Life After Medicine

Is it Possible to be a Doctor AND a Human with Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque

July 20, 2023 Chelsea Turgeon Season 1 Episode 111
Is it Possible to be a Doctor AND a Human with Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque
Life After Medicine
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Life After Medicine
Is it Possible to be a Doctor AND a Human with Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque
Jul 20, 2023 Season 1 Episode 111
Chelsea Turgeon

After her best friend from medical school died by suicide in 2019, Dr. Sapna Shah- Haque realized how broken the current medical system is. She became an advocate for supporting mental health and preventing burnout among healthcare professionals. In this episode, we covered a lot of ground, from the pressure to be infallible to creating a supportive culture in the workplace.

In this episode, we talk about:

  • the stigmas and barriers to receiving mental health support for healthcare professionals
  • how to be authentic and embrace your imperfections in a profession that demands you to be infallible
  • tips for creating a fun and enjoyable workplace where everyone feels supported and valued

This episode is a must-listen for anyone in the medical field who has ever struggled with mental health. Tune in now to hear Dr. Shah-Haque's insights!

Guest Links
https://www.sapnashahhaque.com/

Support for Physicians:
https://physiciansanonymous.org/
https://physiciancoachsupport.com/

REACH OUT TO CHELSEA:
FREE downloads for if you are feeling lost or burnt out in your career:
https://coachchelsmd.com/free/

Ready to create a joyful life and career? Here’s how I can support you through my online courses and coaching programs.
http://coachchelsmd.com/offers/

Life After Medicine FB Group
Connect with a community of like-minded healthcare professionals seeking career change support
https://www.facebook.com/groups/leavemedicine/members

Find me on your fav social media platform for more daily content!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachchelsmd/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChelseaTurgeonMD
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachchelsmd/


Book your FREE Career Clarity Call:
Ready to create a life of freedom and fulfillment? Let's connect to see how I can help you!
Click here to book your FREE 30 min Career Clarity Call.

Life After Medicine FB Group
Connect with a community of like-minded healthcare professionals seeking career change support
https://www.facebook.com/groups/leavemedicine/members

Show Notes Transcript

After her best friend from medical school died by suicide in 2019, Dr. Sapna Shah- Haque realized how broken the current medical system is. She became an advocate for supporting mental health and preventing burnout among healthcare professionals. In this episode, we covered a lot of ground, from the pressure to be infallible to creating a supportive culture in the workplace.

In this episode, we talk about:

  • the stigmas and barriers to receiving mental health support for healthcare professionals
  • how to be authentic and embrace your imperfections in a profession that demands you to be infallible
  • tips for creating a fun and enjoyable workplace where everyone feels supported and valued

This episode is a must-listen for anyone in the medical field who has ever struggled with mental health. Tune in now to hear Dr. Shah-Haque's insights!

Guest Links
https://www.sapnashahhaque.com/

Support for Physicians:
https://physiciansanonymous.org/
https://physiciancoachsupport.com/

REACH OUT TO CHELSEA:
FREE downloads for if you are feeling lost or burnt out in your career:
https://coachchelsmd.com/free/

Ready to create a joyful life and career? Here’s how I can support you through my online courses and coaching programs.
http://coachchelsmd.com/offers/

Life After Medicine FB Group
Connect with a community of like-minded healthcare professionals seeking career change support
https://www.facebook.com/groups/leavemedicine/members

Find me on your fav social media platform for more daily content!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachchelsmd/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChelseaTurgeonMD
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachchelsmd/


Book your FREE Career Clarity Call:
Ready to create a life of freedom and fulfillment? Let's connect to see how I can help you!
Click here to book your FREE 30 min Career Clarity Call.

Life After Medicine FB Group
Connect with a community of like-minded healthcare professionals seeking career change support
https://www.facebook.com/groups/leavemedicine/members

Welcome to the Life After Medicine podcast. Where we help you create a fulfilling and non-traditional career as a healthcare worker. I'm your host, Chelsea Turin. In 2019, I left the hustle and grind of my ob gyn residency and set out to create a fulfilling career on my own terms. Now I'm a best-selling author, career and burnout coach and world traveler. Through this podcast, I'll show you how to enjoy your work. Make an impact and support yourself financially without all the stress and burnout you are currently experiencing. Let's get to the show. Thank you for tuning in to the Life After Medicine podcast. I'm so excited to have you here. If you're listening to this show, you're probably wondering on some level if medicine is the right career path for you. And believe me, I've totally been there too, and I have a free gift to help you through that decision making process, I wrote an ebook called Residency Dropout, how I Quit My Medical Career to Travel the World and Work Remotely. In this 75 page ebook, I share with you my raw, real, and unfiltered story about why I ultimately decided to quit my ob gyn residency during my second year. But it's not just about my story. I also include tips and tools for deciding if a career in medicine is right for you. Long term, I'm giving it away. Totally for free because I know how life changing it can be, and I want you to have access to it. Go to coach chel md.com/ebook to grab your copy. You can also find the link in the podcast description. I've also recorded the audiobook version of Residency Dropout, so you can listen on the go if you want access to the audiobook. I will also be giving this away as a free gift to you. All you have to do is leave a review. Of the Life After Medicine podcast, preferably on Apple Podcasts. To do this, go to the main show page, scroll down to the bottom, choose a star rating, tap, write a review. Take a screenshot of the review and email it to support@coachchelsmd.com, and my team will get you a copy of the audiobook. Thank you so much for your support of the show. It means the world to me. Let's go to the show.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Hello, my loves. Welcome back to another episode of the Life After Medicine podcast. Thank you so much for pressing play Today I am happy to be here with a very special guest, Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque. She is a board certified internal medicine physician host of the Worthy Physician Podcast. And one of the co-authors of the book Thriving After Burnout, which is a compilation of real stories and strategies to reduce female physician burnout. After experiencing burnout herself and watching other physician colleagues burnout, it became a passion of hers to look into these different aspects of burnout. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yes I'm happy to have this conversation that is so needed around burnout, and I think you have a very interesting and special perspective on it. So can you talk us through a bit about your journey and how you got to where you are today being so passionate about burnout, being someone who is such an advocate and speaker of things related to helping cure physician burnout?

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

Absolutely. And again, thank you for the opportunity. Healthcare is much, much different than when I started my training. I think everybody goes into some line of healthcare wanting to genuinely help people. And while we have that ability, the culture of medicine in general is much different than what we had expected, whether it's as a physician, as a nurse. I was seeing a lot of nurses leave bedside nursing within two years of training. I came out here to rural Kansas and I love, I loved that aspect, love the patients, but three years after being on call, even on my weekends off. And how did, what does that look like? When you're in a small town and an internist, not only are you a primary care doc, you're also a consultant. So that was not something I was aware of. So it became a culmination of doing inpatient, outpatient and not really having true time off getting paged on my weekends off on vacation. And then I had a family member, my mom that had a big stroke right after retirement that left her needing 24 hour care. So I had to push pause in life and restructure. Really had to put my. Family at the forefront, and what I was doing at that point in time did not allow me to do that. Looking back, I actually met the cri, the criteria for burnout. Unfortunately, I did not have the language and the knowledge really to understand what I was experiencing. The frustration, the wanting to just not talk to anybody when I got home really just fed up with. What was going on? It was better to go be a mixologist than to be a physician. Fast forward to 2019, I was actually working in a position that allowed me to have that protected time off to, be with family, to be a physician when I'm at work and when I went home, there was no after. Hours paging. We actually had a triage system that captured all the after hour calls. But what really impacted the way I look at life in general, not just medicine, not just my career, but life in general. I, my best friend from medical school died from suicide in 2019. And, there were no warning signs. She left a note that outlined she declined looking for, or she declined professional help because of the fear of professional repercussion. And when you get something like that, that just really shakes you to your core and your really questioning yourself, why am I doing what I'm doing? So with that, I. I really started reading about the rates of physician suicide and burnout. And that is where I came up with the language, with the term of burnout. And not only does it affect physicians, but it affects a lot of frontline workers, healthcare professionals. And then during the pandemic coming up on the first. Death anniversary. Really did not know how to process the loss and emotions. So I started podcasting. I started therapy and here I am today. It's still quite therapeutic. Yeah.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Oh, that is so heartbreaking. Thank you for sharing that story and cuz it, it needs to be talked about, right? It needs to be shared. And so thank you for speaking about it and I just, it's just such a heartbreaking occurrence. It's such a heartbreaking thing that happens, especially within, what really got me is like in the suicide note, how she said he or she actually, I don't know if I got the gender but how your best friend said, They didn't want to seek out care because of fear of professional repercussions. And for people who are not aware of what that means, cuz I didn't really understand that when, even when I was in medicine, I didn't understand. I remember I was dating a guy at the time and he was struggling with like depression. He was in my medical school class and I was like why don't you just go. See a therapist, like, why don't you go get some help? And then he like had all this I thought it was just paranoia around Yeah. But if they're gonna see my records or if something he was just like so reticent to get any sort of help. And I thought it was so weird and I just thought he was being really paranoid. But it's that's not correct. There's, there are actual professional repercussions that happened from. Physicians and potentially other healthcare professionals seeking help. So can you talk to us about like your knowledge or experience of that, of what it is that happens and like what are potential repercussions?

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

Absolutely. So I'm not a hundred percent sure what those repercussions are, but it's like the Wizard of Oz and, yeah, I'm using that analogy partly cuz of from where I'm from, which is, rural Kansas. But it's this big thing, behind the curtain. What if so every year as physicians and other healthcare professionals, when we go to renew our license, we have to ask or we have to answer questions. And some of those questions are, do you suffer from depression, anxiety, mental illness? Do you have a substance abuse problem? If you check yes. What is that going to bring about? Is that going to bring about an investigation? Are you going to lose your license? Are you going to be put on probation? And if so, what does that mean for your livelihood? What does that mean? If you're early in your career, what does that mean for, for debt? Because training in no matter what area of medicine is incredibly expensive and long. So what happens if you can't generate an income to cover that? So there are so many questions about what actually happens.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yeah and I like, I love the way you put it as it's kinda like the Wizard of Oz. It's like this unknown entity. And I feel like that probably makes it scarier because there actually isn't a clear cut. If you suffer from mental health and you're on medication, it's okay, but if you do this and that, like there's no actual clear cut anything. It's just this sort of ambiguous, mysterious what happens if I check these boxes and we don't know? And. I just think obviously, like I'm sure you agree, it's just, it's completely not okay because physicians and anyone working in healthcare like are more, probably more likely than anyone else, like because of the hazards of the job and the responsibility of the job and the underlying factors that bring us into working in medicine in the first place, like the perfectionism, the overachieving, all of those types of things that make us succeed in the training in the first place. All of that is like this perfect storm for mental health problems. And so it's if we're so likely to be suffering in some way, shape or form, and then we're the least likely to be able to get help. You just see how this is set up for such such a problem.

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

Oh, immensely. Immensely. And that's the thing, physicians, PAs, nurse practitioners, Nurses, physical therapists, y'all, everybody that works in healthcare I don't know what the board of nursing does or what those questions look like, but I hope they're not the same. And if they are, definitely rallied to get them changed because there's power in numbers. I can tell you on October 31st, 2019. Here in Kansas, those questions were consolidated into one, basically saying, if you suffer from X, Y, and Z, does it impede your ability to practice medicine? Which is completely different.

Yeah.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yeah. And was that in light of your

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

friend? I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I know that the letter did make it to the Board of Healing Arts, and so I do like to think that did make. An impact because it was an impactful letter. Somebody wrote this and left it on their desk, Dr. Baker, she left it on her desk the night she took her life. That has to speak volumes to those that are governing board saying that our healthcare workers are sick. They can't seek help because of fear. We've got to do something, we've got to do better.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yeah. And so tell me about the podcast. I love, first of all, I love the title of it, the Worthy Physician. What does that title like, why did you decide to call it that? What does that mean to you?

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

Sure. And I think the thing about it is, we as physicians, the Hippocratic Oath, we take an oath to. Heals sickness and suffering in others, but there's nothing that says anything about taking care of the self. So again, this was, this came from a place of mourning of grief, and I wanna remind physicians and anybody else out there who is an empath, who is a giver, who is in the healthcare profession. To understand that they are also worthy of that same compassion and forgiveness and healing that we try to offer others.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yeah. And what do you think makes us not know that? Because as people who are so empathic and kind and nurturing towards so many people, What is it? I know this is like a philosophical question, but like in your experience maybe and even your own life, what is it that makes us have such a hard time turning that back on ourselves?

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

I think it's the way we've been conditioned to give and give. We don't go into medicine just without a lot of hard work. When I say medicine, the overall profession. There are benchmarks and we keep having to meet those consistently, and we are never taught to really take the time and pause. So part of it is conditioning. I think the other part is just the nature of what we go into. It's never a focus.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yeah. And I think that conditioning and the hustle culture and the go go, I think a lot of that ties our worthiness to our achievements and our, pace, our busyness, especially in healthcare these days, there's just like volume is such a thing and like efficiency and moving and so there's this sense of If I pause or if like I don't have time to, to pause and stop cuz there's too much to do and there's too much going on. And so just like that idea of I am worthy of pausing and resting and like that, I think that's just very revolutionary.

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

absolutely. You know where we're all trying to hustle and. Chasing whatever it is that we're supposed to be chasing. But the true question is, what exactly are we chasing? Have we actually paused to, to say, okay, this is what I want my life to look like. This is how I need to take those steps. This is what's important to me. What are our core values? It's really important to get those down. We need we, as healthcare workers, Definitely deserve that happiness and it's not always in material. Things can't make you happy.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yeah, and I think just like taking that time to zoom out and look at our life is so important. And that's something you said like when your friend died by suicide, like that was one thing you stopped and you're like, what are we doing here? What am I even doing? And what sort of came from that? I know the podcast is something that came from that, but just in terms of like you reevaluating parts of your life, did you have any sort of like realizations or sense of this doesn't matter anymore and this actually does matter, and did you have any of those things that shifted for

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

you? Oh, a hundred percent. I actually went part-time After that I decided, I'm not gonna work. I'm gonna work to live, not live to work. And I wanna explore other things that I enjoyed in my twenties that I don't even remember what those were. And part of it was a pandemic that I actually had time. And yes, it was just unfortunate, perfect timing in a very series of unfortunate events. But yeah, I rediscovered a sight of myself, of love of music, love of art, love of reading going out and. Being silly. I realized that I never actually grew up and I'm an adult kid and I love it.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yes. I feel that so much. I feel like my inner child just wants to like, goof around and climb on things and like I see a tree and I'm like, I wanna climb it. Like I'm literally an adult child. But I feel like that's something that is stifled out of us. Within in the medical field because it is a very serious place and that's not wrong for it to be serious because there's a lot at stake. And so I get it, but then it's hard to turn that off and to let yourself be unserious and more like playful and silly and fun when you leave the office or the hospital because yeah, I just feel like there's all that stress that builds up and then we just forget to access that side of

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

ourselves. Going back to the hustle culture, we're really never really taught how to turn down the volume of chaos that maybe work creates. Because, again with medicine being chaotic and very serious, cuz literally life are at stake, you carry that with you, you carry that with you no matter what field you work in. And. A bad outcome is you're gonna take that personally. But we also have to remember that we can only do as much as we can because we're gonna practice at the top of our training no matter what, and then allow ourselves to be human. And that's where I think almost everybody forgets. Again, given the culture in which we live, we forget to be human, we forget to allow ourselves. To be human and to feel, and yet to go out and enjoy all the beautiful things that life has to offer.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yeah. And so when you talk about being human, it's something that I didn't really start practicing until I left medicine, right? Because. I was just a full robot achiever the whole time I was in medicine, and it really wasn't until I left that. Then I gave myself the space to discover my imperfections and be a human and like embrace and love all those parts of myself. And I've never had to take that humanity and try to jam it back into the medical field since leaving. So how do you balance that or reconcile that when yes, you wanna be a human and embrace your imperfections? And the pressure in the medical field is to be infallible and to not make mistakes and to not embrace imperfections. And so how do you reconcile one with the other?

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

So I first will start off with knowing what I will and won't do. I'm not going to work full-time. I work part-time because that allows me to. Both embrace the crazy side, the more creative side, and also to embrace the physician side so that way I can feel like a complete person. So that allows me time to look at all the joys and chaos of life and enjoy each part of it. The second thing is that I work outpatient only. I'm not gonna go do inpatient. For me, it's not sustainable. When I leave work, I understand that there, there are gonna be weekends of call and there are gonna be nights of, pages. But I also want to ensure that I have my protected time with my family, and to be rested. The other thing is that, When I truly don't know something, I am very honest with my patients and I say, I don't know, we can try X, Y, and Z. We can get you to a, B and C specialist. And then I show up as my authentic self. I'm not going to show up in dress clothes and a white coat. That's not me. I wear scrubs and cowboy boots, and we have a culture in the office where I work that. We have a great staff. We have great, I have great colleagues and yeah, to relieve some stress. We're gonna joke around a little bit. Of course, it's in a tasteful manner and it's, not in, it's usually in the office after hours, but we release that stress. We have that culture. That culture has been created. I love that. I love

Chelsea Turgeon:

when you said, I wear cowboy boots and scrubs to work.

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

That's great. Again, I'm here in Kansas, so it's very true to the nature, but that's, for me, that's comfortable and it's, you can always wash off cowboy boots. I'm not gonna worry about it. Life. Life is messy. Yeah, wear the appropriate clothing.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Well, I also think it's just symbolic of regardless of what your authentic self wants to wear, it's like the fact that you're, you are choosing what feels good for you, and you're saying like, I don't need to be this one societal's version of what a doctor's gonna look like. I'm gonna come in looking like myself, being like myself, and just giving myself their permission to tell a patient, Hey, I don't know. And this is something we could try. And I feel like that is something that is really empowering, like to both you and the patients to just be real. And I think that being your authentic self is where whatever work that you're doing, if you feel like you can just let down the mask, relax and just be who you are, it's almost burnout proof. Like not a hundred percent cuz you still need rest, but It's very, it's like a very sustainable way to

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

work. Yes, absolutely. It really is. And you don't have to put that energy toward being something you're not. You can just be as you are.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yeah. And I think that's powerful. So one thing, and also it sounds like you've created a great culture in your current workplace. Do you have any tips for how to. To make a culture that is fun and enjoyable. And that's, it sounds like it's like collaborative and all of that. Do you have any thoughts of like how people can start to bring that into their workplace?

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

I cannot take credit for that. I have to give credit to my office manager who is just amazing. I would definitely, but to say, to speak to that, I can definitely say. Don't just look for a body to fill a position. Not only do they have to know their knowledge for the scope of whatever they're going to do, but also look for work ethic and look at how well they interact with the other coworkers. I think a huge thing that. Companies are missing out on or have a group interview because you also want to see the vibes and the interactions with that energy of that new person coming in with the current staff. I understand it's not always palpable or possible, but definitely make an effort because it just takes one bad apple to upset the basket. And if you can prevent that, And add to the already well-oiled machine or to the already existing culture, by all means, you're going to have more out of that and more longevity if you put that initial

Chelsea Turgeon:

work forward. Yeah, no, I agree that like the fit and the culture and the people that you interact with every day makes such a big difference. And so finding people who you click with and who you feel like you can be more of yourself with is. Really important. And so that's you're currently in a working environment that is more supportive and more, collaborative and joyful to be around. But I know reading through your story in that thriving after a burnout book, I know it wasn't always that way. One of the things that really stuck out to me in the first place, I believe it's like the first place you worked right after residency, was just this idea of shame. In the workplace, and I'm putting that term on it because you were talking about trying to, like, when you realize you're like on call all the time and you're literally working nonstop, that you were trying to decrease your workload and take steps to proactively reduce that. And then you were met with messages from people who were saying things like, your generation just doesn't like to work hard.

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

Yeah. So funny thing is I am actually back working at that same place, but the leadership has changed, the structure has changed, and the office manager is now much different than prior to, and I can talk to that. There is more female representation as far as the physicians. And I think that matters because, we're gonna have a different role maybe say compared to a male physician or a male colleague that is one or two generations older. So I think that when you have different makeup of coworkers, that will also change the culture and that is why it is so important to bring in that diversity. However you want to describe that, whether it's gender, whether it's age, whether it's religion makeup, it really is important because it's going to change the way things are structured and the way things are operating from there forward.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yeah, I know that's a such an interesting observation that it's it's the same place, but then having different leadership, because I really believe in many workplaces, like culture's created from the top down. And so seeing how a shift in the leadership has changed the culture that just proves that point and Yeah, the idea, like the sort of outdated idea of The older physicians who would be like in my day we would work, like we lived at the hospital and we worked all the time. And then just like feeling like we're less than just like even the messages that work is noble in some way, or sacrificing yourself is noble in some way. And if someone's trying to put up a boundary around when they wanna work or not work, that there's any judgment around that whatsoever. I. Now that I've been like four years out of the medical field, that just blows my mind that anyone would judge anyone else around not wanting to work.

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

Yeah. And that's a funny thing is that's the culture, like that's the culture of medicine and it's getting better. And we see that even with nurses, right? I did my night shift. You gotta do yours, you gotta get the unwanted shifts. I think that the generations coming out of the different schools of training do have that caliber to say, I don't wanna do this, that I'm going to figure out a way how, and I admire that. I admire that because they're learning it early, hopefully.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that just like when we were talking about being a human like that's something, that's a way that medicine tries to erase our humanity by saying I. You need to work even when you're tired, you need to work even when you don't want to. That like work is first and foremost and it just erases the idea that we even need downtime or that we should need downtime. And so I think that's just one of the ways, and that's one of the messages among many sort of tell us that we're not supposed to be human.

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

Yeah, no I would agree with you. And the origin in which all that is rooted is very antiquated and obsolete, to be honest.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yeah. And I think it just doesn't, I guess there was a time when the, outcomes were okay and like people were healing even with that. But I just don't see how anyone working themselves to the ground. For the healing of someone else. Makes sense. Like I don't

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

see how that makes any sense. It doesn't. It doesn't. And I think the world of medicine and not, I'm not just talking about physicians, I'm talking about like bedside medicine, hospital clinic. I think that they're waking up and starting to understand that, something's gotta change, how it's gonna change. I would like to see. I would like to see more lobbying as far as from the healthcare workers to definitely make that change and to definitely be the voices of reason. Because there are power. There's power in numbers, and we have the knowledge and the numbers. Yeah, we

Chelsea Turgeon:

just don't have the time and energy.

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

Yeah, cuz we're spending it all at the hospital. We're at the at the clinic and we're not supposed to be human, so who needs sleep anyways, right?

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yeah, it's hard. And like you said I think you've talked about this before, like it's just not an isolated situation. There's just lots of different pieces that need to change. There's the internal piece of us, like believing that we're worthy of all these different things, but then also there's systemic changes that need to happen and it's just an issue that's. So versatile that we need tons of podcasts

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

to talk about it. Yeah. We'll see. But we're hopefully making that positive ripple effect by having this conversation.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yes. That is the hope. I think that's one thing I've been collecting stories for my hundredth episode recently, and one of the things that I keep hearing is it's just like validating and relatable and realizing like, Just saying certain things that are not okay. It's like you don't realize something's not okay if it's so normal to you and everyone around you is normalizing it and experiencing it, and then you feel like you're crazy because it doesn't feel right to you. But then just having places where we can vocalize actually that's not okay. I think there's power in that because it validates people's experience.

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

Absolutely.

Chelsea Turgeon:

And What advice would you give to somebody who is feeling burnt out and unfulfilled in medicine?

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

First off, get help. Get help, worry about the repercussions later because you are replaceable at work, but you are not replaceable at home. Yeah.

Chelsea Turgeon:

What does that mean? Like I think I technically understand what it means.

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

Can you tell so that a bit more? Yes, absolutely. I could walk in and have a replacement tomorrow at work, right? Whether it be another physician or somebody else that they've hired because. I am just a cog. That's not true, but let's use that as an example. But who else is gonna take my place at home? Who else is going to raise my kids? Who else is going to step into that role of, still helping my mom navigate the healthcare system or being her D P A? Who's going to be the one to do crazy childlike things with the rest of the family? That's my job. That's my job. That's what I want to do. That's my fun. Nobody else is gonna do it like me. So I can be replaced at work to take care of patients and to check boxes. But when it comes to everyday life with my family members and my friends, I cannot be replaced. There's only one made.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yeah. And so what I hear from that too is just like figure out what matters to you and then spend time there.

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

That too. Yes. Because life is not meant to be working. Nobody else on their deathbed said, I wish I would've worked more. It's, I wish I would've created more family. No more family time and more memories.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Yeah. So it's just like thinking about what's actually important. And so then when you're in a place where you're feeling burnt out, just reaching out and getting help, which can be the scariest thing to admit that you're burnt out and then to ask for help, but it's necessary.

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

Yeah. I would love to provide some anonymous some places where this is only for physicians if you want to, and you don't have to, but physicians Anonymous and physicians coach support, those are free tools. Yeah. We can

Chelsea Turgeon:

definitely put those resources in the show notes cuz I think that's important to have so people know when we say get help, it's like, what does that mean? Here are some places you can start. Yeah. And I've done a podcast episode on mental health as well. When I personally talked about it and I just, I gave people resources in that and so it's yeah, you guys can go look at my. Mental health episode and find the resources from that cuz I shared different places to find therapists and free therapy and different things like that. And so I think all of that you can also try to use chat g p t as a therapist potentially.

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

Yeah, there's there they can pass medical board. So you got a psychiatrist in your pocket.

Chelsea Turgeon:

My friend and I are like making up an app where it has, we're not really doing it, we're just talking about it where it's like it uses that chat G P T technology to help you figure out why you're not. Happy in the moment or like why you're feeling upset. And we're gonna name the app Shrink Itron.

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

That's

Chelsea Turgeon:

cute. You get to ask it like, Hey, shrink Itron. I'm feeling really like depressed today. What do you think is going on? And it'll be like, I. You haven't, you've only gotten six hours of sleep this whole week, whereas before you normally have eight and so it can like, analyze some of your biometrics and health data, Uhhuh talk about that. So anyways, go toron. Once it's available and you can get help from shrink catron for free,

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

that, that'd actually be really awesome. Yeah, I think

Chelsea Turgeon:

it'd be hilarious. And so where can everybody find you? What, like where can people connect with you? Where can people find out more about what it is that you're doing?

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

Absolutely. Thanks for asking. The worthy physician.com, that is the, my website. It also has link to my podcast some downloads that I have and my blog in the book. Perfect.

Chelsea Turgeon:

Thank you so much for joining us today. We appreciate your words of wisdom and your story, and your honesty, and just your perspective. Thank you

Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque:

very much for having me again. This was a great experience.