Women Physicians Flourish Podcast Trailer

My name is Rebecca Lauderdale, and I’m an internal medicine doctor in private practice in the deep south. About 7 years ago, I suffered from severe burnout and depression.  I had three kids under 12, a demanding career, and I felt like I was failing at every role in my life. 

This was around the time that the first big data on physician burnout was published, and nobody outside academia had much awareness about the issue, much less any physician wellness or burnout prevention programs. And even in academia, the first physician chief wellness officer wasn't hired until 2017.  

All there really was were numbers about how many doctors were burned out, but not how to fix it. This also was before it was clear in the evidence, big surprise, that it’s not us individually, but the organizations and systems we work within that contribute most to burnout.  

Doctors are some of the most resilient people on the planet, so how was this happening to us? Without really knowing where to start, I set out on a somewhat messy, hard, rewarding, journey to figure this out because I was suffering, but I didn’t have anyone to mentor me through it.  I was committed to finding out how to get from where I was, which felt like the absolute bottom,  to not just being without burnout but flourishing, living a truly fulfilling life.

This podcast is about bringing the things I learned on that journey to you. It’s about the science and the stories and the people that helped me heal and then flourish. The things we’ve learned about wellbeing as a science, a burgeoning field right now, and how those things can help you if you’re struggling. 

If you feel like you’re failing, if you feel like your life as a physician isn’t what you thought it would be, and you need some hope, but also some actionable ways to help - this podcast is for you. I’ve directed this content toward women, because I’m a woman, and I found that a lot of the work I had to do in the beginning related directly to the fact that I was a woman living with the social and cultural conditioning  of women in America. There are strange things that happen when outdated expectations of gender roles are making you suffer,  and you try to change them.  I had to work on some of that first, before I was ready to change my practice of medicine. 

Regardless of your gender identification, you are welcome with open arms. I promise you it can get better, and we need each other to do it.

I hope you’ll join me for the first episode, out soon wherever you get your podcasts. In the meanwhile, you can click the link here at www.rebeccalauderdalemd.com/podcast  to sign up for my email list and get notified when episodes are released.