Podcasts about meddiaries

The very first episode of Premed Diaries, a podcast dedicated to you. With Dr. Allison Gray as the host, you are the featured guest by calling 833-MY-DIARY. Links: Full Episode Blog Post Call 1-833-MYDIARY and share your thoughts with us! MedDiaries.com OldPreMeds Podcast MedEd Media Network

The very first episode of Premed Diaries, a podcast dedicated to you. With Dr. Allison Gray as the host, you are the featured guest by calling 833-MY-DIARY. Links: Full Episode Blog Post Call 1-833-MYDIARY and share your thoughts with us! MedDiaries.com The Premed Years Podcast MedEd Media Network Nontrad Premed Forum

Session 01 Hi! I'm Dr. Allison Gray. This is our first episode of the Premed Diaries. We created this podcast, along with the other Med Diaries podcast so physicians and physicians in training could have a place to speak their minds, vent, unload, and hear one another in support and solidarity. The premed journey is not easy and there are many stressors, roadblocks, and frustrations. But there are also incredible joys, like that first time you got to shadow a physician or that first interview offer, or that first acceptance to medical school. Here at Premed Diaries, we want to help you on this journey to avoid and deal with burnout - an ever growing threat and serious problem for our physician community. And as a premed student, it's never too early to start. In each episode, we will hear from a premed student and I'll share some of my thoughts as well. You may also hear from others who have called and left a response for the caller on a previous episode. Today, we will hear from a premed student who is dealing with lots of stress and the feeling of needing to be his best in every endeavor and how this is very emotionally draining. [01:10] Caller #1: Feeling the Stress and Pressure Our student today transitioned out of the military in 2016. He went to a premed school following his transition, which he considers as an enormous blessing in his life, and one of the most convincing factors for him to pursue medicine. Right now, he's been dealing with a lot of stress and pressure. He finds it very difficult to convey to the people in his life that things are high-stakes for him. He is working as a paramedic and since then, things feel high-stakes. He expresses the feelings of pressure to get a 4.0 and do well on the MCAT. Alongside, he's also starting his own podcast. "It's a lot to deal with at once." He is working in the emergency department so he gets cases that affect him from time to time. So going and bouncing back from school being so high-stakes to showing up to work and feeling like he needs to be perfect for the sake of the patients, he sees this as a very emotionally draining process. "I feel like everything hangs on a really delicate balance, too. When I go to class, there's pressure to do the best, to be the best, and you still have to show up to work the next day and take care of patients." Not to mention, he has to take care of his family and dealing with being a former veteran along with all the stuff that goes with that. He admits dealing with a lot of stress and anxiety on almost a daily basis. He's trying to manage all these different things at once. He feels like he never takes a break. Fortunately, listening to The Premed Years Podcast and the OldPreMeds Podcast has been therapeutic for him, which he does on his commute to work and school. He still finds it hard for people in his life to realize this. Although he feels so blessed with the podcast they're starting and with him doing well in school, but that doesn't discount the daily grind that can really get at you. He encourages people out there to segment your time as best as you can and take things one at a time. Just keep going and find a little bit of peace and solitude in what you're doing. It's impactful and important to the people who are affected by it. See the bigger picture and things will pan out. "Everything is hanging in such a delicate balance that you feel like you need extra hands and another brain in order to manage it all." Finally, our caller feels great being able to send out this recording since he was able to get all this off his chest. As his way to manage things, he has had a lot of personal growth on time management and dealing with stress, grief, etc. And he hopes all this would help him carry through to medical school and residency, and hopefully become an attending physician. All the skills he learned as a paramedic, in the military, and during training will all be a driving factor. [08:07] Share Your Thoughts With Us! If you also want to share your thoughts with us, call 1-833-MYDIARY and you also can do so anonymously. We would love to hear what you have to say! [08:42] It's a High-Stakes Game Our caller has touched on so many great things many premeds are struggling with. First, is the high-stakes game of being a premed student. There so many pressures you're all dealing with. You could be looking for someone to shadow with or that you're trying to pay your bills. Or maybe, you're changing your career and you still have to take care of your family. You may be a college student and you're also paying your bills. Many of you could probably relate to this high-stakes feeling. "There are so many stressors out there as a premed and it feels really high-stakes because you feel like you can't really do a crappy job at any of it." [09:40] Family and Friends Not Getting It This is an important thing to recognize and acknowledge. Your family and your friends are your biggest fans and heroes and they're rooting for you. But the reality is that a lot of times, they really can't understand what you're experiencing. This is true as a premed student, and more so as you get into medical school and then eventually becoming a physician. "Your family and your friends are your biggest fans and heroes and they're rooting for you. But the reality is that a lot of times, they really can't understand what you're experiencing." Our caller is already a paramedics so he has experience working with patients and working in a very busy environment. So this already shows him how difficult it is. Seeing patients in life-threatening situations and having to be on is a hard thing to do, regardless of your role in healthcare.  This is really tough. And trying to explain what this is like and articulating it in a way that a family member or a friend can really understand when they don't live in that world is really hard. Fast-forward when you're on the wards. It's very hard for people not working in health care to understand the pressure you're under. These hard situations where patients are dying or dealing with incredibly difficult diagnoses. So try as best as you can to vent and talk to your family and your friends. And if they don't get it, then they don't. Good thing you have peers you're going through things with. And they get it a lot more than others. They may not have the close relationships yet as you do with your family and friends but they do get it. [11:26] Needing to Be Perfect We can never be perfect. Physicians and physicians in training, we hold ourselves to this incredible expectations. We think that we really have to be perfect but the reality is that we are human. Being human means that we make mistakes. It's impossible for us to be 100% all the time. We can really only do the best we can. "The reality is we are humans and being humans means that we do make mistakes." That's something I have really tried to keep in the back of my mind all these years, that I'm doing the very BEST that I can. And as long as I'm doing that, then I feel ethically and morally grounded. That if it's not perfect and I make mistakes along the way, at least I'm doing the best I can. So you have to keep this in your mind as well. [12:50] Use Your Resources and Take a Little Break Listening to resources like podcasts such as The Premed Years Podcast and the OldPreMeds Podcast is HUGE, especially when you're feeling that you don't get a break and that you're doing so many different things. It's really important to find anything that gives you a little bit of a break, even if it's just for 20 minutes. Find a TV show you love or sing really loudly in the car. Listen to a podcast that inspires or encourages you. Go to the gym. It's hard to make time for that but a little bit of that even if it's just for 5-10 minutes can get your mind back on task and give you that encouragement you need to keep going when you're feeling really worn out and spent. So use your resources and lean on other people as you can. If somebody offers to make you a meal, take them up on it. If somebody offers to watch your kids, take them up on it. "Just find a little bit of time, even for 20 minutes to get a breath of fresh air so that it can feel like you're getting at least a tiny break." [14:17] Take Your Time and Growth Coming from Pain With all things in general, it's okay to step back and just focus on one thing at a time. If you have kids, you can't just focus on premed stuff because they need your help or you need to make them dinner. But this is an idea in general, where if you have so many different things you're focusing on, in any one minute, try to just focus on one thing. It can help to just step back. It's a cliche that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but that's true. There's so much growth you will see as a premed and as a med student. Your capacity to just take on will just expand. It has to. Your body and your brain just adopt as you have to take on more and more. So you grow ever more. This concept that as painful as it might be to grow from that and not letting it stop you is huge. Lastly, encouraging your peers is huge. As what Ryan's mantra is, “collaboration, not competition.” So encourage your peers no matter what phase you're at. [16:10] Get Things Off Your Chest This is why we're here. We want to give you the freedom and encouragement to reach out and call so you can get things off your chest. I'm here to support you and offer some thoughts every week. This is a great way for us to all support one another. [17:00] Respond to Our First Caller Call 1-833-MYDIARY and let us know you're calling in response to this. I will play your response on subsequent episodes. Thank you for joining us on this first episode everyone! As you move through this journey, listen to this podcast along with all out other series. Let's support one another in fighting this very scary and serious problem we have in this world of burnout. Links: Call 1-833-MYDIARY and share your thoughts with us! The Premed Years Podcast OldPreMeds Podcast

I asked on Instagram (@medicalschoolhq - follow me!) for questions for this episode. You did not disappoint! Check out the episode for some great questions! Links: Full Episode Blog Post Follow us on Instagram @medicalschoolhq Med Diaries (Call in 833-MYDIARY and you have 30 minutes to leave a voicemail.) TMDSAS Podcast Premed Coaching Services Khan Academy Organic Chemistry Tutorial Videos The Premed Playbook Guide to the Medical School Personal Statement Interfolio

Ryan is joined by Allison who has previously shared her story of burnout. They discuss burnout and they talk about MedDiaries—their newest project to help. Links: Full Episode Blog Post Medscape National Physician Burnout & Depression Report 2018 Call 1-833-MYDIARY Stay informed of the MedDiaries launch. Get notified!

Session 76 This week, we're joined by Allison who has previously shared her story of burnout. We discuss burnout as well as the birth of MedDiaries - our newest project to help with this. This episode is actually taken from The Premed Years Podcast since we're announcing this new project that will greatly impact premed students, medical students, residents, and physicians! [03:35] The Prevalence of Burnout in the Physician Community Allison talks about there are bad days as much as there are good days, which is highly prevalent in the physician community. In fact, 42% of physicians in the 2018 Medscape Report are burned out. Based on personal experience, Allison is passionate when it comes to this topic. She also works in the field of Neurology which ranks second on the list of fields that are most likely to experience burnout, second to Critical Care. More and more people are now researching burnout due to its prevalence in the community of physicians, residents, and medical students. Allison describes how burnout has affected her emotional wellbeing, feelings of self-worth, and even the ability to care for herself. "If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of other people well. All too often as physicians, we are sacrificing our own wellbeing so that we can take care of other people." [05:05]  Burnout as a Sign of Weakness In the onset of burnout, you begin to feel detached, dissociated, resigned, and separated in some way from the job you were trained to do. And even though it's a high percentage of physicians having burnout, it's not something you experience with other people. You experience it by yourself. "Burnout isn't something you experience with other people. You experience it by yourself." In medicine, what has been taught to us is that if you're strong enough to do it then great; but if you can't handle it, then you shouldn't do it. So if you're struggling with emotional difficulty or feeling exhausted, or if you're experiencing the human side of how difficult it is to be a physician and you talk about it or complain about it, or let it affect your work, then that's seen as a weakness and that it's not acceptable in medicine. This is a subconscious thing, but at the same time, it's something directly taught in a lot of places. You would then have to bury that way deep down inside of you, not in the hospital or in the clinic, but someplace else. If you can't handle it, then there's got to be something wrong with you. This is all a bunch of hullabaloo, but this is what we're taught, unfortunately. But it's not we, the people practicing medicine, who are at fault here as we are all human beings. The problem is we're surrounded by unbelievable pressures and so many different obligations, and other things that take away from the ability for us to practice medicine. For instance, these are things like clicking boxes and EMRs, filling out authorizations - things not about practicing medicine but fulfilling guidelines and nothing to do with directly looking after a patient. "The numbers and pressures on physicians, the number of things that people are being asked to do these days just gets bigger and bigger. The list gets longer and longer." [07:50] Premeds Experience Burnout Too! Premeds experience the same things as well, trying to live up to the standard they think they need to live up to - being a 4.0 student, 520 on the MCAT, and getting all the extracurricular activities in - shadowing and clinical experience. You try to get into the best medical schools and best residencies and be the best doctor. "Burnout is prevalent at every stage of the game. Unfortunately, suicide rates are high among med students and physicians." We can't fix the systemic issues and reason we're discussing it now so as you're going through this process, you get into a position of power where you can make some of these differences. It may be not on a national scale, but on a local scale, specifically for your hospital. That being said, we can change the discussion around burnout. This impetus behind our new project. [09:00] Are You One of Us? Are you a physician and feeling down or burned out? Have you had a terrible day and just need to vent and get something off your chest? Are you a resident working 80+ hours a week in a hospital and watching your patients suffer without any dedicated space or time to talk about it? Are you a medical student feeling the toll of studying all night after working in a hospital all day and wondering if life will look any better when you're an MD or a DO? Are you a premed student with a dream of becoming a physician but you're feeling discouraged by a bad grade or rejection letter, and wondering if you'll ever get there? Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were an anonymous safe place where you could speak your mind and have your voice heard? In this time of extraordinary demands on physicians with 42% of physicians feeling burned out in the latest 2018 Medscape Report, we need a place to be heard. All over the United States, medical centers and medical schools are trying to find ways to help physicians with burnout. Wellness groups and conferences and employee assistance programs have formed. Some residency programs have created programs to help their residents process their grief and other emotions that arise in medical training. There are islands of awareness popping up to try heal and support our exhausted physician workforce and help prevent them from self-destructing and from leaving medicine altogether. [10:22] We All Need Support: Join the Movement! But we cannot do this alone in silos. we need support in a way that we feel connected to all those around us, those who are feeling the way we do but never discuss it openly for fear of looking weak. As attending physicians we are often told to meditate, exercise, and do whatever we can to "fix" our burnout. But we argue that we are not the problem. The systems around us create untenable demand that inevitably leads to burnout. EMRs and endless boxes to check, notes to write, prior authorizations, loss of autonomy, fear of litigation, and lots of reimbursement for doing the incredibly hard work this profession demands everyday. As residents and medical students, we are told to bury our feelings deep down and just get the work done. Yet, we lose a part of ourselves when we don't acknowledge the depths, the fear, the enormous responsibility of telling a family member that their loved one is gone no matter how hard we try to save them. While we don't know the fix for this, one thing's for sure: talking about it helps. Welcome to MedDiaries... When you're having a down moment, call 1-833-MYDIARY and leave an anonymous voicemail. Speak your mind. Drop your guard. Say whatever needs to be said. You will be heard by others feeling the weight of burnout too. This is a place to be heard. Join the movement! [11:53] MedDiaries as Your Trusted Resource All over the country, people recognize there's a problem with burnout. Physicians and people all through every stage of training need a place to talk, and people to talk with about how hard this whole process is. The journey never stops right until you die. "There are pockets all over the place and there isn't a place where people can go to just have their voices be heard." MedDiaries is creating a space where people at every stage of this journey - premed, medical student, resident, physician, or attending physician - can go anonymously and talk about what's going on. We're not going to "fix" it but talking about it is a starting point. And this is what's really missing across the board. Under the MedDiaries umbrella, we're going to have four podcasts: The Premed Diaries Med Student Diaries Resident Diaries Physician Diaries And Allison is hosting the shows! So, whether you're happy because you saved somebody for the first time. Or you're struggling because your boss yelled at you. Call 1-833-MYDIARY. You will be allotted 30 minutes to leave a voicemail. While it's anonymous, you're also welcome to say something about yourself. But we want to keep you protected as well as who you're talking about protected. Tell us what you're feeling. There's no right or wrong. Treat us as a diary. There is healing in speaking what's in your mind and getting it out of your mind and out into the world. "You will be amazed at how much what you say can benefit other people." We're targeting releasing two episodes per week where we get your voicemail. We listen to it, play it, and Allison gives her comments. Then we're going to ask the audience to call in and leave feedback. Again, we're not trying to fix anything. But we're all in this together. When we start sharing our struggles and successes, you'd be surprised at the impact this can make! Links: The Premed Years Podcast Medscape National Physician Burnout & Depression Report 2018 Call 1-833-MYDIARY Stay informed of the MedDiaries launch. Get notified!

Ryan is joined by Allison who has previously shared her story of burnout. They discuss burnout and they talk about MedDiaries—their newest project to help. Links: Full Episode Blog Post Medscape National Physician Burnout & Depression Report 2018 Call 1-833-MYDIARY Stay informed of the MedDiaries launch. Get notified!