Empowering Women Physicians – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode we examine the evolution of the understanding of Learned Helplessness.  We review the neuroscience that explains how helplessness is a default and what we are actually learning is control.  

This allows us to have a deeper understanding for ourselves and compassion for ourselves when we do feel helplessness in the face of ongoing challenges.

It also empowers us to proactively strengthen our self-efficacy, agency, and autonomy.

Learned Optimism helps us remind ourselves that challenges are not personal, not permanent, and not pervasive.

Upcoming EWP in person event

EWP Toronto event with Liz Gilbert and Martha Beck

https://empoweringwomenphysicians.com/toronto-2024/

References

Maier SF, Seligman ME. Learned helplessness at fifty: Insights from neuroscience. Psychol Rev. 2016 Jul;123(4):349-67. doi: 10.1037/rev0000033. PMID: 27337390; PMCID: PMC4920136.

In this episode we learn about Martin Seligman's initial experiments on Learned Helplessness.  This context can help us better understand ourselves and why we may sometimes not believe that we have power to take action to decrease our own suffering.  

In person event:
EWP Toronto 2024 with Liz Gilbert and Martha Beck - click here 

Coaching Guide:
To download click here 

Podcast link: 
To send to a friend click here.

We'll be placing links to references here soon.

How are you feeling? No really, how are you feeling. Pick a word. See if you can name how you are feeling right now. Affect labelling (naming an emotion) has been shown to decrease distress.  In this episode, we talk about the neuroscience behind using your own brain to feel better.  

Download the feelings list here https://empoweringwomenphysicians.com/feelings/

Virtual summit link here
Affect labeling article here 

Free COVID related coaching sessions here

While the COVID pandemic is spreading, I wanted to encourage us to manage what is within our control, including flattening the curve. This episode also includes reminders that now more than ever caring for yourself IS caring for others.

We can accept reality while offering hope. You'll hear from Dr. Krista Olsen, a full time obstetrician and certified coach in our program.  She was COVID positive with fever, cough, and myalgia.  She and her family fully recovered and she is back to clinical care.  

Her story serves as a reminder that this is actually the expected and most common course of this disease.  While we can learn to prepare for other scenarios, we must purposefully remind our brains that most who get sick will recover.  Listen in to hear how she managed her mind through the symptoms, diagnosis, and recovery.

Links mentioned in this episode
Free coaching for physicians during the COVID pandemic
https://empoweringwomenphysicians.com/covid/

TED talk.  How we must respond to the Coronavirus pandemic. Bill Gates
https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_how_we_must_respond_to_the_coronavirus_pandemic

There is no emergency in a pandemic
https://acanticleforlazarus.com/2020/03/23/there-is-no-emergency-in-a-pandemic/

That feeling you are feeling is grief.  Scott Berinato.
Harvard Business Review.
https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief

Hidden brain.  Shankar Vedantam
https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain

Dr. Krista Olsen.  True Life MD.
https://www.truelifemd.com/about
 
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
https://afsp.org/our-work/education/healthcare-professional-burnout-depression-suicide-prevention/

You can reach the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK.

On March 11, 2020 the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Today, March 13, 2020, the United States declared a national emergency.

This has impacted all of us. Particularly physicians.

We talk about how you can see this as an opportunity to use your voice, to speak, to lead, to work together.  

WHO announcemement of pandemic is here. 

The link to sign up for free COVID-19 related group coaching resources for physicians by physicians is here.

Image by #joseflee @joseflee.stories 

In this very special episode, Dr. Megan Galaske tells her story.

Her journey of transformation, from suffering to thriving in just a few short months.

She attributes this change to finding women physician groups who offered support, podcasts, and coaching. 

She implemented these changes in her life and you'll love to hear from her.

Her words.

Her journey.

Her transformation.

And...we do have a special time limited offer bringing many women physician coaches who trained where I did, at The Life Coach School, to bring you the very best that coaching has offer all in one space.   

For more details visit 

https://empoweringwomenphysicians.com/pmg/

In this episode, we learn how National Women Physicians Day became a holiday four years ago from one of the women that made this happen.  

On February 3 of each year, we now celebrate the birthday of Elizabeth Blackwell MD the first woman physician in the United States.

See the original press release here

Welcome the beloved Hala Sabry, founder of PMG.  You'll hear how PMG came to exist from a night she was feeling worry and anxiety sitting all alone on her sofa at night worrying about how she could possibly figure out how to take care of 3 small children (including twins about to be born) while being an Emergency Dept physician with unpredictable shifts and high demands.  She reached out to her friend Dina and they agreed to put together a small group of friends...and the rest is history.  

If you want to let me know a "big no" that you are making in your life, I'd love to hear about it and why it's important to you. 

I absolutely love seeing the real change that you, a real woman physician, are making in your life.  That's how we change the culture of medicine, one person at a time.  You become an example of what is possible.

https://empoweringwomenphysicians.com/bigno/

If you want to get info about the 2019 or 2020 Bora Bora retreat to receive updates as soon as they are available (wanna be the first to know?) then click on the "send me the details" button on this site to enter your email

  https://empoweringwomenphysicians.com/boraboraretreat/

If you want to donate to PMGs efforts with Unicef to work towards eradicating tetanus click here https://www.unicefusa.org/pmg.

It's now officially a year since this podcast started!

This episode will start a series of interviews of real clients, real women physicians, who have all changed their lives in some way through coaching.

Bonnie Koo MD has been coaching with Sunny for over a year and went from feeling trapped to realizing she had much more freedom than she realized.

She has gone from a new mother and employed dermatologist feeling trapped to finding she had much more freedom than she realized.  She is doing locums on her terms (next assignment - Hawaii) with and serves as a guide to many women physicians in personal finances.

Her program Money For Women Physicians is open for enrollment through Monday October 14th at 9pm EST.

Empowering Women Physicians affiliate link to enroll:
https://empoweringwomenphysicians.com/money

In this episode, Dr Sunny Smith shares the brand new Randomized Controlled Trial published in JAMA Internal Medicine documenting that coaching decreases distress and improves physician well-being.

Download your free self coaching guide here: 

https://empoweringwomenphysicians.com/guide/

Main reference discussed in this podcast:

Dyrbye LN, Shanafelt TD, Gill PR, Satele DV, West CP. Effect of a Professional Coaching Intervention on the Well-being and Distress of Physicians: A Pilot Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Intern Med. Published online August 05, 2019. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.2425

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2740206

Other references mentioned in this podcast: 

West CP, Dyrbye LN, Rabatin JT, et al. Intervention to Promote Physician Well-being, Job Satisfaction, and Professionalism: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Intern Med. 2014;174(4):527–533. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.14387

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/1828744

Shanafelt T, Goh J, Sinsky C. The Business Case for Investing in Physician Well-being. JAMA Intern Med.2017;177(12):1826–1832. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.4340

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2653912 

Atul Gawande New Yorker article on coaching physicians. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/personal-best