The Physician Whisperer

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What goes through your mind when you bring your kids or your parents to their medical appointments? Do you worry that you'll be "that family member" who is trying to run the visit? Or do you worry that they won't get the right care? Do you feel guilty because you "should" have known better and prevented the injury or illness from happening in the first place? For many of us, the mind drama that occurs around this element of our lives as Physicians can seem like a "me" problem. I'm the only one who feels this way. My dear friend and coach Dr Karen Leitner joins us today to talk about this tension, and how to deal with it. She recently published an article on KevinMD, When a loved one is a patient: Navigating the emotional burden for physicians, and she joins me today to talk about it.

Karen Leitner is a primary care physician and an experienced life coach. She helps women physicians feel better and happier in their lives by empowering them to overcome work-life overwhelm, imposter syndrome, parenting challenges, and all the other joykills so common to  women physicians (and so rarely talked about…until now).

You can find her on FB, IG or her website www.karenleitnermd.com 

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]

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@MeganMeloMD

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Most of us have habit change all wrong. We think we change the habits, and then claim the identity, that we can easily "stay on track," despite having no proof that we can create (or break) the habit. And if we fail, we add more evidence that we're stuck, that change is too hard.

In this episode, I will talk about what happens when we instead choose to change our self-concept, change our identity, and with that start to change our thoughts so that they align more with that desired future self.

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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One of the key ways that we learn as humans is to borrow and adopt the thoughts of others. We do this as children, and we do it as we learn. What we often don't consciously do is to go back and reexamine how these thoughts affects us later in life. Today we are digging into this idea, and learning how to get rid of thoughts that are no longer serving us, as a way of reducing suffering.

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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Physicians love a path. An Algorithm. A Decision Tree. We are used to thinking in patterns, in sorting through data to see what fits and what doesn't fit. The path into medicine was also fairly prescribed. So when we are struggling with a decision, one where there isn't a clear path, we can easily get stuck. We might dig into research mode. Or consult with a mentor. But so much of the time, we avoid looking inside, avoid listening to the person most affected by the decision; ourselves. In this episode, I will share an idea about how to move forward when you don't have all of the information that you want, and are searching for the "right" answer.

Fair warning, this episode is a bit rough around the edges, and my kids were definitely running up and down the stairs. But part of me letting go of perfectionism, is being willing to publish it anyway. So here's to good enough work, in real life!

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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Today I am so excited to welcome back Dr Lara Hochman of Happy Day Health, who is now a published author! She and 46 other brave physicians have written a book, Made for More, available today, to share their stories of stepping out of their comfort zones ("I'm just a doctor, that's all I know how to do!") to become clinic owners, coaches, speakers and so much more. Dr Hochman is a fellow Family Physician, and we talked on the show in June 2022 about her passion, which is helping physicians find jobs in well-run, physician-owned practices, and coaching physicians through the process of creating resumes, interviewing, negotiating, etc. She is a wonderful human, and speaks so candidly about her journey, so don't miss this episode!

To get your copy of the book, click here.

To learn more about Dr Hochman and her work, FIRST go to her YouTube Channel, and then find her in all the places:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCorwNuzOmzeH25dDy6i6N5w

Website: www.happydayhealth.co

Instagram: happydaymd

Linked In: Lara Hochman, MD

Twitter: @HappyDayMD1

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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Just say no. If you are a child of the 1980s and 90s, you may think I am talking about something else, but here we are talking about saying no to things that we want to say no too. How often do you wish you could say no, or regret not saying no, but find yourself stuck with extra work?

I'm going to share 3 different tools that you can start using today to learn the skill of saying no. Yes, it's a skill, and it's definitely something that YOU can learn. Try out one, try out all 3, collect them all for your resilience toolkit!

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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How often have you gone on vacation, and somehow felt LESS rested than before you left?

Learning how to rest is a skill, and sometimes that most of us need to practice. Today I share how to re-learn rest, and create a real shift in your experience of your "off" time.

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

Physicians are dealing with difficult problems. Overloaded hospitals, overloaded clinics, severe staffing shortages, delayed care, and frustrated patients. And since we live in this world, and we are fixers, it's easy to feel like these burdens are ours to bear, and ours alone. But you didn't create this mess. And although you may not choose to leave it, you can choose to change the way you think and feel about your role in it. Today we are talking about how to get real about your particular situation in medicine, and I show you how to start to change the way you think.

In the episode, I reference an important article published this year in Medical Economics by Richard Payerchin, entitled "Primary Care Physicians need 26.7 hours a day for comprehensive for patients." To read the article, click here. 

Oh, and thinking about joining me for "Healing Perfectionism in Women Physicians?" Click here to learn more, or head to my website and click "upcoming groups."

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

New Year, New You, right? Hold up. Before we move on into 2023, and celebrate the shiny new year, let's reflect back on what we got done this year. It's so easy to look forward, anticipating that we will be better, smarter, faster and stronger; the typical magical thinking that comes along with newness. But what about slowing down to celebrate our wins now? Let's notice the gains that happened this year, or even just today, and build a new habit of practicing joy and gratitude.

This episode is short and sweet, but a great way to end the year!

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 find yourself dragging your feet on decisions? Convincing yourself that you need more time, you need more information, but really just being paralyzed? Today I talk about what to do if you find yourself here, and how to get unstuck from analysis-paralysis.

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