amygdala's smoke alarm
• The difference between your body sending a signal and you noticing it, and why burnout can live in that gap
• Why your brain turns the volume down when you're locked onto a goal, drawing on Anil Seth's work on prediction
• Why burnout is rarely one event, and why this isn't about "you should have noticed"
• THE WARNING LIGHT MAP 1. Name your lights (body, behaviour, thoughts) 2. Find your amber, before it turns red 3. Attach a 60-second response to each amber 4. Attach one question to a habit you already have: "Which of my lights is on?"
• Plus quick wins across mindset, support, movement and sleep.

THIS WEEK Jot down 2-3 of your warning lights, attach the question to one daily habit, and tell one trusted person your first warning light.

This episode is general education, not medical advice. If a symptom is persistent, new or worrying, please see your own GP.

CONNECT Instagram/Facebook: @burnoutrecoverydr

LinkedIn: drjobraid

Newsletter, The Sunday Long Game: drjobraid.com/subscribe

Speaking enquiries for 2027: drjobraid.com If this landed for you, a five-star review helps other clinicians find the show.

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Episode 206 kicks off a 10-episode series on connection: with yourself, your colleagues, your patients and your purpose. We start with the brain, because connection is not a nice-to-have for people with spare time. It is biology.

Dr Jo takes you to a women in leadership course in Prato, near Florence, where a values exercise shifted her top values from integrity, growth and fun to connection and courage. Values aren’t tattoos. She got clear on her new values in a room full of people.

The research behind why isolation feels like a threat:

• Eisenberger and Lieberman (UCLA): social exclusion lights up pain-related brain regions James Coan (University of Virginia) social baseline theory: holding the hand of someone close calms the brain’s threat response
• Julianne Holt-Lunstad (BYU): lacking social connection carries a mortality risk comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, via biological, behavioural and psychological pathways
• Her EAR framework: Educate, Assess, Respond
• Arnsten (Yale) on chronic stress and the prefrontal cortex, and Maslach on community as a driver of burnout 

Tools for this week:

The Weekly Connection Audit: ten minutes, four questions

Mindset: a values check

Support: the two-minute connection

Movement: move with other people

Sleep: poor sleep makes you feel lonelier and look less approachable (Ben Simon and Walker, UC Berkeley)

Try this week: do the audit once, message someone you’re overdue to contact, and share one idea from this episode.

Connect: IG/FB @burnoutrecoverydr | LinkedIn drjobraid Newsletter: The Sunday Long Game https://drjobraid.com/subscribe

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Boundaries don't fall over in the planning meeting. They fall over when you're tired. So decide before you are.

Episode 205 is the final episode of the Boundaries series. You already know the skills. This one is about holding them in October, when the tank is low and the year still has weeks to run.

Why "when I have the energy" rarely arrives (my morning walk and the rain)

• The 30-minute starter block for the job you keep circling
• Why a tired brain says yes and adds, instead of removing
• If-then plans across the four pillars: Mindset, Movement, Support, Sleep
• The drop, defer, downgrade stop-doing list for the home stretch
• Three reflection questions and one action step

The research:
Arnsten (Yale): chronic stress impairs the prefrontal cortex
Gollwitzer & Sheeran (2006): if-then plans and goal attainment, 94 studies
Adams, Converse, Hales & Klotz (2021, Nature): people overlook subtractive changes

No Is a Full Sentence: boundary scripts for work, family and off duty. The scripts are the basic tier, and the premium tier adds the masterclass. drjobraid.com/store

Next week: a new series on connection.

Instagram/Facebook: @burnoutrecoverydr LinkedIn: drjobraid The Sunday Long Game newsletter: drjobraid.com/subscribe
Produced by @propodcaststudio. Supported by MIGA.

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Doctors are supervised at every step of training, then told "good luck, carry on for 30 years." Dr Suzi Hamilton thinks there's a better way.

Suzi is an emergency physician in Christchurch, New Zealand, who also works in the Chief Medical Officer's team as Director of Workforce Development, and coaches and supervises doctors on the side. Her path here includes a ski-field season, a boat in Antarctica and a high-altitude rescue post in Nepal.

In this episode, Jo and Suzi cover:

The difference between mentoring, coaching and professional supervision, and why supervision is not a performance issue
Why individual resilience was never going to be the whole answer
Suzi's four cornerstones of team resilience: connection, culture, recovery and reflection
Why reviewing what went brilliantly belongs alongside reviewing what went wrong 
How one question after a game of five-a-side changed a hard stretch in her training
The self-care routine Suzi actually keeps (it isn't a routine)

Reflection: what kind of support do you need right now? Advice from someone who's been there, a goal to work towards, or a safe place to think out loud?

Also mentioned: the Doctors Who Coach Doctors group, a directory of doctors who coach other doctors. Find out more here: https://www.doctorswhocoachdoctors.net/

**Content warning: death of a child mentioned in this episode.

Connect with Suzi: https://www.hamiltoncoaching.nz

Connect with Jo: IG/FB: @burnoutrecoverydr 
LinkedIn: drjobraid 
The Sunday Long Game weekly newsletter: https://drjobraid.com/subscribe 
Produced by @propodcaststudio. Supported by MIGA.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Your phone doesn't need to ring for it to cost you. In this episode, Dr Jo Braid shares a moment from her own coaching session when one glimpse of a lit-up screen quietly pulled her out of the room, and what the neuroscience says about why that happens.

This episode covers:

• The telepressure trap. Why the felt urge to respond immediately predicts worse sleep and higher burnout, even when you never actually reply. (Barber & Santuzzi)
• The 23-minute reload. Dr Gloria Mark's research on task-switching shows a single interruption costs an average of 23 minutes to fully recover your focus. There's no such thing as a quick check.
• Why willpower isn't the fix. The variable reward mechanism behind your urge to check, and why redesigning your environment beats trying to out-discipline your own brain. The right to disconnect.
• What Australia's after-hours contact laws actually mean for healthcare workers, on-call rosters included. Practical tools: the real difference between Do Not Disturb and Work Focus mode, a two-line after-hours auto-reply, and one recurring block in your week worth protecting with a hard boundary.

Reflection question: When was the last time a phone glance pulled you out of something that mattered, and what did it actually cost you?

Action step: Choose one recurring commitment this week and put your phone on Do Not Disturb. Properly off, not just silenced.

Connect with Dr Jo Braid: Instagram/Facebook: @burnoutrecoverydr LinkedIn: Dr Jo Braid Newsletter: The Sunday Long Game — drjobraid.com/subscribe Produced by @propodcaststudio. Supported by MIGA.

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You can know every script. You can know that no is a full sentence. And you can still say yes — because some quieter part of you doesn't believe you're allowed to say no. This week Jo goes underneath the boundaries series to look at the self-esteem doing the real work behind every hard conversation.

THE SIGNAL 
→ Self-esteem = your satisfaction, confidence and self-respect. Not fixed — trainable, like any other skill. 
→ Four scenarios where it shows up: family, patients, colleagues, yourself. 
→ A script is only half the equation. Words + self-esteem, not words instead of self-esteem. 
→ Boundaries have two parts: the request, and the consequence.  
→ The neuroscience: social disapproval activates the same pathway as physical pain (Eisenberger, UCLA). That's why willpower alone doesn't hold a boundary — but the circuitry is trainable. 
→ Counterintuitive truth: weak boundaries look like closeness. Healthy ones are what actually build trust.

THE RESET 
→ Family: practise one small no this week, no justification, no rush to fill the silence. 
→ Patients: "I want to give this the time it deserves — let's book you back in." Protecting quality of care, not abandoning it. → Colleagues: before saying yes, try "let me check and come back to you." 
→ Yourself: end each day this week noticing where you spoke to yourself in a tone you'd never use with a colleague.

Pick one scenario. Practise one boundary. Write down what you notice afterwards — that's your evidence file.

RESOURCES 
No Is a Full Sentence, Jo's boundary scripts resource, is live now: drjobraid.com/store 
The Sunday Long Game newsletter: drjobraid.com/subscribe
IG/FB: @burnoutrecoverydr | LinkedIn: Dr Jo Braid

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You cut your hours to protect your time, and that protected time can become the most raided time in your week.

Dr Jo Braid shares what a real, full Monday looks like (home visit, clinical letters, her own coaching session, a board meeting) and why chosen switching feels like a rhythm while imposed switching feels like being pecked at.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Why so many clinicians go part-time, and where the inbox goes on their days off
• Why a "quick" email costs more than it looks, and why the enemy is the open loop, not the switch
• The rituals you already own for moving between roles: the drive, the school gate, the change of clothes

THE RESEARCH: Shanafelt et al., Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2016: emotional exhaustion and cutting hours (correlation, not causation) Micek et al., JAMA Network Open, 2023: part-time physicians and inbox time (US, one health service)

TRY THIS: THE PROTECTED DAY CHARTER

• Name the zone and its edge: this zone is for ___ and ends when ___.
• Close the loop: one minute on where you left off and what's next.
• Guard the threshold: decide what earns an interruption and who covers the rest.
• REFLECT Which of your zones has a clear edge, and which one bleeds into the next?
• Is your self-care inside your day, or squeezed in around it?

THIS WEEK

• Name your zones.
• Pick one blurry edge and give it a marker: a one-minute note, a walk, a timer.

CONNECT: Instagram/Facebook: @burnoutrecoverydr

LinkedIn: drjobraid The Sunday Long Game (weekly newsletter): drjobraid.com/subscribe 

Boundary Scripts for Clinicians: drjobraid.com/store

Be human first, everything else will follow.

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Episode 200. That's the number today — but this one isn't really about the number.

Four years ago, I started this podcast while on the inaugural Australian Clinical Entrepreneur Program, wanting to share coaching tools without anyone needing to be in a formal coaching relationship.

Today's episode is a thank you to everyone who's pressed play since — and a reminder of what this whole thing was actually for. Burnout isolates us. It pulls us out of community right when we need it most. This podcast has always been a vehicle for something simple: helping people feel heard, and helping people learn to hear each other.

In this episode:

• Why I started the podcast in October 2022, and how it's grown into keynotes, workshops, and coaching
• Catching up with fellow AUSCEP crew - Dr Amandeep Hansra and Dr Carlo Bellini - at the Creative Careers in Medicine Conference on the Gold Coast
• Two simple connection questions you can ask a colleague this week — no coaching qualification required: What is actually true here versus what you're assuming? What would you do if you weren't afraid of getting it wrong? 

A reflection question: when did someone last make you feel like a person, not a job title — and could you be that for someone else this week? 

Thank you for being part of this. It only exists because you keep listening — and sending it to someone else who needed it.

Connect with me: IG/FB: @burnoutrecoverydr LinkedIn: Dr Jo Braid Weekly newsletter, The Sunday Long Game: drjobraid.com/subscribe

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Registrar to consultant, the job changes shape. Less doing, more being. So why do so many of us keep doing all of it anyway?

A coaching story about chasing a patient's scan, a waiting room, and the guilt of asking someone else to help — and why that guilt is worth pushing through.

THE SIGNAL 🩺 Patient sent back to the waiting room while the scan gets tracked down — laborious, repeated, patient after patient

🎯 "Top of registration": Sinsky & Bodenheimer on redistributing tasks to reduce burnout

🧠 The real cost of task-switching between admin and clinical thinking

😬 Why delegating can feel like guilt, not relief — and what that guilt is actually protecting THE RESET

✅ Sort your task list: "only I can do this" vs "this just always defaulted to me"

✅ Name the guilt out loud when you hand something off

✅ Run a Top of Registration Audit for one day

✅ Delegate one task this week, guilt and all The doing crowds out the being. Hand some of the doing back.

🔗 Get the words for the moment: No Is a Full Sentence, at drjobraid.com/store

📩 The Sunday Long Game, my weekly newsletter: drjobraid.com/subscribe

📱 Instagram/Facebook: @burnoutrecoverydr

💼 LinkedIn: Dr Jo Braid This episode is supported by MIGA www.miga.com.au

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you're still contactable, are you actually on leave? A watched moment on a family holiday — one work email, and the mood shifted for everyone.

This episode looks at why accessibility during leave costs more than we think, and what to actually put in place before you go.

THE SIGNAL
 📧 One out-of-hours email, and the holiday brain switches off 
🧠 Allostatic load: your body doesn't always know "quick" from "urgent" 
🔬 Sinsky et al, JAMA Network Open 2024: inbox coverage predicts real detachment 
🏥 Stanford Medicine wellbeing data: 100% found an Out of Office best-practice doc helpful; 77% found a "life outside work" grand rounds moment helpful

THE RESET 
✅ Name one delegate before you leave, not as you're walking out the door ✅ Update your out-of-office with their contact, not just "I'll reply when I'm back" 
✅ Separate work email/phone — a physical barrier beats willpower 
✅ Bring the culture piece to your team, not just yourself

Hope is not a boundary. A named delegate is.

🔗 Get the words for the moment: No Is a Full Sentence, at drjobraid.com/store

📩 The Sunday Long Game, my weekly newsletter: drjobraid.com/subscribe

📱 Instagram/Facebook: @burnoutrecoverydr 💼 LinkedIn: Dr Jo Braid

This episode is supported by MIGA. www.miga.com.au

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.