What happens when you combine a lifetime of service, leadership, and a deep desire to uplift others?
In this inspiring episode, Dr. Andrea Austin welcomes Paula Drivas, as she shares how her changemaking story started at age 13 as a candy striper in Queens and how a simple request to transfer to the emergency department shaped her life’s purpose. She walks listeners through an expansive 33-year career spanning emergency medicine, internal medicine, orthopedics, urgent care, academia, and leadership, culminating in her transition into coaching and medical administration.

This conversation honors the evolution of medicine over three decades, from the loss of autonomy to intensifying metrics, and how Paula found her own path by listening to her heart, embracing spontaneity, and pursuing an MBA to impact healthcare at a systems level.

A pivotal moment arrived when Paula experienced coaching for the first time during the pandemic, sparking an “aha” that shifted everything. She describes how coaching unlocked clarity she didn’t know she needed and how it inspired her to create the Provider Coach Project to offer free access to coaching for medical students, PA students, nurses, residents, and clinicians.

The episode explores the urgent need for coaching in medicine, the role of value work, the emotional toll of modern healthcare, the DISC assessment as a tool for team growth, and why no one should have to navigate a healthcare career alone.

This is a deeply human, energizing conversation about purpose, service, and building a future where every healthcare professional feels supported and empowered.

You’ll Hear How They:

• Recognize changemaking moments early and follow them
  
   
• Navigate a nonlinear healthcare career with courage and openness
  
   
• Balance patient care with leadership, business demands, and personal growth
  
   
• Use coaching to unlock self-awareness, purpose, and sustainable decision-making
  
   
• Challenge the financial barriers that keep trainees from accessing coaching
  
   
• Apply DISC assessment insights to strengthen teams and improve communication
  
   
• Address burnout, emotional labor, and the realities of emergency medicine
  
   
• Build new models of support for clinicians across all stages of training
  
   

If you’ve ever questioned your next step, felt the weight of modern medicine, or wondered how coaching could shift your career, this episode is for you.

About the Guest:

“Follow your heart. Never say never. You don’t know where life is going to take you.” – Paula Drivas

Paula Drivas, PA-C, MBA is a Master Certified Physician Coach, seasoned emergency medicine PA, urgent care medical director, and founder of the Provider Coach Project, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing financial barriers to coaching for healthcare professionals and trainees.

Over her 33-year career, Paula has practiced emergency medicine, internal medicine, urgent care, orthopedics, and medical education, and has served in multiple leadership roles. She holds an MBA and trained as a coach at the Physician Coaching Institute.
Paula is passionate about empowerment, reflection, and helping clinicians reconnect to meaning and joy in their work.

📍 Connect with Paula

Website: https://www.providerscoachproject.org

📚 Resources + Mentions

• Physician Coaching Institute
  Provider Coach Project
  DISC Assessment for communication + leadership
  Jen Sincero — You Are a Badass
  Jefferson Fisher — “Leave it on the table”
  
  🔑 Top 3 Key Takeaways:
• Coaching is essential, not optional, for the future of healthcare: Paula highlights how coaching helps clinicians make value-aligned decisions, navigate burnout, and reclaim agency—especially in a system strained by complexity and moral distress.
• Your career doesn’t have to be linear. Follow your heart: Paula’s journey—from adolescent volunteer to emergency medicine PA to medical director and nonprofit founder—shows the power of staying open to unexpected paths.
• No one should navigate medicine alone: Through the Provider Coach Project, Paula advocates for accessible coaching that removes financial barriers and ensures every trainee and clinician has support, clarity, and a safe space to grow.

🩺 About the Host:

Dr. Andrea Austin is a board-certified emergency physician, educator, and passionate advocate for system-level change in healthcare. As the creator and host of Heartline: Changemaking in Healthcare, Dr. Austin brings curiosity, compassion, and bold honesty to conversations with leaders who are challenging the norms and reshaping medicine from the inside out.

With decades of experience in high-pressure clinical environments, Andrea has seen firsthand the cracks in the system—and the people working to repair them. Whether she’s mentoring residents, speaking on national stages, or recording with a fellow disruptor, she centers one theme: change doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens heart to heart.

💫 About the Show:

Heartline: Changemaking in Healthcare isn’t just a podcast—it’s a pulse check on what’s possible.

Hosted by emergency physician and educator Dr. Andrea Austin, Heartline features conversations with healthcare leaders, innovators, and quiet disruptors who are challenging the way things have always been done.

Each episode explores real stories of change—from redefining leadership and communication, to reimagining systems built on burnout and hierarchy. This is a space for truth-telling, for asking better questions, and for reconnecting with the reason we all got into medicine in the first place: to make it better.

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about progress—with heart.

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🎓 Upcoming Events & Opportunities

• 🔥 ⁠⁠⁠⁠Recalibrate: Group Coaching for Physicians⁠⁠

Starting  2026, I’ll be co-leading Recalibrate with psychologist and coach Sharee Johnson. This 6-month group coaching program supports physicians in rediscovering mindfulness, meaning, and wholehearted practice. I'm an alum myself—this program transformed my career. Learn more and enroll here, and please share with colleagues who may benefit.

• ⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠AAWEP St. Lucia Retreat | March 5–8, 2026⁠⁠
  • For women EM physicians. Sun, connection, and reflection in a stunning setting.
• Heart of Medicine in Uluru, Australia

o   Join us for this incredible one of a one-of-a-kind event in the heart of Australia at one of our most spectacular locations—Voyagers Resort in Central Australia in 2026.

o   Learn from some of the world's medical leaders in compassionate care, and how heart-centered healthcare can empower and heal healthcare workers and their patients. 

o   For: Doctors, Nurses, Allied Health Clinicians, Healthcare Leaders,
Coaches and Supervisors of Medics, Patient Advocates and all healthcare workers.  

o   When: 29-31 July 2026
Where: Voyages Ayers Rock Resort, Central Australia

• Women in Medicine Summit | Chicago, Sept 24-26, 2026⁠⁠

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🎧 Thanks for tuning into Heartline: Changemaking in Healthcare!

🌟 Learn more and book a free discovery call today at ⁠⁠andreaaustinmd.com/coaching⁠⁠.

Stay connected and keep making a difference:

✅ Subscribe to the ⁠⁠Heartline newsletter⁠⁠ for insights into reclaiming your well-being as a healthcare professional, improving teams around you, and transforming the system.

📱 Follow us on social: ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠, ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠

📚Discover Dr. Austin’s book Revitalized: A Guidebook to Following Your Healing Heartline.

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