Your ability to earn income is your most valuable financial asset. Physicians spend years protecting patients, building careers, and accumulating assets, yet many discover too late that the insurance designed to protect their income is full of loopholes, exclusions, and traps. Disability insurance sounds boring until the moment someone needs it, and then it becomes one of the most emotionally and financially consequential topics in medicine.

In this episode, we explore the hidden realities of physician disability insurance, why employer policies often fail when doctors need them most, and how to think strategically about protecting future income before health problems appear. We also walk through what physicians should do when filing a disability claim, and how to avoid sabotaging the process from the very beginning.

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Tools, mindsets, and communication techniques so you don't get eaten alive by a job you're good at.

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Guest bio: Matthew Wiggins is the founder of Doc Insure and a leading educator in physician disability insurance. Since 2003, he has helped more than 15,000 doctors understand and secure income protection, while pioneering a faster, online-first way for residents, fellows, and attendings to compare personalized disability policies. Through Doc Insure, Matt makes a confusing and often overlooked topic practical, transparent, and easier to navigate so physicians can make informed decisions about protecting their future earnings. Matt and his crew will give you a quote on disability insurance through this link. Or you can set up a call to chat with them directly here.

We Discuss:

• Why most employer disability policies leave physicians underprotected
• How true own-occupation coverage protects a physician’s specialty income
• Why physicians dramatically underestimate their chances of becoming disabled
• The different disability risks facing procedural and cognitive specialties
• Why disability claims often become adversarial and difficult to navigate
• How detailed occupational documentation strengthens disability claims
• Why income documentation determines the value of a disability payout
• How understanding a diagnosis improves the strength of a disability claim
• Why filing timing can affect whether benefits are approved and when payments begin
• Why buying disability insurance during residency protects future insurability

Mentioned in this episode:

Get Out On Time

The Out-On-Time Course gives you the tools to complete your charts on shift, manage overwhelm and interruptions, and create fast, focused, kickass notes, so you can stay out of chart debt and get home on time. Self-paced. 12 hours AMA PRA Category 1 CME.

Learn More About The Out-On-Time Course

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We took the highest yield tools from our 1:1 coaching and created a community-based course with docs who get it and get you.

The UnBurnable Course

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Medicine gives you a map. Pre-med, med school, residency, attending. Step by step, no shortcuts. Then one day, the map disappears and you’re there asking, “Now what?”

In this episode, Dr. Mizuho Morrison and I dig into what happens after training, when fulfillment, identity, and control are no longer prescribed. We talk about nonlinear careers in medicine, from part-time clinical work and motherhood to podcasting, entrepreneurship, leadership, and walking away from roles that no longer fit.

We also get into what happened when Mizuho wore a continuous glucose monitor during emergency department shifts, and what it revealed about stress, cortisol, and the real physiologic cost of the job.

This is a conversation about agency, experimentation, and ownership, and how to build a medical career that actually works for your life, not just your training.

💡 Check out our Free Resources specifically designed to address pain points in medical practice💡

Guest Bio: Dr. Mizuho Morrison is a board-certified emergency physician in Southern California and CEO of EM:RAP. A graduate of the Los Angeles County + USC residency program, she has worked in both academic and community emergency medicine and has been a major voice in EM education for more than a decade. Miz was one of the first female EM podcasters, helped launch multiple EM:RAP programs, served as Editor-in-Chief and Senior Medical Director at Hippo Education, and co-hosted Essentials of Emergency Medicine. She is also an entrepreneur and cofounder of 3MD, Three Mommy Doctors, a medical device company that reimagined first-aid kits for kids. She lives in Orange County with her two children.

We Discuss:

• The Train Track Problem in Medical Careers
• Fulfillment Is Not One Standard Career Shape
• Seasons, Experiments, and Knowing When to Move On
• Stress, Cortisol, and the Cost of Shift Work
• Begin Before You Feel Ready
• Reclaiming Agency in a System That Keeps Asking for More

Mentioned in this episode:

Supranormal: A Field Guide for the Impossible Job

Rob's book is for anyone doing high-stakes, human-facing work who's ever thought I wasn't trained for this. Built from 20 years in emergency medicine and thousands of hours coaching physicians, Supranormal delivers the tools, mindset shifts, and communication techniques that don't show up on any board exam, but make all the difference in how you perform, connect, and build a career worth keeping.

Get Supranormal on Amazon

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UnBurnable Registration is Now Open

We took the highest yield tools from our 1:1 coaching and created a community-based course with docs who get it and get you.

The UnBurnable Course

It’s not uncommon for hospitals to provide clinicians with scorecards. While they may seem like a judgment of your quality of work, scorecards rarely provide data that will lead to flourishing in your career. But what if you made your own scorecard, filled with things that were important to you and fully within your control? If you nailed one of those each day at work, what would your experience be like?

In this episode, we explore what happened when Dr. Erin Broderick, a participant in the Unburnable Course, stopped using the hospital’s scorecard as her main definition of success and created a more personal one instead. Erin talks about how she took a new approach to patient satisfaction surveys, one that has eliminated nearly all the stress and distress associated with them.

Finally, we look at how intentional practices during and after a shift made Erin’s work feel joyful and sustainable.

💡 Check out our Free Resources specifically designed to address pain points in medical practice💡

We Discuss:

• Measuring success with a personal scorecard
• A post-shift routine that closes the day
• Closing open loops
• A novel approach to patient satisfaction surveys
• Letting go of metrics that don’t serve you
• Scheduling recovery during the shift
• Extending intentionality beyond the hospital

Mentioned in this episode:

Doctoring Done Well | Bite-Sized Wins

Every other week, a few minutes of career-elevating insight delivered straight to your inbox. The Doctoring Done Well Newsletter is never lame, never spammy, and always fresh.

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Supranormal: A Field Guide for the Impossible Job

Rob's book is for anyone doing high-stakes, human-facing work who's ever thought I wasn't trained for this. Built from 20 years in emergency medicine and thousands of hours coaching physicians, Supranormal delivers the tools, mindset shifts, and communication techniques that don't show up on any board exam, but make all the difference in how you perform, connect, and build a career worth keeping.

Get Supranormal on Amazon

UnBurnable | Our Cohort-Based Burnout Prevention and Cure Course

We took the highest yield tools from our 1:1 coaching and created a community-based course with docs who get it and get you.

The UnBurnable Course

If you have ever lost it mid-shift, frozen when you should have acted, or spent the next two weeks asking yourself what's wrong with me, you already know what character assassination feels like.

In this episode, we break down a simple and effective reframe that interrupts the self-flagellation shame spiral without making excuses or lowering standards. You will learn how to move from why did I to, of course, how to give yourself a legitimate and hard-earned break, and why self-compassion is not softness but one of the most underutilized performance tools in medicine. Topics include physician burnout, self-compassion, cognitive reappraisal, shame and self-criticism, communication under stress, and physician coaching.

💡 Check out our Free Resources specifically designed to address pain points in medical practice💡

We discuss:

1. Why self-criticism after a hard moment often hurts more than the moment itself
2. The difference between first-order distress and second-order distress
3. What the research on rumination and shame actually shows
4. Why your brain treats harsh self-evaluation like a physical threat
5. The biology of performance under load and why grit has a limit
6. The of 'course' reframe and how to use it in real time
7. Four steps to move from character assassination to context assessment
8. Why suppression makes it worse, and reappraisal changes the signal
9. Pre-shift dread and how to take the shame out of it
10. Why self-compassion is a performance tool, not a soft skill
11. What this reframe is not: excuses, lowered standards, or avoiding accountability
12. How to start today with one sentence

Mentioned in this episode:

Doctoring Done Well | Bite-Sized Wins

Every other week, a few minutes of career-elevating insight delivered straight to your inbox. The Doctoring Done Well Newsletter is never lame, never spammy, and always fresh.

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Supranormal: A Field Guide for the Impossible Job

Rob's book is for anyone doing high-stakes, human-facing work who's ever thought I wasn't trained for this. Built from 20 years in emergency medicine and thousands of hours coaching physicians, Supranormal delivers the tools, mindset shifts, and communication techniques that don't show up on any board exam, but make all the difference in how you perform, connect, and build a career worth keeping.

Get Supranormal on Amazon

The Out-On-Time Course

Built for emergency clinicians who are tired of chart debt and getting derailed by interruptions and overwhelm. Learn practical, real-time documentation and shift-efficiency strategies to finish your shift and actually leave on time.

Learn More About The Out-On-Time Course

Emergency medicine has an interruption-based workflow. There's no getting around some of that, but recurrent interruptions erode quality of care, accuracy of documentation, concentration, and ultimately the ability to leave work on time. While some interruptions are unavoidable, most are predictable and preventable. Reclaiming control over interruptions is more than a way to improve efficiency; it's about patient safety, reducing medical errors, and safeguarding your mental health. Constant task switching creates cognitive load, contributing to emergency physician burnout and compromising clinical decision-making.

In this episode, we explore tactical and mindset shifts that emergency clinicians can use to reduce interruptions, enhance documentation efficiency, and avoid the hidden costs of task switching. We'll cover practical strategies for managing EKG interruptions, skillful ways to manage nursing questions, and setting boundaries all while maintaining team dynamics and patient care quality. Whether you're an emergency physician, PA, NP, or resident, these evidence-based strategies will help you work smarter, reduce stress, and reclaim control of your clinical day.

Finishing emergency department shifts with a stack of charts to complete gets old fast. This chart debt also contributes to burnout.

We will help you break bad habits and equip you with the skills to walk out the door unencumbered.

Out-On-Time is a course for emergency physicians and clinicians that teaches shift efficiency and real-time documentation, enabling you to write fast, focused charts that bill well and are medicolegally sound.

Learn More About The Out-On-Time Course

We Discuss:

• The Cost of Interruptions in Emergency Medicine
• Not All Interruptions Are Urgent
• The Cognitive Cost of Task Switching
• Becoming a Non-Interruptible Clinician
• Deferring Without Alienating Your Team
• Protecting Focus at the End of the Shift
• Fixing the EKG Interruption Problem
• Asynchronous Communication That Actually Works

Mentioned in this episode:

Supranormal: A Field Guide for the Impossible Job

Rob's book is for anyone doing high-stakes, human-facing work who's ever thought I wasn't trained for this. Built from 20 years in emergency medicine and thousands of hours coaching physicians, Supranormal delivers the tools, mindset shifts, and communication techniques that don't show up on any board exam, but make all the difference in how you perform, connect, and build a career worth keeping.

Get Supranormal on Amazon

So many of our choices are shaped less by desire and more by expectation. We chase prestige, status, or recognition, only to arrive and realize we were climbing the wrong ladder. Beneath burnout and the friction, there’s often the truth that we were never pursuing what we truly wanted. In this episode, we explore the concept of mimetic desire, how it misguides our ambitions, and how to reclaim our decisions. Finally, we examine how fear of judgment and shame shape our careers more than we think, and what it takes to break free.

Guest bio:  Josh Russell, MD, is double board-certified in Emergency Medicine and Palliative Care. He’s held leadership roles as a Chief Medical Officer in telehealth, artificial intelligence, and urgent care systems. He’s an experienced clinician, writer, educator, and medical editor with a passion for making complex topics accessible. 

LinkedIn article that spurred this podcast

Josh’s Website

We Discuss:

• Mimetic Desire: Chasing What Others Want
• The Trap of “Should”: Internalized Shame
• The Concentric Circles of Stressors
• Finding What You Really Want
• The Ladder Against the Wrong Wall
• Actionable Reflection Practices

Mentioned in this episode:

The Out-On-Time Course

Built for emergency clinicians who are tired of chart debt and getting derailed by interruptions and overwhelm. Learn practical, real-time documentation and shift-efficiency strategies to finish your shift and actually leave on time.

Learn More About The Out-On-Time Course

Doctoring Done Well | Bite-Sized Wins

Every other week, a few minutes of career-elevating insight delivered straight to your inbox. The Doctoring Done Well Newsletter is never lame, never spammy, and always fresh.

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What if the true test of strength is focusing less on what we feel and more on what we do? In this episode, we explore a practical philosophy of action, presence, and personal agency with Dan Millman, author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior. Finally, we dig into how small mindset shifts can transform both high-stakes moments and the quiet struggles of everyday life.

Guest bio: Dan Millman is a world champion athlete turned author, educator, and teacher of practical wisdom. With a background that spans competitive sports, university-level coaching, martial arts, and academic instruction, Dan brings a rare blend of physical discipline and philosophical insight to his work.

Following two decades of spiritual exploration, he developed what would become known as the Peaceful Warrior’s Way, an action-based approach to living with purpose. Dan is the author of 18 books, including the international bestseller Way of the Peaceful Warrior, which was adapted into a feature film. His writings have reached millions across 29 languages and continue to influence readers around the world.

We Discuss:

• Peaceful Warrior Philosophy in Action
• What We Control (And What We Don’t)
• Action Over Emotion
• The Three Rules of Wise Living
• The Power of Present Moment Awareness
• Mastery Through Deliberate Practice
• Purpose as a Practical Tool
• Growth Without Perfection
• Working Within Broken Systems
• Practicing Life

Mentioned in this episode:

Free Tools To Make Medical Practice Easier

No fluff. Just good stuff.

Free Resources Link

The Out-On-Time Course

Built for emergency clinicians who are tired of chart debt and getting derailed by interruptions and overwhelm. Learn practical, real-time documentation and shift-efficiency strategies to finish your shift and actually leave on time.

Learn More About The Out-On-Time Course

Supranormal: A Field Guide for the Impossible Job

Rob's book is for anyone doing high-stakes, human-facing work who's ever thought I wasn't trained for this. Built from 20 years in emergency medicine and thousands of hours coaching physicians, Supranormal delivers the tools, mindset shifts, and communication techniques that don't show up on any board exam, but make all the difference in how you perform, connect, and build a career worth keeping.

Get Supranormal on Amazon

Doctoring Done Well | Bite-Sized Wins

Every other week, a few minutes of career-elevating insight delivered straight to your inbox. The Doctoring Done Well Newsletter is never lame, never spammy, and always fresh.

Sign up for our Newsletter

Your work world is built on endurance, intensity, and mastery. The culture is 'always on,' and you were trained to perform in conditions no one would call normal. The work is supranormal. It sits at the edge of reasonable and regularly exceeds what is sustainable by most standards. High performers like you often find themselves on an above-the-fray pedestal, expected to be tireless and self-sacrificing. Supranormal work can unlock extraordinary performance, but the cost adds up if it goes unchecked.

In this episode, we look at where this culture came from, the cortisol spikes that shape your days, the hidden curriculum of self-sacrifice, and the countermeasures that keep you from burning out. It is a straight look at the supranormal experience and what it takes to do this work without losing yourself to it.

Awake + Aware | Our 2026 Retreat

Join us at Awake and Aware, our 3-day retreat in Scottsdale, AZ. March 1-4, 2026. Space is limited.

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🎓 P.S. This is a CME event.

We discuss:

• Why medical culture expects you to perform inside conditions no one would call normal

• What makes supranormal work different from ordinary high-stress work

• How the “always on” ethos formed and why it persists

• The hidden curriculum of self-sacrifice and the pedestal of being above the fray

• Cortisol spikes, sympathetic load, and what chronic activation does to your body

• Why self-preservation feels selfish in medicine and why that belief is wrong

• The roots of modern training from monastic care to Halsted’s cocaine-fueled stamina

• Why emergency medicine is an outlier in burnout, longevity, and physiological strain

• The concept of parasympathetic nurturing as a countermeasure

• How mindset changes biology and shifts performance

• What it takes to last in supranormal work without losing yourself

What if the best decision is to not decide at all? We waste valuable mental energy overthinking simple choices, especially when the outcomes are nearly identical. That kind of cognitive drain reduces our capacity to think clearly when decisions actually matter. In this episode, we explore how to reduce cognitive load, identify low-risk choices that can be automated or ignored, and recognize when deliberation is just noise. Finally, we break down how framing, values, and the right question can make even complex decisions frictionless.

Guest bio:  Dan Dworkis MD, PhD is an emergency physician who is a clinical professor of emergency medicine at USC Keck School of Medicine. He’s also host of the Emergency Mind podcast that focuses on helping individuals and teams perform better under pressure and the author of The Emergency Mind: Wiring Your Brain for Performance Under Pressure. 

We Discuss:

• The Three Types of Cognitive Load
• Harvesting Free Rolls
• Applying Dominance and Cutting Through Decisional Noise
• How to Stop Fretting Over Equivalent Decisions
• Navigating Equipoise
• Making Big Life Decisions

Mentioned in this episode:

5 Free Tools To Make Medical Practice Easier

Scripts for your least favorite conversations. The quick and dirty guide to calling consults. A 10-minute "Driveway Debrief" to switch off from work. My favorite documentation templates. Step-by-step guide for delivering the news of death.

Free Resources Link

Doctoring Done Well | Bite-Sized Wins

Every other week, a few minutes of career-elevating insight delivered straight to your inbox. The Doctoring Done Well Newsletter is never lame, never spammy, and always fresh.

Sign up for our Newsletter

The Out-On-Time Course

Built for emergency clinicians who are tired of chart debt and getting derailed by interruptions and overwhelm. Learn practical, real-time documentation and shift-efficiency strategies to finish your shift and actually leave on time.

Learn More About The Out-On-Time Course

As students navigate an increasingly complex, competitive, and costly path to medical school, parents often find themselves uncertain about how to help without hindering growth. Meanwhile, institutions maintain opaque admissions practices, amplifying anxiety for both students and families. In this episode, we explore what parents need to know to truly support, not sabotage, their aspiring doctors. Finally, we pull back the curtain on everything from shadowing to AI in essays, offering a brutally honest look at what really matters in the application process.

Guest bio:  Dr. Ryan Gray, a former Flight Surgeon in the United States Air Force, is the founder of Medical School Headquarters and Meded Media, where he has become a leading voice in guiding pre-med and medical students toward careers in medicine. He is the author of The Premed Playbook series, including Guide to the Medical School Application Process, Guide to the Medical School Personal Statement, Guide to the Medical School Interview, and Guide to the MCAT. Dr. Gray also hosts several popular podcasts, including The Premed Years, OldPreMeds Podcast, The MCAT Podcast, and Specialist Stories.

We Discuss:

• Support vs. Sabotage
• The Myth of the Perfect Applicant
• Why Checklists Aren't Really Checklists
• What Shadowing Really Tells You
• What's the Deal With Volunteering Hours?
• Service for the Right Reasons
• Why Pre-Med Doesn't Mean Pre-Doctor
• Using AI When Writing Med School Essays
• Compressing Preclinical Education
• The Price of Applying and the Sneaky Secondaries
• Why Don't Schools Post MCAT Cutoffs?
• How to Write a Good Letter of Recommendation and When to Say No
• Thank You Notes
• Letters of Intent
• Should Premeds Attend Non-Interview Info Sessions?
• Why Clinical Hours Are Non-Negotiable

Mentioned in this episode:

Free Tools To Make Medical Practice Easier

No fluff. Just good stuff.

Free Resources Link

The Out-On-Time Course

Built for emergency clinicians who are tired of chart debt and getting derailed by interruptions and overwhelm. Learn practical, real-time documentation and shift-efficiency strategies to finish your shift and actually leave on time.

Learn More About The Out-On-Time Course

Doctoring Done Well | Bite-Sized Wins

Every other week, a few minutes of career-elevating insight delivered straight to your inbox. The Doctoring Done Well Newsletter is never lame, never spammy, and always fresh.

Sign up for our Newsletter

A broken system won’t fix itself, and no one is coming to the rescue. Medicine is fraying under the weight of burnout, misaligned incentives, and systemic inertia. Yet, hope isn’t lost. Change is still possible, but it won’t come from the top down. In this episode, we explore how grassroots leadership, inner work, and community involvement can become the antidote to despair in modern medicine. Finally, we dig into the personal cost of service and the tools we need to heal ourselves while fighting for change.

Guest bio:  Dr. Andrea Austin is the inaugural Emergency Medicine Program Director at Sacred Heart in Pensacola, Florida. As a Navy veteran, her military service taught her how to perform under pressure and lead teams in high-stakes environments. She brings that same focus to her work in medical education, physician well-being, and healthcare systems change. Dr. Austin is the author of Revitalized: A Guidebook to Following Your Healing Heartline and host of the Heartline: Changemaking in Healthcare podcast.

Books mentioned in this episode

• What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo

We Discuss:

• The Case for a New Residency Program
• What It Means to Be a Change Maker
• Working Within the Domains of Change
• Overcoming Social Loafing in Medicine
• Rethinking Suicide Risk in Emergency Medicine
• The Call for Psychiatric Fellowships in EM
• Reclaiming Wellness Through the “Heart Line”
• The Inner Work is the System Work
• Building a Portfolio Career

Mentioned in this episode:

Coming Soon! The Out On Time Course

If you are on our mailing list, you will have early access and a few other surprises as well.

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The Out-On-Time Course

Built for emergency clinicians who are tired of chart debt and getting derailed by interruptions and overwhelm. Learn practical, real-time documentation and shift-efficiency strategies to finish your shift and actually leave on time.

Learn More About The Out-On-Time Course

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