"I've hit the point of burnout multiple times in my life. Most recently it was after I started my coaching business. So I was working full time as a primary care outaptient physician and I was coaching my clients on my admin half day and weekends. I realized that what was burning me out was medicine post-pandemic. I just couldn't do it anymore and it took me a while to recognize why I was feeling the way I was feeling. So I took some time to self-reflect. Actually a year ago in August I took ...
"I wanted to maintain my running and then work was catching up and I think that's when it got kind of crazy in terms of you know I'm trying to do too much. And when you have too many balls in the air waiting until they hit the ground and a lot of problems with mariage, a lot of problems with kids, and a lot of problems at work. That was when I was like 'I need to figure out what to do here because I can't continue like this. It's time to prioritize. I don't want to look back and have my husba...
"My brain was not in OB mode. Like anybody who is an obgyn, when you get admitted that sick at 26 weeks, knows you're really not going to go until 34 weeks but my brain wasn't processing that. So I reached out to both my program director and the chairman of our department in like panicked text messages. I didn't have it in me to call them. I had 1% battery on my phone. I was in triage. I was barely even admitted to the hospital. They had given me oral medication to get my blood pressure down ...
"I promise we will all do better if you lift up and empower other women, because guess what when the time comes and you need a favor they will then return it to you. We need to stop this you or me mentality and competition. I think women are pitted against each other more than men are and I'm like there is enough to go around, I promise."This episode is with Dr. Tiffany Moon, an anesthesiologist in Dallas, Texas.In this episode we talk about:- Having twin girls as an attending- Her decision t...
"I feel like I was able to spend those years of fellowship really asking this question of how do I want this career to fit into my life. Before I never really understood what it was going to feel like to be a mom or to be a wife or what it was going to feel like to just want to be Rene and who I am and the rest of the things. For so long, understandably so, the main focus was how do I become the best doctor and that's what you need to get through medical school and residency to get the ...
"We both knew that one of us would need to be able to still be a default parent and I actually wanted that role, which I'm sure we'll talk about it's also very hard to be a default parent and a doctor, but that was sort of the thing I didn't want to give up when I went into medicine."This episode is with Dr. Molly Brett, a primary care physician in Colorado.We talk about:- Deciding early on that she wanted to be a primary care doctor for multiple reasons- Being in a dual physician family- Bei...
This episode is with Dr. Kimberly Buss, a family medicine physician in California. We discuss:- Having a miscarriage in her second trimester- Having a young child at home while in her residency training- One of her children having health issues and how that affected her as a mom and a physician- Her work as a primary care physician, particularly with patients with diabetes- Being a lifelong learner- and so much more!Connect with Moms of Medicine:- Instagram @moms_of_medicine- Momsofmedicine@g...
This episode is with Dr. Grace Farris, a hospitalist in Texas and published author. We discuss:- The inspiration between her comics, and specifically "weekend mom"- The decision to move her family from Boston, to NYC, and then to Texas- Working as a hospitalist in NYC during the COVID pandemic with two young boys- Working full time- Coaching youth soccer- Her next graphic novel See One, Do One, Teach One, which is a memoir of her time in medical school and residency- and so much more! C...
"I felt totally stripped of everything that I had ever thought of myself because I was not going to work, so I was really kind of just tied to my house for 6 weeks. I was bored! I wanted to be working, I wanted to be doing easy cases. The baby slept so much. I'm like what do I do? And then she never really latched and so I was exclusively pumping straight away. I could have tried breastfeeding for longer but I knew I only had 5 weeks of maternity leave and I wasn't going to fight her every fe...
"It sounds easy but it's really hard when you've worked this hard to be a physician to say 'oh I'm gonna do a little less'. What I've realized is that myself and I think maybe some listeners out there might resonate with, we often feel like our productivity and our value to society is based on how many procedures we do, patients we see, hours we put in. Usually I would be the first one there and the last one to leave and you know we wear it kind of as a badge of honor, but over time that narr...
"The big bottom line, ok, this is the big bottom line - young moms and women in general we are so self critical and we are so down on ourselves, and I could practically cry just thinking about this because it's so unneeeded. We're as smart as the guys, we're as committed as they are, we probably work harder in certain ways. Women do a lot of unpaid work. And so we have no reason to feel bad about ourselves, but I know when I was a young mom, you're so insecure. What happens though, I think wh...
"I know how hard it is. I know that parenting is hard. I know that life is hard, but I do believe that we have to look for the glimmers and look for the hope and look for the joy and celebrate those things, at the same time not denying the negative but understanding that those negatives will always exist in our world."This episode is with Dr. Mona Amin, a board certified pediatrician and IBCLC and host of the pedsdoctalk podcast in We discuss:- Her traumatic births with her two childre...
"Having any sort of mental or physical health problem doing this job makes it almost impossible...it makes you realize you don't know what other people are going through and I think it reminds us to give everyone some grace."This episode is with Dr. Alli Letica, a general surgery resident at Massachusetts General Hospital. We discuss:- Being furloughed during the COVID pandemic while she was pregnant- Writing an article advocating for normalizing childbearing during surgical training - Recove...
"I came to this point where I am like 6 months post partum at this point. So I've gone back to work, you know was in the swing of things, was working at that point 3 sometimes 4 days per week and I just was not happy in either situation. I wasn't fully happy at home and I wasn't fully happy at work and I told my employer 'I love you guys and I love it here but I just think I need to step away' and they were all like 'What are you gonna do?' And that was the first time in my life where I had n...
This episode is with Dr. Polly van den Berg, an Infectious Disease physician in Philadelphia.We talk about:- Timing of having a child in the context of her husband's brain cancer diagnosis- Post-partum anxiety- and so much more!Connect with Moms of Medicine:- Instagram @moms_of_medicine- Momsofmedicine@gmail.com
This episode is with Dr. Laura Vater, a GI oncologist in Indiana who focuses her non-clinical time on humanism, writing and well-beingWe talk about:- Writing her first novel and working on getting it published- Having her daughter in medical school- Breastfeeding her daughter for 2.5 years while being an internal medicine resident- The inspiration and motivation behind creating the life support community to support people in medicine- Her family's decision to have her husband quit his job and...
"I was super present with my kids when I was home. I didn't pull out phones, there weren't cell phones way back then that were so distracting. I would try not to be on the computer and making phone calls and things like that. I remember it that way of just being as present as possible. My kids still remember I was getting up at 6 in the morning and making them pancakes before they had to go to school and I had to go to work. So I really sacrificed sleep a lot because when they went to bed I w...
"After week 17 I think, I was worried about him. I knew that with my fibroids I would have pain. I was like it will be worse than what I had with my periods, but, well I can handle pain. I didn't factor in the emotional aspect of that. Like worrying about losing someone. So that to me was the hardest part."This episode is with Dr. Mwanasha Merril, a hematology and oncology fellow at Dana Farber Cancer InstituteWe talk about:- Having fibroids and how that impacted her pregnancy- The challenge ...
"Just before I turned 34 weeks I was doing my fellows clinic from my hospital room. I had a sign on the door like 'Do Not Disturb, I'm in clinic', and they were like we have to get your vitals at some point during this. So they came and took my blood pressure and it was like 170/100. The resident was pushing IV labetalol while I was precepting with my attending, and finally I was just like 'Ok, I think I'm done with clinic'. I had a few more patients left in the day and I was just like 'I'm d...
"Within the span of an hour and a half our lives had gone from I'll be back in 90 minutes to go in and do my surgeries and move on, to we're having a girl let's celebrate, and then we're holding hands just with our hearts in our throat"This episode is with Dr. Liliana Camison, a plastic surgeon and craniofacial surgery fellow at NYUWe talk about:- Late pregnancy loss and deciding on termination- Having her rainbow baby- Fellowhsip interviews with an 8 week old baby and her mom in tow- She and...