The Physician Whisperer

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“I’m so behind” I thought.  Uh oh…

Join me today as I dive into a well-worn thought pattern in my mind, and probably one that shows up for you as well. I share a little of how the name of this podcast came to be, my experience of a sensation of chronic overwhelm, and a deeper dive into how to use “The Thought Model,” which is a wonderful coaching tool from Brooke Castillo, the founder of The Life Coach School.

Want to see how this (and other tools) can make a difference in YOUR life, as they have for me and so many of my physician clients? Schedule a 1:1 meet and greet with me, and let’s talk about what we can do together to bring more ease to your life. 

Schedule now:

https://calendly.com/healthierforgood/coaching-discovery-call

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

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Have you ever found yourself at the bottom of a bag of chips and don’t know how you got there? 

Blame “The Bliss Point;” a high desirability combination of flavors/crunch/textures that make us want to keep eating, without feeling fully satisfied. Sound familiar?

Today we talk about how profitable industries manipulate us to keep doing more of what makes them money; for the food industry, it’s eating (and buying) more foods that tempt us without satisfying us. For the medical-industrial complex? It’s just enough validation to give a bit of dopamine (for people-pleasers like us anyway), but not enough that we’ll feel content in our innate worth, or certainly in our value as professionals.

Also, be sure to check out Episode 34 from July 15, 2024 of my friend, Dr Rashmi Schramm’s excellent podcast, “Inner Peace and Power;” in the episode, she and I spoke about this concept of a “Bliss Point” in medicine, and how this leaves us hustling to prove our value. Find the show “Inner Peace and Power” on your favorite podcast app.

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

Send us Fan Mail

Disordered eating, including eating disorders, are more common in physicians than you know. 

It’s yet another area of silent, shameful struggle for many people.

Today I am thrilled to be joined by a leader in this area, Dr Siobhan Key, a fellow Family and Obesity Medicine Physician, as well as a Physician Coach who specialized in helping physicians end their weight loss struggles. Siobhan’s podcast, Thriving As a Physician, was one of my first exposures to coaching in the physician space (as in physicians coaching physicians), and in this episode you’ll hear her wisdom and experience in working with so many who have struggled with weight and eating along their journeys into medicine, their experiences of burnout. 

This is a DO NOT MISS episode. Whether or not you identify with problems with your eating behaviors or weight, there are so many parallels with other ways that we cope with stress, that we internalize messages that we are broken, that we aren’t good enough, etc. 

To hear more of our conversation, I also encourage you to listen to Episode 293 of the “Thriving As a Physician” podcast, “How Restriction Drives Overeating: Interview with Dr. Megan Melo MD”

Siobhan Key, MD is a Weight Loss Coach for Physicians and an expert in emotional and binge eating. She is also a practicing Obesity and Family Physician, mother of three amazing kids and an avid runner. Through her coaching and weekly podcast,Thriving As A Physician, she helps physicians go from feeling overwhelmed and out of control with their eating to finding relief from stress and binge eating without relying on willpower. Siobhan can be found at www.weightsolutionsforphysicians.ca. Check out the weekly Weight Solutions for Physicians podcast on all podcast platforms.

Other Links:

Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/weight-solutions-for-physicians/id1449336543

Instagram: www.instagram.com/drsiobhankey

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drsiobhankey

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

Send us Fan Mail

We’ve all heard of death by a thousand paper cuts; today I’m talking about “papercut” statements from patients.

“You weren’t available so I couldn’t get seen”

“Why can’t she just order me malaria pills!”

“That means I will have been in pain for 16 months”

There’s lots of things that patients say/write to us that sting. And, many of us internalize these in such a way that we carry them as deep pains and scars. Let’s give that up. 

Join me as I walk through some recent experiences, and I how I am choosing to change my experience. It’s not about blithely accepting all the hurt, but it’s the start we need to be able to understand what’s going on inside us, inside them, and then decide what boundaries we want to set, what behaviors we will reinforce (for them and for ourselves).

Papercuts and paintballs my friends!

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

Send us Fan Mail

Ah, here's an interesting one for you...

Another thing you never knew you needed help with? Getting help!

We are so used to doing EVERYTHING for everyone. As physicians, we have a lot of work in helping keep people healthy; women physicians are typically asked to do EVEN MORE by our patients and workplaces. That's a separate topic.

What's relevant today is that we are often not good at accepting and allowing help. Why should we be good at something that we don't have much practice with? I don't know how to do what I haven't experienced, right?. So today, we are exploring different elements of what it looks like to ask for help, cultivate good help, and become the leader who has the support she needs. The focus is work, but the ripple extends to helpers at home, including kids. Don't you WANT help with chores?!?

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

Send us Fan Mail

What is it like to make the decision to leave your physician job without a plan?

Today I'm thrilled to be joined by my friend and fellow Family Medicine Physician, Dr Sara Ionescu. She shares her story of being "on the train" from a young age to go to medical school, doing "all the things," and finding herself unhappy. She walks us through her decision-process of leaving her job in Primary Care to be home with her kids, and how she is thinking about her future career choices.

Dr. Sara Ionescu is a board certified family medicine physician, wife, mom of 4, and exercise enthusiast. She graduated from Drexel College of Medicine, completed family medicine training in York, PA, and currently lives in WV. She is passionate about wellness, preventative care, and exercise and loves to inspire others to move. She strives to stay physically active daily as she sees massive physical and mental health benefits with this and wants to help, inspire and encourage others to do the same! 

To learn more about Dr Sara Ionescu, find her in the following places:
Website: drsaraionescu.com  
Instagram: @drsaraionescu  
Facebook: facebook.com/drsaraionescu  
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drsaraionescu

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

Send us Fan Mail

As I record this in early July, new Residents and Fellows are starting clinical rotations. And over the next several months, recent graduates, new Attendings, are starting their new roles as "the grown up" in the room.

What do I wish I understood when I was in their place?

Today I'm sharing 10 things that I wish had understood 14 years ago, as I prepared to be an Attending. In brief, they are:

 1. You will always look more calm and more organized to other people than you feel inside.
 2. Your program wanted you to succeed; your job wants you to bring in money.
 3. You will have to relearn or learn how to say no.
 4. There will always be more to do than time to do it. Be picky, be selective.
 5. Boundaries allow you bandwidth
 6. No one will watch out for you but you.
 7. You will never be done learning; the better you take care of yourself, the more bandwidth you will have for curiosity and growth
 8. The amount of admin tasks will metastasize, especially if you are willing to do them.
 9. You have more choices than you know.
 10. Your job is not to have all the answers

What would YOU add to this list? Whether you've been out of training for a year, or 20, let me know what you wish you had known. Email me at [email protected] (yes, I read this myself) or DM me on IG at @MeganMeloMD

As promised, here is a link to a 2022 article in Medical Economics that showed PCP require 26.7 hours per day to provide comprehensive care to their patients: https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/primary-care-physicians-need-26-7-hours-a-day-for-comprehensive-care-for-patients 

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

Send us Fan Mail

What is YOUR long term vision for yourself? And are you living a life that is aiming in that direction?

Today’s episode is inspired by the book, The Infinite Game, by Simon Sinek, and I challenge you to ask yourself what is your big picture? After getting through medical school, residency (“finite games” with a beginning, middle and end), we find ourselves launched into the world, and we may lack clear direction for what we want for our lives. Sure, maybe a family, a job, etc, but let’s get more granular.

When we are clear on who we are, what we want, how we want to use our gifts and talents, it’s easier to make decisions that move us in the direction we want to travel. Contrast this with “going through the motions,” day-in and day-out, feeling like you are stuck in Groundhog’s Day (remember that gem from the early 90s?).

Bring your journal and your pen for this one, listen a few times, and find out what YOUR infinite game looks like.

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

Send us Fan Mail

Do you struggle when you feel bored? Does it drive you crazy, because you want to rest, but your brain tells you to DO stuff? Creates chores out of nowhere?

Boredom/restlessness is what I am calling an "In-Between" emotion. It sits between the usual feeling of busy-ness/hustle/overwhelm and calm. When our bodies and minds are used to being busy and overwhelmed all the time, we think that if we don't have any tasks, if we get everything "done," then we will feel calm. But it's not true, is it? Usually we feel a restlessness, because we are used to DOING, and when there is no stuff of DO, we don't know how to respond.

This week I tackle boredom, along with 2 other "In-Between" emotions, resentment and anger. Listen in, and see if you agree. 

Alright, full disclosure, didn't plug in my mic (though audio recorded on my other device) AND had to edit out a bunch of awkward pauses. It seems fine....

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD

Send us Fan Mail

The pandemic changed the lives of all physicians; generally not for the better.

For my friend, Dr Sarah Stombaugh, a fellow Family and Obesity Medicine Physician, the pandemic catalyzed a dramatic pivot in her career that she never imagined. Join us to hear more about her journey from employed physician who had to advocate to protect her pregnancy to the owner of her own Obesity Medicine Direct Care Practice.

We talk about how our own desires for healing burnout lead us to coaching, and how that journey empowered us to create healthier, more boundaried lives as practicing physicians. We share how the practice of medicine leads to bad health habits, and how to start to make changes.

Dr. Sarah Stombaugh is a family medicine physician and diplomate of the American
Board of Obesity Medicine. Graduating from Creighton University Medical School and
completing her family medicine residency at University of Chicago, Dr. Stombaugh
practiced outpatient primary care in Evanston, Illinois before moving to Charlottesville,
Virginia with her family.

Upon moving to Charlottesville, Dr. Stombaugh opened a private practice weight loss
clinic, in which she sees patients in-person at her downtown Charlottesville office and
by telemedicine throughout the states of Virginia and Illinois.

In addition to her clinical work, Dr. Stombaugh is the host of the "Conquer Your Weight"
podcast. Through this platform, she shares valuable insights, expert opinions, and
practical advice on weight management, contributing to the well-being of a broader
audience.

Dr. Stombaugh believes in empowering both individuals and the medical community in
order to promote an evidence-based approach to the treatment of obesity.

To learn more about Dr Stombaugh, find her in the following places:
www.SarahStombaughMD.com
Instagram.com/Sarah Stombaugh, MD

Support the show

To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me.

Want to contact me directly?
Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram!
@MeganMeloMD