Hi. I’m Dr. Marie Curious from MedPEP, the Medical Professionals Empowerment Program. We’re releasing this one-minute reminder to let you know that MedPEP physician listeners are eligible to receive as many as 20 FREE AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™ for listening to MedPEP. Just go to MedPEP.org/CME.
This is the 20th and final episode of the first season of MedPEP. Along with the first and eighth episodes, this is one of three episodes in which Marie and Les engage in a two-way conversation without a guest expert. Their two-way exchanges, relative to the more didactic three-way conversations, are particularly personal and heartfelt. In this final episode, they review Marie’s MedPEP journey, which commenced with a focus on the “self” and ended with a broader focus that encompassed teamwork, c...
At the beginning of this episode, Marie acknowledges to Les that she is continuing to mull over Dr. Green’s paradoxical suggestion (episode 18) that one way to overcome a sense of powerlessness is to embrace it. In today’s discussion with Dr. Liebschutz, they consider the possibility that some physicians may be able to overcome their sense of being overwhelmed and downtrodden by actually taking on more. Dr. Liebschutz, an accomplished physician leader at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Cent...
Every practicing physician has had the experience of feeling powerless in the face of patient expectations that come across as overblown or unrealistic. Addiction psychiatrist Mark Green, MD, shares with Drs. Curious and Schwab that an effective strategy for managing such expectations is for the health professional to join with the patient by acknowledging their shared experience of powerlessness. In this episode, Dr. Green reflects on the work he has done helping primary care physicians manage ...
Dr. Steve Adelman, founder of MedPEP and director of the physician health program in Massachusetts, has a frank discussion with Marie and Les about physicians’ use of addictive substances like alcohol and marijuana. In this era of stress, burnout, and medical “battle fatigue,” doctors may be especially susceptible to numbing themselves with substances that have the potential to impede their performance. Steve’s perspective is that physicians are safety-sensitive professionals who are responsible...
Dr. Marie Curious and MedPEP host Dr. Schwab have a rich and engaging conversation on the doctor-patient relationship with primary care physician and writer Dr. Danielle Ofri. The discussion contains numerous clinical pearls, some of which are drawn from Dr. Ofri’s experiences learning to play the cello as an adult. She reflects on her own frustrations with electronic medical records in a way that steers Marie in the direction of valuing and savoring the time she spends with patients, attentivel...
Dr. Jeffrey Auerbach is a psychologist, coach, and author who has coached health care executives, physicians, and physician leaders for more than 20 years. This episode focuses on the complexities of emotional intelligence (EI). Jeff explains to Marie and Les that there are four broad domains of EI: (1) knowing yourself, (2) managing yourself, (3) understanding other people, and (4) being able to effectively and sensitively manage relationships with others. Specific competencies within each of t...
After learning about the causes of burnout, how to cope with it, and how to convey one’s concerns to the higher-ups in an organization, Marie meets Dr. Helen Riess, a practicing psychiatrist who directs the empathy research program at Massachusetts General Hospital. Helen believes that the rigors and pressures of medical education, training and practice deplete physicians of their natural ability to empathize and connect with patients. She describes how physicians can form meaningful empathic co...
The stresses and strains of medical practice burned out Dr. Diane Shannon to the point where she left clinical practice and reinvented herself as a medical writer. She shares her moving, cautionary tale with Marie Curious, explaining to her that medical practice was not what she had expected it to be. She found it to be so chaotic and stressful that it was taking a serious toll on her physical and emotional health. It also detracted from her capacity to sustain healthy relationships. Since leavi...
Marie meets with Dr. Paul DeChant, a former family medicine physician and CEO who now works as a health care management consultant. As a medical leader at the Sutter Gould Medical Foundation, Paul successfully led a system-wide transformation that enhanced clinician well-being and restored joy in caring for patients. Paul is the lead author of Preventing Physician Burnout which focuses on the use of Toyota Lean principles to improve the practice-level processes that have dehumanized the care exp...
Following up on her conversation with Marie on conflict management, a second conversation with Dr. Jo Shapiro focuses on her hospital’s model peer-support program. There, clinicians facing emotionally stressful situations such as safety events, trauma and traumatic losses, malpractice suits, and medical board complaints are offered the opportunity to meet with trained peers, who help them to express and normalize the complex feelings that arise in these situations. Jo demonstrated the Brigham’s ...
Marie and professionalism expert Jo Shapiro, MD, have a deep conversation about resolving interpersonal conflicts that come up on medical teams and at different levels of health care organizations. Dr. Shapiro, a surgeon at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, directs the Center for Professionalism and Peer Support there. She believes that conflict in medical settings is inevitable and may be healthy when it allows for a respectful synthesis of multiple perspectives. Dr. Shapiro helps Marie unpack ...
Psychologist and Coach Alan Morse focuses on assessing and addressing physicians’ problems from individual, team, and organizational perspectives. He suggests that the same analytical skills that physicians utilize to assess patients’ conditions may be applied to one’s self and one’s practice. Understanding organizational culture is a must, and solutions should be viewed through the lens of the team. Hierarchical differences between team members take a back seat to the good of the patients and t...
Les and Marie take stock of their first 6 conversations with well-being experts, and they reflect on Marie’s ability to effectively incorporate the torrent of new information, skills and techniques into the everyday flow of a busy life at work and home. Marie acknowledges how difficult it is to translate knowledge into habit formation, and they discuss the importance of accountability, consistency and practice, all of which support positive behavior change. In a demonstration of mentorship and c...
In this episode Marie meets Beth Frates, MD. Trained as a physiatrist, Beth coaches people to adopt healthy lifestyles, with an emphasis on diet, sleep, stress resiliency and exercise. In this MedPEP episode, Beth focuses on nutrition and healthy eating patterns as critical factors to energize Marie over the course of rigorous days in the clinic. She describes the evidence-based Harvard Healthy Plate - half is comprised of vegetables and fruits, one quarter is whole grains, and the last quarter ...
Dr. Marie Curious reports back to Dr. Les Schwab that her arousal level is unacceptably high in the course of the work day, and he comments that difficult conversations in the clinic may be a contributing factor. He introduces her to Dr. Cathy Lanteri, a practicing psychiatrist and executive coach. Cathy explains that the current environment requires physicians to develop expertise in communication, conflict resolution and team building, and gives Marie pointers for effectively managing difficul...
After Marie describes her experience with savoring the moment while drinking water — a follow-up activity from the meeting with Dr. Gazelle — Dr. Schwab introduces her to Diana Dill, EdD, who coaches physicians to prevent burnout from feeling stressed and overwhelmed due to unsustainable organizational changes. She points out that people have different stressors and everyone has to assess if they have enough energy to sustain through the day. In the stress management world, energy arousal is mea...
Dr. Schwab introduces Marie to Gail Gazelle, MD, a practicing hospice physician and health professional coach, and they review multiple working definitions of mindfulness. She stresses the need for compassion, both for one’s patients as well as for oneself. Dr. Gazelle also emphasizes the importance of being in the present moment, staying focused on the reality in front of us. Marie comes to understand that focusing on the here and now allows one to put a distance between oneself and the downwar...
After reviewing Marie’s effort to take time for lunch, Dr. Schwab introduces her to Margaret Moore, MBA (a.k.a. Coach Meg), founder of the first health and wellness coaching school in the United States. Coach Meg points out that physicians are trained first and foremost to focus on their patients' well-being and often feel guilty when they pause to take care of themselves. "We’re not a healthy society, emotionally or physically. And it’s hard to imagine us getting that [patient care] done withou...
In this episode, Dr. Curious meets physiatrist and lifestyle medicine guru Eddie Phillips, MD. Marie describes the draining of cognitive, emotional, and physical energy engendered by rapid multitasking and juggling in the clinic. In response, Dr. Phillips emphasizes the importance of physician self-care to counteract energy depletion. Health professionals should practice what they preach when it comes to a healthy lifestyle, stress management, nutrition, physical activity, and substance use. He ...
Meet Les Schwab, MD, a professional coach, internist, and medical leader, and the host of MedPEP. He is joined by Marie Curious, MD, a young primary care internist who finds her growing clinic practice to be increasingly stressful and overwhelming. Les and Marie embark upon a journey to discover solutions to survive and thrive in today’s depleting medical environment. Marie’s longstanding aspirations to be a healer are now butting up against the harsh and inhuman bottom-line driven realities of ...
MedPEP’s star, Dr. Marie Curious, is a young, primary care internist who has started to fantasize about leaving the profession that she loves. On her MedPEP journey, Marie joins Dr. Les Schwab and a group of specialized physicians, coaches, and other experts, who offer a broad range of practical techniques to help her survive and thrive in today’s tough medical environment. The territory they cover includes nutrition, exercise, getting along with difficult colleagues, dealing with bureaucracy an...
