Surgeons with Purpose – Détails, épisodes et analyse

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Surgeons with Purpose

Hippocratic Collective

Forme & Santé

Éducation

Fréquence : 1 épisode/7j. Total Éps: 118

A podcast for surgeons who feel like they are languishing in a career that didn't turn out to be as fulfilling or as prestigious as they expected. Dr. Mel Thacker, an ENT surgeon and coach, takes you on a journey to help you understand why you are feeling dissatisfied, burnt out, and stuck. With this newfound insight, you'll be able to reframe how you see your experience, rediscover who you are underneath your surgeon identity, and create a life that aligns with your authentic self. Find more info about Surgeons with Purpose and other shows on the Hippocratic Collective at hippocratic-collective.com

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Données mises à jour le 18/09/2026

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#115 Vaibhav's Story Part Two

lundi 14 septembre 2026 • Durée 38:21

*************SENSITIVE CONTENT WARNING*******************

This episode discusses a recent suicide. Please listen carefully, or if this is particularly triggering for you, forgo listening completely.

On July 23, 2025, Vaibhav Duggal turned 24. He spent the morning of his birthday in a women's health clinic in El Paso, on his OB/GYN rotation as a third-year medical student at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Six days later he was dead.

In this episode, I share more details that have come to light about this case, including the processes the institution followed to address the complaint against Vaibhav, what the culture was like inside the institution, and the conversation between the Dean of the school and Vaibhav's parents.

Please go back and listen to the first episode #111, Vaibhav's Story, before listening to this one.

If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by call or text in the U.S. Medical students and physicians can also reach the Physician Support Line at 1-888-409-0141, staffed by volunteer psychiatrists.

Join us inside Empowered Surgeons Group here.

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#114 Swarm Leadership with Dr. Erik Pearson

lundi 7 septembre 2026 • Durée 48:53

Join us inside Empowered Surgeons Group here.

Interested in the Women Surgeons' Cabo retreat Jan 6-10, 2027? Get on my calendar here.

Dr. Erik Pearson grew up the son of an X-ray tech, trained in Dublin, and matched in Utah, where watching the pediatric surgeons at work made the decision for him. It wasn't only the operations. It was the weight of being trusted with someone's child.

After fetal intervention research at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and pediatric surgery training at Emory, he found a growing practice in Las Vegas looking to build out its ECMO program. Ten years later, he joins us to talk about what that work actually asks of a person.

We get into the parts of pediatric surgery that don't make it into the training curriculum: the driveway moments after a hard case and learning to compartmentalize without going numb. Erik describes the mental shift that let him keep doing this work: I get to be there to help. Not so much be the hero.

The second half of the conversation turns to October 1, 2017. Erik was on call at Sunrise Hospital when victims of the Las Vegas mass shooting began arriving. He walks us through the organized chaos of the ER, the improvised triage bay in the ambulance parking lot, the color category the team invented on the spot because the standard system didn't fit, and the five hours he spent with a single gunshot patient alongside a scrub tech he had never met. He also describes the leadership he saw that night: a CEO in a purple polo whose entire job became removing barriers so clinicians could work.

It's a conversation about competence, grief, transparency with families, and what every hospital and every physician should be asking themselves before the worst night of their career arrives.

The numbers Erik shares from that night

124 patients with gunshot wounds requiring treatment
129 patients admitted that night
16 mortalities, 14 of them dead on arrival
58 surgeries in the first 24 hours
516 blood products used

Swarm leadership: the five principles

A model first identified in the response to the Boston Marathon bombing (observed in flocking birds) that Erik saw play out in real time:

Unity of mission
Generosity of spirit in action
Staying in your lane
No ego, no blame
Trust-based relationships

Dr. Erik Pearson is a pediatric surgeon in Las Vegas, where he has practiced for the past ten years as part of a physician-owned group. He is known as Citizen Surgeon on Instagram. Follow him here. Check out his website here.

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#113 Becoming a Trauma-Informed Surgeon with Sacha McBain, PhD

lundi 31 août 2026 • Durée 56:59

Interested in the Cabo retreat? Click here to schedule a 15-min interview.

Learn more about the powerful coaching community & mindset course, Empowered Surgeons Group, here.

Decades of research point to the same conclusion: social support is one of the strongest protective factors in the face of trauma. But what happens when the way we've learned to relate to others gets in the way of that connection, especially in a profession where repeated trauma exposure is routine?

In this episode, Dr. Sacha McBain joins me to talk about the intersection of attachment, community, and trauma-informed care in medical settings. We start with the research: Australian psychologist Richard Bryant's work following the Black Saturday bushfires showed that it wasn't just individual relationships that predicted recovery; it was the shape of a person's whole social network. People who were diversely connected, and whose connections were also connected to each other, fared better. The overlapping network itself served as a buffer.

From there we turn to what happens inside hospitals. Sacha describes sitting in on resident onboarding and hearing the scare tactics used to keep new physicians in line: it's not if you'll be sued, it's when. Patients will find you in parking garages. Never admit you were wrong. The message underneath is essentially "be perfect, or a patient could destroy you.” And it makes co-regulation almost impossible with the very person you've been taught to fear.

What shifts when you see a distressed patient as a frightened, vulnerable human rather than a threat to your livelihood? What do you do when you can't find any empathy left and you're already overwhelmed? Sacha shares a piece of advice from a mentor that reframes curiosity as the thing you reach for when compassion isn't available. And we close on trauma-informed care as something fundamentally pragmatic, not a soft add-on, but a working set of practices around safety, transparency, power, collaboration, and cultural humility.

Sacha McBain, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and associate professor at Rush University System for Health in Chicago. A national leader in medical traumatic stress, she has published peer-reviewed research on the conceptualization and treatment of medical trauma, led national clinical trainings, and helped shape best practices for mental health screening and intervention after traumatic injury.

#112 The Three Success Tenets in Surgery

lundi 24 août 2026 • Durée 23:41

Interested in the ESG Cabo Women Surgeons' Retreat in January 2027? Get on my calendar here.

Join us inside Empowered Surgeons Group here.

In today's episode, you will learn the three success tenets to create success and sustainability in surgery:

Protect the asset
Serve the patient
Diversify your professional identity

When we master these three things, life as a surgeon becomes easy and fulfilling. Even in the face of moral injury, decreasing reimbursement, litigation fear, complication fear, and the public's mistrust of the medical profession in general. I know because I'm living proof.

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#111 Vaibhav's Story

lundi 17 août 2026 • Durée 01:07:10

*************SENSITIVE CONTENT WARNING*******************

This episode discusses a recent suicide. Please listen carefully, or if this is particularly triggering for you, forgo listening completely.

”If we could save one student, one kid, one life, we are spreading his shine,” Neeru Duggal.

In this episode, I sit down with Vaibhav's parents, Vivek and Neeru Duggal, who are passionate about spreading the truth about what happened to Vaibhav with hopes to prevent this from happening to anyone else.

We talk about who Vaibhav was, why he became a physician, his dreams for the future, and the events that ultimately crushed those dreams.

We also reconstruct those six days, hour by hour, email by email. Vivek and Neeru hope to turn this needless tragedy into a campaign for reform.

The burning question: when a university opens a disciplinary process against a student, what does it owe that student while the process is underway?

As Vivek puts it: nothing can bring their son back, but if another family is spared this, they will be able to look themselves in the mirror.

Neeru and Vivek describe a son who had wanted one thing since childhood: to be a doctor. By every measure available before that week, he was on his way. He graduated summa cum laude from Texas A&M with a 4.0 in biology, finished a semester early, volunteered at a medical center through COVID, and came to Texas Tech El Paso on a scholarship. He had no prior professionalism concerns anywhere on his record.

The clinical encounter at the center of this story lasted a few minutes. The nurse practitioner conducting the exam and asked whether the patient was comfortable having a student present; the patient consented. On her way out, according to Vaibhav's account, the patient invited him to follow her on Instagram. At 10:34 a.m. he did. About an hour later he unfollowed and blocked her, telling the dean days afterward that he'd realized it crossed a professional line. That afternoon, the patient filed a complaint.

Links & Resources

#110 From Hiding to Highly Visible on LinkedIn with Sheikh C. Ali

lundi 10 août 2026 • Durée 01:02:08

Sheikh C. Ali dreamed of becoming a private practice surgeon from age seven. Then, when COVID hit between his third and fourth year of medical school, he noticed the landscape shifting. The pathway he'd spent his life walking toward no longer seemed viable, so he built a new path. He became the strategist healthcare leaders now hire to turn their expertise into visibility, authority, and opportunity on LinkedIn.

This conversation is the playbook.

Sheikh makes the case for why LinkedIn beats every other platform for clinicians. It is the one platform where you have direct access to 1.3 billion users and key decision-makers.

He defines personal branding as what people say about you when you are not in the room, built from three components: core values, applicable expertise, and personality. Then he walks you through his 4 P's framework (Position, Polish, Publish, Pursue), reveals the gold mine hiding in plain sight, and gets tactical about writing a headline that works ("I help X do Y in Z").

You'll learn about the two audiences your content must speak to, why commenting is a superpower, what it takes to move someone from "I know you" to "I want to work with you."

Underneath it all runs the mindset that makes the tactics work: network from abundance, choose done over perfect, and let confidence compound through action.

Sheikh C. Ali helps clinical leaders and healthcare executives become the leading voice in their niche. Connect with him (where else??) on LinkedIn or his website here.

Join us inside Empowered Surgeons Group here.

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#109 PE Sharks in the Water with Dr. Adrienne Towsen

lundi 3 août 2026 • Durée 01:00:13

For 19 years, Dr. Adrienne Towsen practiced in the kind of orthopedic group most surgeons dream of: five partners, employees who'd been there forever, a 30-year reputation, a family feel.

Then came the supergroup. Then came private equity.

The pitch: liquidity events, surgery centers, top-dog status. The math: one year's salary upfront, paid back over five years through a 25% management "scrape." The reality: 12-to-14-hour days, a salary cut in half, a practice that couldn't pay for gauze pads, and a call center in another location that didn't even know she was a doctor there.

Her breaking point came after a weekend of hip fracture call, when she did the math and realized she'd essentially volunteered her time. She sent her resignation the next morning. With no plan. Just the certainty that there had to be another way.

Five months ago, she opened The Towsen Clinic: a concierge direct-care practice built entirely on her own terms, where visits last 60 to 90 minutes and patients finally get what they're starved for: a human partner in their health.

In this episode:

The seductive pitch PE makes to physician groups and the math hiding underneath it
What "we're employed now. This is no longer our practice" feels like from the inside
The moment a 20-year patient left because he couldn't get through the phone tree
Why she resigned without a plan, and what the sadness-plus-relief told her
Walking away from the OR after 21 years and making peace with it
The surprising bridge from hip fractures to hormone health and women's medicine
Her advice if work is murdering your soul: don't stay stuck

"I couldn't have been more miserable." -Dr. Towsen then.

"This is the beginning of my next chapter." -Dr. Towsen now.

Dr. Adrienne Towsen is an orthopedic surgeon and founder of The Towsen Clinic, a concierge preventive-care practice in West Chester, PA. Check out her clinic here. Follow her on LinkedIn .

#108 Difficult Conversations with Dr. Anthony Orsini

lundi 27 juillet 2026 • Durée 55:30

Join us inside Empowered Surgeons Group here.

Most of us got less than 20 hours of communication training in four years of medical school. Then we were thrown into the real world.

Dr. Anthony Orsini has spent his career fixing that. A practicing neonatologist and founder of The Orsini Way, he's trained thousands of clinicians to navigate medicine's hardest conversations: breaking bad news, disclosing medical errors, and rebuilding trust when everything's gone wrong. His methods have helped hospitals boost patient satisfaction scores by as much as 60% and reduce malpractice risk.

Learn more here.

Follow Dr. Orsini on LinkedIn here.

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#107 Becoming a Great Defendant with Heather Hansen

lundi 20 juillet 2026 • Durée 01:08:03

Take the quiz: What kind of surgeon are you becoming? here.

Join us inside Empowered Surgeons group here.

One of the most surprising truths about medical malpractice is this: the work that prepares you to become a strong defendant is the very same work that helps prevent lawsuits in the first place. It's the work that strengthens your relationships with patients, your spouse, your children, your colleagues, and your friends. At the heart of all of it are two skills: compassion and communication.

In today's episode, I sit down with Heather Hansen, a medical malpractice defense attorney and expert in effective communication. As surgeons, most of us will face a lawsuit at some point in our careers. Yet no one teaches us how to navigate that experience, or how to become the kind of defendant a jury can trust.

The research is clear: patients are less likely to sue physicians who communicate with empathy, authenticity, and compassion. Heather has spent decades defending physicians in the courtroom, and she shares a fascinating perspective from the other side of medical malpractice. The defense attorney's job is to humanize the physician and tell the story of a compassionate, thoughtful surgeon who genuinely cared for their patient. The good news is that is a skill set that can be developed long before you're ever named in a lawsuit.

In this conversation, you'll learn how to better understand the game of medical malpractice, see the key players through a different lens, communicate more effectively under pressure, and cultivate the qualities that not only make you a stronger defendant but a better surgeon and leader.

For more than 20 years, Heather Hansen defended physicians, healthcare providers, and hospitals in medical malpractice litigation. During that time, she mastered the art of communicating with compassion, credibility, and charisma when the stakes couldn't have been higher. Today, she teaches those same communication strategies to leaders, teams, and healthcare professionals around the world. You can learn more about her on her website here. Follow her on LinkedIn .

#106 Villains in Surgery

lundi 13 juillet 2026 • Durée 54:09

Take the quiz, What Kind of Surgeon Are You Becoming here.

Join us inside Empowered Surgeons Group here.

We often believe we have to create villains in the world in order to effect change. But what if that were not true?

In this episode, I teach villain compassion, the difference between helping, fixing, and serving, and the power of intentionally choosing our thoughts before we make decisions. Because when we change our mindset, we open up a portal to new ideas and solutions. That's the heart of coaching.

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