Author's posts
The 5 secrets to setting boundaries at work
Karen is a 35-year-old physician recently recruited to lead a newly formed department at a large academic health system. She was new to leadership and initially let the prevailing culture dictate the ways meetings were held. There were many tangential …
Hello, health care organization leader, are you listening?
I’m not an organizational leader, a member of the C-suite, a department chair, or a VP of anything. I’m a coach who guides physicians as they try to provide exceptional care and actually have a life. But I know a lot about setting goals, executing on p…
The sense of powerlessness and being a cog in a wheel is now at an all-time high
Toward the end of my clinical career, I didn’t feel like I had control over much at all. The patient safety issues loomed large. We used ridiculous workarounds for broken processes. The constant vigilance to provide excellent care in a suboptimal envir…
An organizational solution to lactation support for women physicians
In a previous post, I recognized lactation support for women physicians as an equity issue. Many of the women physicians I’ve interviewed have identified returning to work while breastfeeding as a major challenge and a major source of stress. Providing…
Institute policies to proactively support physicians who are breastfeeding
I’ve been speaking with women physicians about the top challenges they face today. I’ve learned there are many—which honestly didn’t surprise me, given that 48 percent of women physicians report burnout symptoms (compared with 37 percent of their male …
Solving imposter syndrome in physicians
“I no longer start every day in dread,” Sheila (not her real name) told me as we completed a six-month coaching engagement. Her statement initially surprised me because that’s not how she described her interest in coaching when we began. She had simply…
Innovative approaches to solve physician burnout
Health care organizations are moving to address clinician burnout with a real sense of urgency. It is now commonly accepted that burnout is widespread among health care professionals and has serious repercussions for patient safety and the quality of c…
