Episode 44: Building What You Need with Dr. Dawn Sears

Dr. Dawn Sears is a nationally recognized gastroenterologist, speaker, coach, and fierce advocate for women in medicine. In this heartfelt episode, she shares her inspiring journey from leading wellness initiatives in her hospital (starting with soda machines!) to creating powerful coaching communities that are truly changing the face of leadership in healthcare.

Here are my key takeaways from this episode - 

• How Dr. Sears turned a soda machine into a movement for institutional wellness
  
  
  
• Why cohort coaching is a game-changer for physician well-being and retention
  
  
  
• The hidden costs of being a woman in medicine, and how we start shifting the culture

Connect with Dr. Sears here -

dawnsears@dawnsearsmd.com

gutgirlmdconsulting.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawnsearsmd/

https://www.facebook.com/dawn.sears.982

https://twitter.com/GutGirlMD

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4a1MubzSrKMBaAHwHCe0DQ

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sears DM et al. (2025). Leadership development as a novel strategy to mitigate burnout among female physicians. PLOS ONE, 20(3): e0319895. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0319895

Transcript

0:08

Welcome to the Purposeful MD Podcast. As a physician, you've sacrificed so much of your life for other people, your patients, your family, your friends, and your colleagues. What would it feel like to spend time doing what you enjoy and to live without guilt? I'm your host, Dr. Laura Suttin, a family physician, certified coach, and business owner. If you're a medical professional on a journey towards your most purposeful life, a life with more time and energy, and ultimately more joy, then this is the podcast for you. Welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have my guest today, Dr. Dawn Sears. We've been trying to make this work for a while and just really excited to see you and talk to you, Dawn. So welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Laura. I've been so excited for, to watch your journey, be part of it, cheerlead with you, collaborate with you, and we've been trying to get together, so I'm so glad we finally made it happen. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for being a part of it. For really just cheerleading is perfect. I mean, you've, um, you've been there for me when I needed it in those moments, so thank you. Sure. This is kind of what it's all about, is that we're all in it together and we remind each other how amazing we are and how much we've done and how much we can do. So I love it and I love everything that you're doing with being purposeful as being a purposeful md. Thank you. Well, let me read your bio. I wanna give you all the kudos and then, we'll dive in. So Dr. Dawn Sears is a professor and practicing board certified gastroenterologist hepatologist, who has focused much of her career and research on the wellbeing of her colleagues. She spearheaded The Women Leaders in Medicine, serving over 300 women physicians and moving the needles of engagement, retention, and burnout. She's received multiple grants and awards for her work, including, AMA, AMWA, TMA, and Physicians Foundation. She hosts women physician empowerment conferences, ACE and EMERGE, where we've connected. As an ICF Certified Executive Coach, she works regularly with both private and institutionally based physicians. Her goal is to stop the hemorrhaging of women physicians from healthcare. She has served as Chief of Wellbeing, been Program Director, sat on boards and Lead as Chief of Gastroenterology in multiple institutions. She proudly serves at Veterans Administration, Gastroenterology Division in North Texas, and Clinical Professor at UT Southwestern, as an instructor, gastroenterologist, and coach, and just scrubbed out out of a procedure, which is why you're, if you're watching us on YouTube, which is why you're in your car. Um, so that is just a testament to your commitment to taking care of patients, whether that's at the bedside or as a coach and as a, as a woman physician leader. So thank you for everything that you do. Sure, thank you. And sometimes it gets overwhelming and I think it's a good practice for us to just pull out your your CV, your bio every once in a while when you're feeling low and have an imposter syndrome. Or should I take this talk? Or, and then you go, oh wait, no, of course I should. Of course I'm qualified. Of course I'm the expert. So thanks for reminding me,'cause sometimes we, we feel a little overwhelmed like, am I doing the right thing? And then you go, oh, yeah, yeah, I am. So thank you. You are, and you've reminded me that on several different points in my journey. I think the, the, so the conferences that you've hosted here in San Antonio, um, EMERGE, and then ACE, both of them. I, I'm sure you planned it this way to be at really pivotal points in my career, in my life. Um, absolutely, but they both really were. And, um, and just your, your, your smile and your friendship, and your sitting down with me and saying, how are you really? How is this going, um, have just been so impactful for me. So I just, again, just wanna thank you from the bottom of my heart. Aw, thank you darling. I, it is so important for us to have authentic friends who really have our back and will really say, no, really, how are you? Or, why are you doing that? Like, like really, why are you doing that? Like, is now the right time? Yeah. So to cheer us up as well as to call us out of, maybe you don't need to do that right now. So I love that we have built this amazing community where we can do that for each other. Yes. And really be there. So thank you for reminding me of that. Yes. Alright, so tell us, how did you get to where you are this day? How did, how did your leadership coaching your journey, tell us everything about what brought you to this point. The, the big thing was just being a servant leader, just looking for opportunities, uh, where I was of the things that weren't there, and knowing that I wanted that, but I wasn't gonna sit around and complain about it. So, at my institution, we had way too many soda machines and I was like, what is the deal? All I talk to all my patients about is soda, whether they're coming to see me with reflux or fatty liver or constipation or whatever. And so I knew I needed to get the soda machines out, but I needed to do it in a way that leaders would care. So I got together this group of 10 of our leaders, like the Chief of the Pediatrics, the Chief of um, Surgery. The, CEO, CMO, all the things, and I said, hey, love you guys. Y'all are working really hard, but I need you to work hard for another 20 years. I need you not to die. Let's get together as a wellbeing group. And you don't have a meeting, you don't have a patient at 5:30 in the morning, so we're gonna get together, and work out, and we're all gonna run half a marathon together. I had never run a half marathon, and these people were like, what, who are you? And I'm like, I'm your fruit fairie. I'm the Director of Wellbeing and I need you on board. And so we delivered fruit baskets to'em at the beginning of every month. We had'em get together with their family or their partner, uh, at least once a month. We had them journal and we had them work out. And if they didn't work out, they had to put$10 in the kitty and the CEO and the Chief of Surgery, whatever, they do not wanna give up 10 bucks. And it's their pride and they're not gonna let that happen. So anyway, at the end of a year, we had lost 300 pounds. We lost a gallbladder, we had lost a knee, and we all ran a half marathon together. Um, most of us. Um, so by the end they got it. So the two new hospitals that were built the following year, guess who didn't have fryers and who didn't have soda machines, because they got it. So once you see what needs to happen, you find a way to make someone care about it and then they got it. And then I saw that, um, as the leader and gastroenterology, I was the chief. And being a female gastroenterologist in the deep south, it was pretty unusual 20 years ago when I started. Now there's more of us, you know, now we're at 16 to 20%, but back then we were less than 8%. So, um, anyway, I was leading the division, leading the fellows, all the things. But my institution was hiring a new pulmonologist, she's a woman, will you mentor her? New dermatologist, she's a woman, will you mentor? New pediatric podiatrist, she's a woman, will you men, I'm like, what is happening? There's all these other women. Why am I the only one? So I got together a group of women together in a boardroom and said, you're the angry, you know, surgeon, you're the sweet pathologist, you're the, you're the fun, um, pediatrician. Let's get 10 of us together, pick a date on the calendar, and make it happen. Let's just gather. And we gathered and everybody loved it. Everybody was like, oh my gosh. So we filled up. We only planned on having about 30 to 50 people there. Um, I got called when we had 80 people signed up and said, where are we capping it? I was like, holy cow. So we capped it at a hundred. Uh, I wrote a grant. We got$150,000 from the Physicians Foundation, and then we just published this work. Finally, this was back in 2017, but because of COVID, we had collected all the data just as COVID hit. We finally got it published in PLOS ONE. And it shows that when you get women in a room where it's safe and they can share their thoughts and ideas that, um, they feel seen, they feel heard, and it improves their life. So their burnout went down, their retention went down, their engagement went up, and their intention to stay went up. And every conference, which we put together conferences every six months, when we did it, um, there was always one or two in the back of the room weeping, saying, now I can do this. I don't need to quit. I don't need to leave. I now have a sisterhood. I now have a tribe. I have people, like we were talking about at the beginning of the call, who see me, who acknowledge what I'm doing is hard and it's okay, and also tell me I don't have to do everything that I can prioritize. So that's how I am. Um, and then I had to leave my institution for various things. The second, when I got the second vaccines, the day I resigned, um,'cause I led through COVID and doing aerosolizing procedures. Um, it it, it showed me how much I was valued or not valued by the institution. And I knew I couldn't stay at that point. And, um, through coaching, and through counseling, and through taking, uh, three months off as a sabbatical, a hundred days without working, I figured out it's not my job's job to make me happy. It never was and it never will be. And it's not my job's job to keep me safe. That's me. My job's job is to do two things, provide me patients, and provide me a paycheck, and it's doing that and there's no perfect job out there. So I've learned a lot in my journey in the last five years, and now I can't keep it to myself. So I do executive coaching and I coach a lot of women physicians, so I empower them to gain control over their careers. I, I wanna dive into all of that, everything you just said. Thank you for sharing. I, I knew a little bit about your story, and I know we've met several times. I had, I did not know it started with soda machines. I think that's, it's fascinating and it's, uh, but it's true. I mean, the soda machine is a reflection, right of, how are we taking care of ourselves? It's so interesting. Like what do hospitals have in their cafeterias or in their buildings or like McDonald's and Wendy's and Whataburgers in Texas, right? Yes, yes. Like, what are we, what's the message that we're sending? So I love that, I love that you did that. In that you, it sounds like you had some pretty good uptake. I mean, people were either gonna cough up the money or get, kind of, oh yeah, start working out. And it wasn't always received well, I mean, the, the Chief of Pediatrics, he nearly crawled across the table and said, I have never run. I don't run. Who do you think you are? And I was like, whoa. Down John down. I was like, just get on a bike and just ride a bike with us. Well, maybe, I don't know. Anyway, he was the grumpiest, most untrustworthy. Everybody else knew me. He was new. He's the only one who didn't know my reputation over the last 10 years. And anyway, fast forward five years later, he was still running half marathons and full marathons with himself and his friends and his kids, and I'm like, what? So he actually stuck, stuck with it for another 10 years after the program. And so you never know, even you get resistance, that may be your biggest one, who's gonna be your advocate if you just continue to persist with love and you're doing it, you're serving in a way that is not about you, not about your ego, not about what's gonna get for me, but truly supporting, hey John, I want you to be healthy and you're, the children's hospital needs you to be healthy. And he was so excited eight months later to call me and say, guess what, we redesigned the kitchens. We removed all the fryers. It's, it took twice the real estate and it's gonna be twice as long to make those chicken nuggets, but we're doing it in ovens because you taught me so much. And I'm like, yes. Wow. That's incredible. That's, yeah, I mean, so. And we can all have influence. Just build what you need. Just influence where you need to influence. We're all leaders. It's just a matter of sharing our knowledge, sharing our wisdom, sharing our ideas in a way that empowers others and makes them the hero. Yeah. And that's what you've done with the the, and I wanna definitely hear more about the study and then the one that you're also mentioning that's hot off the press that you've mentioned before we hit recorrd about the women leaders in medicine development program and coaching. Um, that again, you saw, so, okay, took the soda machines and the fryers out of the cafeteria. You're like, check. Yeah. Um, moving on to seeing a gap in the female leadership in your specialty and in your organization. And, yes, that you're being asked to mentor all these women, um, and seeing opportunities of how can these women support each other. How can we all come together? And, and that's just something that I, I really appreciate about you, is you see the different gifts that people have, and you bring people together to capitalize on those strengths so that we're not operating either literally or figuratively in a vacuum, that we're all benefiting from each other's wisdom and each other's gifts. Absolutely. And it's so fun to be able to, to let women know, no, you don't need a certificate. You don't need more initials after your name to do the thing. And that's why so many were holding back like, but, but you're the chief, but you were the program director. But, and I'm like, no, go through this little program and I'll stamp all of your heads. Have, have you, have you gone to Gross Anatomy? Okay, you're already more qualified than 98% of humans on this planet. I don't care if you've ever led a meeting or even done a PowerPoint presentation. So just reminding each other that we were amazing and that there was a need that we needed to have more mentors and more importantly, more sponsors and more advocates. So once everyone went through the program, and I asked them point blank, who are you mentoring now? And who is your mentor? They're like oh, I'm like, yeah, all of you should be mentoring at least six people right now, and all of you have mentors. And then they, they took the, took the ball and ran. And then we ended up with, you know, uh, it's been a traditionally, um, monochromatic, uh, board of directors. Well, after that we ended up with three women on the board of directors and everybody was going up for chief and chair and, you know, all these things. And everybody was stepping up to the plate saying, well, you, y'all have modeled it that we can do this. And so the same thing for what we've done in ACE and EMERGE. And, um, many of us have gone off to start our own, uh, businesses like you through it all and should say, yes, I can do it. You can do it too. And we just give each other permission. Yes. Just like the men have been doing on golf courses for centuries. And then sometimes we have to do it in a meeting room at a resort, and that's a beautiful thing. Or podcasts or through, uh, virtual meetings. Um, the biggest gift of COVID has been all these friends across the nation and across the world that I have accumulated, that I get to know that I know I could call somebody in Australia at four in the morning if I just need somebody to get into my brain and stop some toxic thought I'm having or something like that, just because we've built so many of these authentic communities. So I'm grateful for all these virtual connections'cause they're real, real, real connections. Yeah, they, they really truly are. Um, and like you said, giving ourselves that space and that permission, like I, and I just wonder, I hear this so often from, from females and I still fall into the trap too. I had a client recently who, um, who is a neurologist and she was talking about conversations with patients in which she's talking, talking with them about like, her role in their care when they're seeing so many other specialists. And the phrase that came out of her mouth was, I'm only a neurologist. And I stopped her and I said, wait a second. You just said I'm only a neurologist. I said, you literally, you're literally a brain specialist. Like do you, do you hear what you just said? And so where do you think that voice comes from? Where, oh yeah. How do we get that in our heads? Many of us, as I talk to, many of us powerful women that are also coaches and have learned so much, many of us have the same story. And you and I haven't spoken about this, so I don't know if this is part of your story, but many of us grew up in critical homes or critical environments where it wasn't good enough. Um, what have you done for me lately, or, um, a little bit of jealousy possibly, uh, from pre, pre other generations instead of support and encouragement. And so the prove it again, prove it again, are you sure? Are you too big for your britches? That is a common story of so many of us. And so I think that's where a lot of it comes from is some early childhood voices of, oh, you ain't all that. Oh, you don't know how hard it's gonna get. Instead of, wow, that was amazing. Let's keep it going. You know? And of course the pendulum swung and we, we see the results of that too. Right? But, but there is a healthy balance. But that's my observation as many of us have the same story. Yeah. I think, I think a lot of mine came from my training. I mean, oh yeah. And so I'm curious from your perspective,'cause you're in the medical training environment and I, I've been out of that for so long. Mm-hmm. Do you see the, do you see the training environment shifting? We do. As a matter of fact, I just got back from the Joy and Wholeness Summit, um, that, it was in North Carolina this weekend, and that was one of the things we talked about because the, some of the keynote speakers have been doing the same keynote for 10 years, all about burnout. They're like, I'm so sick of giving this talk about burnout. But in reality, we have this term that we all knew in medical, medicine called pimping, where you ask the question again and again and again until it's so hard that you've humbled them. Now there's shame, now there's remorse, and now you scared them into studying harder so that they don't get embarrassed again. And of course we have shined a light on that and now we call it what it is, which is called bullying, and that we're not tolerating workplace bullying, uh, like we did in the training environments. Uh, in the past that I was certainly a part of. So now it's the exception. It's still, of course, it's gonna always happen, but now people are not getting away with it like they used to and we're able to call it out. So it is improved because it's no longer socially acceptable. Again, some are still getting away with it. But everybody goes, hey Joe, you, you know, you're gonna get busted for doing that. You know, don't, don't do that anymore. So I'm glad to see that. And as someone who is still involved with education and gets to train fellows every single day, I can tell you that we talk about their wellbeing, we talk about their sleep. We are on suicide watch for everybody. We are talking about mental health, we are talking about all these things that would've never, you know, I miscarried at work and still scoped patients for the day. You know, I mean, that was the environment I was in, and I worked up until the day of delivery of all three of my kids. Um, it was horrible. And I got off four weeks to, for my maternity leave for each of'em, you know? Um, so it was a different environment where that's not gonna happen anymore. That's not gonna be tolerated no more. Now we're allowed to be human with needs. Um, so it's good. It's better. Yeah. I'm so sorry that you experienced that. That's and makes my, makes my heart hurt for you. And also glad to hear that, that's not going on anymore, because that, that's inhumane. Yeah. Yeah. There's no way. It's very different now. Very different now. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, yeah, I mean, it was a badge of honor to not sleep. Right. I mean, if we, you kind of, how, how little sleep did you get? How much studying did you get done? How many patients did you admit? I mean, no way I would've ever asked to use the restroom during a case or go eat. I mean, even if I was passing out, like, yeah, so never again, never again. We're changing things. We're not gonna, we're, we're not gonna let, uh, tell people that they're robots'cause it's not true. And you're setting'em up for failure. We're gonna let them know this is the real world and, and the fellows all know. I'm gonna ask, did you eat? No, I don't wanna hear about the afternoon patients. Go get some food in your mouth, go pee and I'll see you back in my office in 15 minutes. Yeah. Just whatever it takes. Go get some food. Yeah. And if you don't have food, here's some.'cause I always have, you know, the running joke'cause you open up my cabinet and it's an avalanche of food. So there, there are snacks. So I will get you plenty of snacks to throw in your pocket if we need to eat it and run. And we're, we're gonna, we're gastroenterologists for heaven's sake. We love to eat. You know? Yeah, yeah. I mean, and it is, but it's crazy that. To think about that it took us this long to get to this point, right? That we realize that we're not robots and we're human. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So one of the studies that came out in this last week that I'm super excited about, yeah, I wanna hear about that in the, in the Journal of Internal, of General Internal Medicine. And so it's the first randomized control study that I've seen. And of course as an internist, we got get all nerdy about randomized controls trials. So it was looking at coaching for, um, for staff attendings in internal medicine. And it was randomized to one-on-one executive coaching, which we do. As well as cohort coaching, which is actually what I love versus control group. And so no surprise to us, we saw that cohort coaching improved burnout and the intention to stay and was more cost effective. Well, no kidding, right? So I love it because it builds community and we are thriving when we have community and we're dying when we're lonely. We're seeing so much in the literature about loneliness and the hypertension, and early mortality, and dementia, and cancers. So I wanna do all that I can to continue to build communities. So I'm excited to see more evidence of the power of cohort coaching. Yes. I mean, what, how, how much more can we shout it from the rooftops? And I'm gonna look for that article and share it too, I think. It's, it's great that institutions and organizations are starting to see that. Coaching isn't just a nice to have. It's not just like a a a wellness initiative. This, there's hard, there's hard dollars and ROI tied to physicians getting coached. They are more likely to stay, they're less likely to commit errors. The patient outcomes are better. Every financial and clinical outcome that healthcare organizations track is impacted in a positive way when physicians get coached. Um, I mean, if our professional athletes are getting, how many performance coaches are they having? Why do our physicians not get coached? So I love that. Right, right. So yeah, so I just wanna continue to highlight that for everyone. And then I've got the Kevin MD article. Why are women leaving healthcare for'cause of gaslighting? As a female gastroenterologist, I attract more female patients. Well, female patients have longer colons, so the amount of colons I can do in a day is gonna be less than my friend Bob, who has 80% met. We also get paid by the number of polyps we remove. Guess who grows more polyps? The boys. So Bob does half a number of scopes, but he gets paid four times the amount, and then I do half the volume and I don't remove as many. So people will claim women get paid less because they're not willing to work as hard. Really. So that's just some of the data. And of course I know that everybody has seen that women in the same exact practice versus men get 26% more messages from our own staff. Did you really want that CAT scan? When do you wanna see Ms. Jones back? I know you said three months, but did you really mean that, you know, versus the men get 26% or, or yeah, get less. And then, um, messages from patients. We get 24% more from patients in the same exact practice. So basically we're doing 25% extra work. And then there was a study in the last two weeks that came out about the amount of time that we spent in the portal. Uh, shocker is 20% more than our male colleagues in the exact same because of these exact things, of who's initiating the contact, right? It's not us just trying to have conversations all night long, it's people thinking that we're more available, we have more, uh, more access, and we have more time. But if it's a male doctor that's like, oh, he's busy. Right. We're not busy, we just don't care. Oh, she must not care'cause she didn't respond within three days'cause she was on vacation. And how dare her do that? So that's one of the things that you and I coach on a lot is it's okay to leave your computer at home. It's okay to trust your team and not check that portal. And I double dog dare you to give it a try. And when you come back, it will not take you two weeks to dig out. Yes, it'll be fine. Trust your team, train your patients to trust your team, to you'll be happier. Your patients will be happier. It's like having your kid, you know, load the dishwasher. Yeah. It's not perfect, but it's gonna get done. Mm-hmm. And that's how your kid's gonna learn. And it's okay to do that with our patients and our team too. Yeah. They're not gonna do it the way you would've. But now you get to enjoy your vacation, actually be present for your friends and family, and that would been the most fun when I've been collecting the data on the international coaching I do with Scrubs and Heels GI across internationally is the question that makes me cry every time on stage, is, um, not only are you burnt out and do you intend to stay at your job, and are you catalyst toward patients, but the one that really gets me is, are you present with your friends and family when you're not at work, when you're at home and before the program is at 25%. After working with them for nine months, it's at 75% and it's all through cohort coaching of getting them to understand boundaries, permission slips. You're not alone. You're doing nothing wrong. You can break up with perfection. You know, all these things that, that you and I, uh, talk about all the time. But I just know we're saving marriages. We're saving counseling, we're saving suicide. We're saving alcohol abuse. We're saving buffering of horrible, you know, behaviors or habits. So anyway, that, I just wanna put in a plug for the amazing impact that we see that isn't always captured in the current data that's out there, but we're publishing it here and there for Scrubs and Heels. But I encourage all the coaches and all those data miners out there to ask about the presence. Um, because at the end of the day, that's what really matters. And the impact on those, the kids too. For the physicians that have children or involved in caregiving in some way, shape or form, whether it's extended family or whoever, that is just the, the impact on the the future generations. And because we're seeing now that kids of physicians don't wanna become physicians, right? And so how do we turn that tide and not just so that our children can become physicians necessarily, but, I mean, that's what life is about, is time with family and loved ones. And if we can really, not about maximizing the efficiency of it, but how do we, how do we make sure that we're focusing our time and our energy on what's most important? Because that inbox, that's, that's not it. No, it is not it. It is not it. We are replaceable and any of you that have lost a dock at work to a motor vehicle accident or cancer or suicide, you know that somebody takes care of their patients the following week. We are so replaceable at work, but, who's gonna read that bedtime story, you know? Uh, so no, our time is incredibly precious and sometimes we learn that lesson a little too late. And so that's why we remind each other of that. And when we see each other doing things we shouldn't be doing, um, we say, hey, maybe you could delay that a year or two, because I bet that problem will still be here in two years. Yeah, but little Susie is only gonna be in sixth grade once, so enjoy that dance recital now, you know? Yeah, yeah. And again, you're creating the space where we can, we give each other those permission slips and we can see our, our colleagues that are setting the boundaries and that it, it's scary at first, but the payoff is huge and we have each other to lean on. Mm-hmm. Um, I was pretty intentional about that this past year with my daughter as a senior in high school, I really wanted to be as present for her as I could. And there were so many lasts. Yeah. And so I had to make decisions about things I was gonna do either personally or professionally, so that I could be there for her. Um, and it's, it's interesting, once, I, it was kind of like, I made the decision once and then I didn't have to keep making it again. Mm-hmm. I love that. So, yeah, so I'm trying to do that more in, in life. It's let's, I'm just gonna make the decision once and I don't, I don't have to keep going. I love it. Yeah, yeah. No, you come up with your rules, you come up with your filters. Right. And like with, with Dina and I, when the last time we ran a, a conference, we knew that, you know, there's a million decisions that have to be made constantly. Like I said, always, always, always. And we said, you know, is does it bring joy? And do we have alignment? We both say yes. And if it brings joy and we both say yes, then it's easy. Mm-hmm. And if it doesn't bring joy or one of us is just like, eh, then it's a no. And it made decision making so much faster and easier. We're like, eh, okay. That's a no. All right, next, next question. Yeah. So whatever filters, set your filters now. I love that. Love that for your whole life, you're allowed to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what are you most excited about coming up? Oh yeah, great question. Um, I am excited to, um, continue to expand coaching at UT Southwestern. And, uh, UT Southwestern is the only university that I know of that has an ICF accredited coaching program. And so I think they have over 50 of their physicians trained in it. And so, um, being that I've renewing my a CC literally today, turning in my mentoring hours and things like that, um, that I'm gonna continue to be part of that, to, to expand that so that we can make coaching truly accessible for everyone. Whether you're a trainee or whether you're, you know, joining the division and you get assigned a coach or however, there's like a million pilot projects going on. So I'm excited to continue to collect data around these things, continue to preach it to the world and to normalize it for academia and all institutions that it should be available. And then, um, just to continue what we've already started and to normalize it so we don't have to explain it as much. What is coaching again? I know Tiger Woods has a co you know, we go through this, but now it's becoming, uh oh yeah, I've heard something about it, tell me more. Instead of what? And you know, and we always laugh that that's what I did to Dina the first time I met her. And she told me she was a coach. I did that to her 12 years ago. What? And here I am, you know, a coach. So you just never know. People are in different places in their journey. So I'm excited to continue to see it at this point in my life and in my career. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. I love that too. Uh, you said a couple times normalizing it and I, I love seeing that that's going on. That it used to be coaching was for like the problem children or if you were working with a coach is'cause you were delinquent on something. And that's not, certainly I don't, I don't feel like that's ever been the case and that's, that's certainly not the case anymore. Mm-hmm. And I'm seeing the stigma from that really dropping and people are much more coaching, curious and seeing it, seeing it help their colleagues and seeing the impact that it's made. And again, the more we can get evidence, I mean, we're scientists, right? We love evidence. So the more we can have evidence on it, then um, the easier that will be. Exactly. And what are you excited about for the next year, Laura? Oh my gosh. Um, continuing to grow the business and, uh, expand my own personal brands and continuing to coach and, and just explore how I can have as much impact as possible. I, I really feel like, it's a win-win win, when physicians work with coaches. Um, I mean, as coaches we get to do what we love and the impact on the physicians is tremendous. The organizations benefit, the patients benefit their families. I mean, just the ripple effect when sometimes when I stop and think about the ripple effect that coaching has, and you we just talked about, they're being present with their families. I mean, that's, those are, we're building core memories with young children and what could be more beautiful than that? Absolutely. I love that. I love that. And at the Joy and Wholeness Summit, that reminds me of the highlight from the meeting was one of the gals came up to me and said, oh, Dawn, you're here again. I heard you. And she's said, Tammy, get over here. This is why I do what I do. And I'm like, what? Tell me more. She said, I got your blueprint of how to run a Women Leaders in Medicine Meeting. It's 18 pages with sample budgets and board of directors and sample agendas and all the survey questions like these, uh, and it's already packaged for you. It's just plug, plug and play. She's like, so I did, I downloaded it and now I put together five of'em and I'm like, great. How many women have we impacted? She's like, yeah, I guess about 30 to 50 each time. I'm like, yes. This is the whole point. Get it out to every institution, every group practice. And she's a PhD, she's not even MD or DO you know? And so we can all do this, and several of the nurse practitioners saying, how do I do this? Said, here's the rule book. Do it. Here, take it, download it off my website of Gut Girl MD Consulting, and just click the box and it's yours and run with it. You know, I don't protect it. I want it out there for everyone to recreate it. We should have women leaders in medicine groups everywhere because women are leading. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We're half the population and, yes, yes, yes. Awesome. Thank you so much. We'll definitely share your website and how to connect with you and with our listeners and in our show notes. What else would you like to share? Just whatever you're doing, make it count three times. Do it for yourself, do it for your institution, and then do it for the public. Get it, just do a little publication, whether it's a Kevin MD article or editorial, or even writing a full manuscript. Put it out there. Don't be the best kept secret. Mm-hmm. So I just wanna encourage everybody to make everything count three times, because you're already doing it anyway. So continue to be awesome, but make it count. Yes. I love that so much. Thank you so much, Dawn. So good to talk to you. Thanks for being on show. It's wonderful. Yeah, thanks so much for inviting me and of not letting me get, get off the hook too easily when I went ahead and got married the day before last time and other things that came up. I'm just getting married this weekend. I don't think I can. Yeah, I shouldn't. Wouldn't it be wise to pull up a podcast the day before, anyway. Yeah. No, I'm so happy for you. Thank you for everything that you're doing and everything that you're creating in this world. Oh, thank you. And thanks for amplifying all that's going on in our world. It's fun and letting people peek in and see what's going on. Thank you. Yes. Thanks, Dawn. You too. While I am a physician, the information presented in this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your own healthcare provider before making any significant changes to your lifestyle or routine. By listening to this podcast, you are not creating a physician patient relationship. Thank you for listening to the Purposeful MD Podcast. If you like what you hear, please rate and review the show. Please also visit my website, www.thepurposefulmd.com for free downloads or to discuss working with me as your coach.