This episode is with Dr. Laura Vater, a GI oncologist in Indiana who focuses her non-clinical time on humanism, writing and well-being We 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 inspira…

"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…

"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,…

"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…

"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 NYU We talk about:…

"Studying burnout has showed us that having control over your job, over your work life, is such an important component of being satisified, of not being burned out, that it makes me sad for women like you and women now giving birth and trying to find balance, in particular in primary care. I think there are just more and more barriers to it unfortu…

"I think I put that pressure on myself kind of to begin with that I just wanted to prove to everyone that I could be a pregnant resident and still function like a normal non-pregnant resident... I was taking primary call every third day up until 36 weeks so that was definitely challening as time went on. Like doing reductions with a big pregnant be…

"I had a lot of ambivalence around being a mother and I think looking back on why it was all justified, and part of it is that particularly as working women we are expecetd to work as though we don't have children and parent as though we don't have jobs, and I just felt like I don't know if i want to do this. I dont know if i can be the type of mom…

"I remember so distinctly we were in Rwanda, I came back from a run, and my husband was like sitting on the chair looking shell shocked, and he said 'uhh you need to read this email'. And it was an email that said 159 children have been released from The Congo and yours is one of them. Please come get him" This episode's conversation is with Dr. Be…

"Our lives are different than men in medicine in so many ways, and it has to do with being female and all of the reproductive burden that is put on us because of that." We talk about: - Having a baby as the only female physician in a private practice - Feeling ostracized - The challenges of treating pregnant women while pregnant - Her husband choos…

"I just felt like, in that moment, I can't move forward in being a physician. Because you know to be honest I was fixated on her mortality, and I really thought I can't exist in my old life, you know, after this." On this week's episode I talk with Dr. Kashi Goyal, a pulmonary and critical care fellow at Ohio State University, about her experience …

"What do you want to do with your life, you know? I mean what are you really happy doing and is it worth doing something that you don't love every single morning." On this week's episode I talk with Dr. Angie Frank about how she decided she didn't want to do research anymore and what it looked like to make that change, discovering that it is possib…

This week I'm joined by Dr. Ritika Parris who is a primary care physician and head of GME wellness at BIDMC in Boston. We cover so much in this coversation from having her two babies prematurely, navigating roles and jobs with her partner who is also a physician, the mentors she had looking out for her along the way, and what she had to do when she…

"It has been just the absolute joy and privilege of my life to see how institutions can change and how we can change the institutions that we love...that we are not just here to put the stethoscope on the chest of a patient. We are here to change the future of medicine" In this conversation with Dr. Daniele Olveczky we talk: - C-sections and compli…

"The big bottom line, ok, this is the big bottom line - young moms and women in general we are so self critcal 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 …

"You end up finding yourself in this bubble of work, and childcare and survival mode, and I think a lot of us tend to feel alone when our focus is so narrow and our focus is on the work and on our child and it can feel very isolating, and it can feel like we're the only one going through the situation, not recognizing that it is so common and all n…

"We have this whole other life outside of the hospital where we may or may not identify as being a physician, and either way I think that's ok. Some people feel like medicine is their calling and they're a doctor at home and a doctor at work. And there are other people who are like I love being a physician and I'm a physician at work but I'm a mom …

"I spent too long thinking that because the system was a certain way, that that was the right way for it to be, and I think it took me a really long time to have the perspective to look and see how diseased our entire system really is, and to think of it in terms of how if we were to design a system by which to train physicians today…for training a…

"Culture change is really hard, but changing the culture in medicine and other industries to make it sort of normalized for the non-birth partner to take just as much time to sort of set the stage for a 50/50 partnership when it comes to the logistics of raising a child, which are substantial" In our first episode I got to sit down and talk with my…