A: Hey guys. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Amanda.
L: I'm Laura.
K: And I'm Kendra.
A: And, you may or may not know, we just got back from the ACEP meeting, which is the American College of Emergency Physicians, and while we were there, we ran into some people who are doing work on circadian rhythm for shift workers. They've already proven that this works for jet lag, and now they are looking for study participants for shift workers, which is exactly who we're talking to. What they need…we are not associated with them at all. This is totally for free, but I thought if this could cure one of our biggest problems, this would be huge.
So what it is, it's basically like a night sleep mask, and it uses science that was perfected at Stanford to introduce sudden bursts of light that doesn't wake you up. And it, apparently it matters what color the burst of light is, but it literally resets your circadian rhythm so that you are much better rested for your night shifts. And they are looking for study participants to prove that this works in shift workers. So if this sounds like you, that you work regular night shift rotations, you have access to an iOS device and you're 18 to 65 years of age. We'll have the link in the show notes, but you can reach out to [email protected]. That's lumos.tech, and they can get you in this study and get you all the stuff you need to help our people. Can you imagine if our nocturnists were well rested and not going insane. So, look in our show notes. I mean, that was a huge reason for me to go to our freestanding ER. I couldn't, I couldn't sleep well in the day anymore.
So, today though, I'm excited because we have another ER physician with us. She is Dr. Shideh Shafie and she joins us today to talk about stress. Shideh is an absolute rockstar emergency medicine doc who runs businesses on the side. She's a performance coach, and she is the mother of twins. So we are absolutely certain when we say she's an expert on stress. Shideh has won multiple teaching awards at Brown University's Warren Alpert Medical School, and we are so honored she's joining us today.
S: Thank you for having me.
L: Yeah. Thank you so much for being here. We're so excited to hear more about what you can teach us about stress. So please just introduce yourself to our audience with a little bit about who you are, your training, et cetera, and what got you into what you're currently doing.
S: So I'm Shideh Shafie. I live in Rhode Island with my husband, my dog, and my two kids. They are first graders this year. So a lot of growth and adventure involved in all of that. I am an emergency room physician. I actually started off as a urology resident, but then quickly, not so quickly maybe, after my first year, I thought, “oh, I'll stick it out in a year of surgery, see if I like it.” And then in my second year I was like, “oh, I actually hate operating.” I just like, you know, running around, and I liked everything in medical school, so I decided to switch out and become an ER doctor. And I quickly moved to Brooklyn, New York, where I worked at Maimonides. Which, if anyone is familiar with the ER world in New York, Maimonides is a particularly challenging place to work.
And I loved it. I was there for about 10 years. I did my residency there. I did a year fellowship in ultrasound education, and then I ended up doing an associate director role there. And then once our children were born, after they were at a year and a half, we were like, “we've always wanted to raise our family in Rhode Island.” And we decided to move back.
And then I joined the faculty at Brown EM. And then the pandemic happened, and we, you know, we went through that. I helped open the field hospital here in Rhode Island. Rhode Island did pretty poorly during the pandemic. We were one of the super hard-hit states. A lot of it has to do with the demographics of Rhode Island. We’re the second oldest state, like with old people and the second most densely populated state. So a lot of people live in multigenerational family housing. And so we had a lot of old people who were really sick.
But anyway, I did a lot of roles for my group during the pandemic to bring togetherness and wellness. And that was a lot of, like, the awards I won were in the wellness space there. And I had had coaching myself. After, you know, when I had. What I didn’t mention about my intern year of emergency medicine was quite eventful. Because I got married. I got married on February 14th, which was a Sunday on Valentine's Day. Not because I'm a romantic, but because I was an intern and I was getting married in India. And it had to be on a Sunday because, like, it was the day that was auspicious or whatever. And then I also needed enough time to travel to India and get back from India. And so the only Sunday that that happened was in February where we… Our, our rotation was that you spend like three weeks in the NICU and then you take two weeks of vacation afterwards. That was the block schedule. And that Sunday was February 14th.
February 15th, we went to the Taj Mahal with all of our family and friends who had come to the wedding. Not all, but many, in caravan. Took about five and a half hours to get there in the, like, mini buses. And within like 15 minutes of reaching there, I fell off of an eight foot ledge. And mind you, I am I Iranian, my husband's Indian. I mean if you look at the demographics of Indians in the United States, there's a high proportion of them that are doctors. This was an Indian wedding, but literally I was the only doctor in the group. I was like, how is this possible? But I fell off this ledge. Landed on my head. I was bleeding in and out of my ear and going in and out of consciousness. I ended up going to a hospital in Agra, which is a smaller, less technologically advanced city. And I had an epidural, subdural and pneumocephalus. I don't have to explain what those things mean. And then I had to get an airlift. It took about six hours to organize an airlift because there's no actual civilian airport in Agra. It's an Air Force airport, and I'm not Indian. So I had to get like approval from all these people.
And finally I get…and they wanted to operate on me in Agra. And for whatever reason, my parents and my husband were like, “no way.” They wanted to intubate me. They said, “no way.” So I'm, but I'm thankful they said, “no way.” Because I, when I landed in Delhi, they decided to re-scan me. Because they were like, “well she didn't become sick after six hours waiting for transport,” and none of the injuries had advanced from the images from before.
So I spent my first week of my honeymoon in the neuro ICU and then two weeks- like we had about two weeks total in the hospital and six weeks round in India. And then I came back to the US, and my program was amazing. They, like, helped me along and then, and I was like, “I'm just gonna work. Like, I'm gonna pretend this never happened and just work, work, work, work, work.”
Because that's like, you know, that's what we do. We just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and keep going. And then my mom and then my, you know, I'm Iranian and my husband's Indian, and my mom was throwing a big Iranian wedding in the US. And that was in the subsequent June. And, and like I was, like, getting a little, like, nutty about it, whatever. And she was like, “you need to go and get some help.”
And so she had somehow met this coach who, like, really helped me to understand all the dynamics of being newly married, having gone through a really bad injury. Like my husband was, like, a first or second year law associate. So he was, like, working, you know, 120 hours. Like we barely saw each other. There was just, like, a lot going on. And this guy, like, really taught me how to—it wasn't like kumbaya, let’s hold hands. Like, because I'm not about that stuff. Like, that is, like, I hate yoga. I don't like sitting still. Like, if you ever sat next to me in a lecture, I have to, like, doodle or do something. That is not who I am.
But he met me where I was, who I was, and then was like, “this is how we move forward from this. And we don't have to sit there and, like, go backwards.” Like, did you, you know, did your mom tell you she loved you enough as a kid? Like none of that stuff. It was just like, let's move forward. It was very goal-oriented, which worked really well for me. And then I was like, this is magic. And he had a year-long program where you could learn from him. And I couldn't obviously do that when I was a resident because it was one long weekend every month for 10 months or something, or 12 months. And so the first year I was an attending, I did his program. And it was just phenomenal. I loved it and I was like, “I'm gonna employ these tools somewhere. I don't know where yet.” My plan was for my retirement career to be marriage counseling and helping these schools to help people and relationships do it.
And then the pandemic happened, and I was like, oh, these people, like, “we need community. We need help. We need, like, people need to know how to feel better when, even when things are really horrible.” You still like- one of the other gifts I’d gotten for a wedding, for a wedding gift. I don't know why this, like, random person got us this book called Touching Joy. It was someone, I don't know. It was someone in my husband’s like, you know, Indian wedding, like 500 people. I know none of them cause I've never lived in India. It's a lot of extended family. Touching Joy was about having joy even when things are challenging. And so I started employing a lot of those tools in work during the time that we were really stressed out with the pandemic when it was, like, still super scary, and it just, and then I was like, “oh, I need to do more with this.” And so then I just had to get certified as a coach and the rest was kind of history.
L: Ah, what an amazing story. That's awesome. And I can't wait to read that book, Touching Joy. We've heard you say that stress gets a bad rap. Tell us more. What do you mean by that?
S: Like the world around stress is like, “let's just like get rid of stress. Let's like manage your stress so there's less of it in your life.” But like first of all, as ER doctors, our job is to handle stress, right? Stress is not always negative. When we think stress, there's actually data that supports that stress is actually linked to value. People who say that their lives are more valuable also say that their lives are more stressful. If you're in the ER, and they hand you an EKG, and it’s an obvious STEMI. And the tech that hands you the EKG to sign. You sign it, and you're like, where's this patient? And they're like, “Oh, I don't know, but I'm going on my break.” You're like, “No. Where is this patient?” You get stressed out, and the reason you're stressed is because you know that EKG means that someone needs to get to the cath lab. And you have put a lot of value and stock in getting that patient to the right care because you are a good doctor. You care about the outcomes of the patient. So that is normal stress, and there's nothing wrong with it. But it just is stress linked to value. Or like if you're, you find out that your kid had an accident in school, you're gonna get stressed out.
When you are checking into a hotel, you might not care about the wallpaper in the bathroom. Like that doesn't stress you out, even if it's ugly or ripped, you're just like, “Whatever. I'm gonna sleep here. I got here.” Now there's somebody else who that might stress out, right? Like if you were the interior designer for the hotel and the white wallpaper's, like, misaligned. that might bother you. If you need that room for a photo shoot or whatever—there’s different people that might stress them out, but there's a real variety of what you're gonna allow to stress you in life. And some of the stuff we allow ourselves to get stressed out about is stuff we don't really even mean to be stressed out about, but it's just like this natural reaction. And we have to calm ourselves down from it.
But stress is also a physiologic reaction. And so we have to solve for that. So when you think about- you know when you're like walking as a kid and like your little brother jumps out behind you? I mean, let's pretend it's not your little brother. Let's pretend it's your child, because with your little brother, you’d probably sock him. But let's say it's your little five-year old or six-year old being funny. You still get this like heart racing, palpitations. And even though you see it's my little kid. They're not gonna hurt me. I'm safe. Like some of that mental stuff, it doesn't right away solve for the physiology of stress that happens in your body.
And what happens as ER doctors is like, we are really good at not actually feeling that physiology, right? Because we just take on stress after stress after stress. And one thing you really have to separate out is stress itself is actually a physiologic reaction. And stressors are often what, is what induces that. So the EKG with the STEMI is a stressor, or the tech being like, “I don't know where the patient is and I'm going on break” that is a stressor. The stressor is like, “I gotta find this patient, and this person's not helping me.” But the stress is a physiologic reaction.
And so when we separate those two things out, then you realize we always solve for the stressor in our lives, right? Like you always figure out where the patient is. You get that email from school that all of your kids need covid tests, but they have to be every other day and backwards and upside down. You're like, “okay, I’ll call CVS. I'll schedule 'em. No problem.” You get it all done. All those stressors you solve for. But the stress, the physiologic reaction, we don't do anything with it.
And that stress reaction is actually a physiologic reaction, due to nature. And it's what we think about as a fight, flight or freeze reaction. And that is one type of stress reaction. That's the most common type when we are learning about it. And that reaction, in nature, is like, what if you fight off a small animal? So it's like a little baby cub bear or something is chasing you. You might fight it off, but if mama bear comes after you, you might try to run away. Or if you're like a deer, if you've ever seen a deer in headlights, you'll freeze hoping that it'll go get it's like cousins to come eat with them, and then you can run away when he leaves. And actually, what happens to the deer after the threat is gone is that it'll shake. It's caused by this thing called ecstatic shaking. All of these things are to solve for that hormonal reaction, which is the stress reaction, which is mediated by corticosteroids, and adrenaline. And you got a tiny bit of endorphins with it too, because it's a little uncomfortable. Which is also like why we're, kind of, all ER people are adrenaline junkies. Because we also like the endorphins that come with adrenaline. So, and the whole point of that reaction is to get your muscles ready to do something. To like run away or to fight back or to do this ecstatic shaking after you've already frozen.
But when you finally find the patient, it’s not like you go for a run around in the hospital. You don't do, like, jumping jacks, something to finish that reaction. So those are called stress response cycles that are unfinished. So you have the stressor, you solve for it. The stress reaction is still in your body. And so understanding that if you choose a job that is high pressure and high stress, like emergency medicine, you have to make room for the stress that goes with it. And, that's just part of the gig, right? Like, just like if you're gonna play professional football, you can't not work out. You have to work out cause your muscles have to be strong enough to outrun the other people, right? Or you have to be agile enough to catch the ball. But it's not necessarily something that we talk about or think about when we think about our training, right? We don't think about all the multiple stress reactions that we go through in a day.
Right now, I know we're in a really hard spot with our healthcare system. There’s a lot of failures, and everyone's short staffed. But, like, even in a perfectly functioning ER where every nurse is perfect, everybody has their own CAT scan machine and their inpatient room. Every surgeon is nice.
Neurosurgeries, like, “I'd love to come see that consult!” In all those cases, we still will hold stress and pain because you still diagnose people with like—you know. I told a 89-year old that her back pain that she'd had for three weeks was in fact pancreatic cancer, right? Or you tell a 40 year old that they have recurrent cancer. Or you see somebody who had a really bad accident and is maimed in a really bad way. Like, or, you know, you tell parents their child died—like that is traumatic, right? Like, that stuff creates a lot of stress and pain, and we have to have time on the other end of processing it.
And if you're gonna go to therapy to talk about all this stuff… Therapy, I'm a hundred percent pro. But like you don't even necessarily know how to access it because we're so good at compartmentalizing, right? We're not like, “oh, this is what I'm sad about today.” You don't even know what you're sad about. You just know that there's like a lot of stuff. What we do is, if you think about it, like this overhead compartment. We just tuck it in there, and then finally there's so many things that it just collapses on us and we're like, “oh my God, I don't know what to do.”
And so I think one of the things that's super important to understand about stress is there's nothing wrong with stress. And that it's challenging because we're in a world of people being like, “You should always be happy.” No, you shouldn't. Like, life is not always about being happy or like Instagram, like beautiful pictures, all that. It's about living and contributing and having value. And when we contribute with things that are super valuable, they create a lot of stress for us. That doesn't necessarily mean stress is bad. It just means like you gotta make room for it.
K: Wow. That is awesome, Dr. Shafie. That was such a good perspective. I really related with the compartmentalization. And we do so good at compartmentalizing, but then we forget to open the compartments and figure out where goes what and what to deal with first. So they just all get put in their compartments and tucked away nicely. Makes us great ER docs because we go from trauma to trauma to bad news to bad news, to sick patient, to sick patient. And we can do that well because we do the compartments. And unfortunately, though, we never unpack them. So with this knowledge that you just imparted on us, how do we hack stress for our benefit?
S: So the number one thing to get stress out of your body is movement. The stress reaction is created for movement, right? Like it is, it is a physiologic reaction made to make you run away or to fight something off. You can create that movement. And like, when I say movement, I'm not saying why you gotta go pump iron for an hour at the gym? Cause if you are a mom and a doctor and a parent or whatever, you have all these other roles. You're not, you may not have an hour. But you have 15 minutes, right? And you can, like- literally during the pandemic, I have a little rebounder, which is a mini trampoline. And I had made a little rule for myself that when I started getting a little too much in my head, I was like, “you're just gonna go jump on that thing to that Ace of Base song.” I Saw the Sign. Yeah. I'm not a singer. That song, I would just like dance to that song, jump on the- to that song on the rebounder. You cannot physically be angry after jumping for a while. Or like worried. It just lets all those chemicals outta your body. You know, I am also a coach, and so one of the things I teach my clients is like, just commit to dancing to one song every day. One song. Dance to it, or jump to it or do jumping jacks to it or jump rope to it, whatever.
Something that lets you let it all out. And, now at the clinic, it's so funny cuz I work in a clinic. And they're all like, “oh, Dr. Shafie's doing her end of the day dance.” Because there's a little like testing room that we have, and I'll just like put on a song. Like whatever happened today, I'm releasing it and like going on to the rest of my life. And when I work in the ER a lot, when I have a 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM shift, I usually schedule myself for a gym block right afterwards so that I can just let it all out. But movement is the number one thing.
There are other things you can do, but nothing as effective as movement. And I know that with the people that are busy and strapped in their time—I mean, try that. Try that one song, like dance to it or like do fake punches, you know, or whatever. Like I've been known to make a person jump squat to a song or whatever. Anything that really creates movement in your body is the easiest way to let go of stress.
K: I love that. That is great. I think what we should come up with is, like instead of all of our hospitals making wellness programs, we just need to have one room, no windows, with just a crazy sound system. And we all just hit it right after shift. One or two songs, and sign up, and just hit it. I think that would be money well spent. What do you think?
S: A hundred percent. A hundred percent.
K: And so we talk about the cause of burnout being pretty multifactorial. You've elicited some of the situations earlier in this podcast, but one element is the repeated stress cycles really haven't been solved for. So how do we deal with that constant repeated stress cycle?
S: I mean, the main thing is having a program to release the stress out of your body. I think physical activity is the number one program for that. And creating the space and time for that for yourself. You know the thing about the rest of the factors of burnout, like, a lot of those things are not in your direct control. Moving your body is very much in your direct control. And then what happens when you start moving your body and you feel a little bit better, is then you actually have energy and time to help change the other aspect of burnout, right? Because the things that burn out emergency medicine, I mean like our schedule sucks, right? For most of us, we have these changing schedules often depending on who your scheduler is. They come out late; they don't come out on time. You get so many requests. Our shifts are always changing. Like those things are not necessarily directly in your control. And you can change jobs, obviously. That's one option. But if you wanna stay employed in a specific place, you can just, like, work on feeling better. And then you can bring those things up in a more meaningful way. And then decide if there is no change, that you may need to find something different. But I think the first thing that you can do is take care of yourself so you're not coming into that space broken.
One of the other spaces where I spend a lot of time talking about stress is in the medical malpractice world. Because litigation is one of the biggest stressors that physicians face. And as ER doctors, three out of four of us will face litigation at some point in our time. Which is, you know, we're four of us on this call. And to think that, that's like, that's pretty huge odds. And one of the things I talk about about reducing your risk of going through litigation is taking good care of yourself, so you're not so stressed out, so that you have space to think and process.
One of the key characteristics of burnout is apathy. Right? You become apathetic to things like, what I do does not matter. And so, you know, the resident runs a plan by you, and you are sort of half listening and maybe you make an error. And that's really scary. And it's really scary that that can happen to us as physicians. And you know, giving yourself time and grace and being a little bit nicer to yourself can really go a long way, both in the legal risk, but also in how you feel about your job.
A: (I will) put a link on the show notes to a site that does neurogenic tremor. It's that same thing like you were talking about, the ecstatic tremor that say gazelles do after being chased. And for the people that are not into it, don't go there. But it's specifically like stretching, but it—you know how if you've ever done a barre class and you stand on your toes so long that your muscles start shaking like that? It does it specifically for the psoas muscle, which is where some people feel like you hold your traumas and all of that sort of stuff in it. If you're into that sort of thing, go to the link. If you're not, get on the trampoline and listen to Ace of Base. I don't care. Just shake it. Whatever works. But it just brought that up in my mind.
S: Or like punch to “Eye of the Tiger.” Like that is so fun. Don't let anybody else see you because they might make fun of you. But it's really fun.
K: And those are some great theme songs for like, “I am a champion today, no matter what.” Yeah.
S: And also realize there's nothing wrong with you for having stress. Like you have stress because you value the outcome. And that's a huge thing. Like understanding that element of it. The other thing I would say for more junior physicians and residents-in-training is the other element of stress responses is like…one part of it is the stress response. But another stress response is the challenge response, which is very similar hormonally to a regular stress response, but it has more of this hormone called DHEA, which is like a growth hormone in it. And that is what you see as yourself. You know, when you were an intern and like if you walked into a multi-trauma, like the first month of intern year, you're like, “God, I'm never gonna be able to do this.” You, you have the normal stress response. You're just kinda like what to do? Nope. That's why we don't put you there as an intern. But by the end of the third year when they're like, there's a Level 1 coming in with like two gunshots, whatever, you're like, “oh my God, so exciting. I'm gonna put in a chest tube, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna get them a trauma team.” And you get kind of excited because you surmount to that challenge.
And remember, remembering that too when you are in the middle of a stressful situation—remembering that your stress response can be shifted eventually to a challenge response. So those of us in, like, kind of earlier in our careers, I think a lot of things are stressful and we think like, “oh my God, how am I gonna get there?” But remember, one of the things that you get there is your knowledge base builds up, but also the resources around you. You start finding resources around you. So you're a new attending in a new institution. You gotta make your friends. You gotta get to know the nurses. You got to do all that stuff. And then what seems so stressful will shift to a challenge response. And remember we have all done that. You know, we were kids who were taking the MCAT and super stressed out about it. And then we did fine. And then we were like, “oh my God, I'm never gonna get into residency—we did fine.” And reminding yourself that. You know, the stress response is one response and that eventually it will move into a challenge response. And, and, and as ER people we're kind of addicted to that kind of high of the challenge response, right?
I know Dr. Glaucomflecken, who like, who wears the- He makes that meme of us with like the bike helmet, and they're like, “oh, I just like have to all these high adrenaline things.” We like challenge. We like physical challenge. We like all of that stuff. That's why we chose ER.
A: Yeah, so we actually got to meet him! He was at ACEP in his bike helmet. It was awesome. But I noticed that for codes. You know, when I was a baby ER doc, that was very stressful for me having codes. But by the end it's like,” Well, I'm not making 'em any worse, you know.” So it became definitely more of a challenge, like, “I don't know, let's see what can happen. Maybe it will turn out well.” But it was definitely a mindset shift. So are there any others? I know you've talked on this before. Are there any others besides stress or challenge response or is that pretty much it?
S: There's another one called “Tend and Befriend.” That's like…you think of it as like your mama bear response. That's the response. It actually has a little bit more oxytocin in it. So like labor hormone or the milk hormone. That one is kind of fun. It's like when you think about..you don't like how when the nurse upstairs is giving the ER nurse, that you don't even really like that much, but she's giving her a hard time getting report? And you're like, “give me the phone.” And you're like, and you're like, “listen, we've been trying to give you a report for two hours. Put your charge nurse on the phone.” And they're like, “oh, there's Dr. So- and-so,” whatever. That's that like Mama bear, like I'm gonna protect my own. When you are presented with challenger stressful situations, you protect your own.
So it causes us to build community. We think of that when we think about the social movements that have happened in the world recently. We think of that when we think of like how, you know, we as ER doctors, we sort of feel like we're a tribe. Like, oh, “we get each other, we know each other.” That's kind of like this, you know, way that we protect each other.
A: Kind of, kind of like a Roseto Effect a little bit. So we've got stress response, challenge response, and Tend and Befriend. Okay. Love it. So your website says you're a performance coach. So just for our audience, what does that mean? Who needs a performance coach? And what clients do you work with?
S: So I love working with clients who are ambitious professionals. They don't have to necessarily be doctors. I work with people across different industries who kind of want it all, but are sometimes stuck in how to build the infrastructure to have it all. And also that tends to happen when they become parents. I think a lot of us have been gunners from the get go. We were killing it at life. And then we become parents and we're like, “I still wanna kill it at life, but I also wanna kill it at my family. I wanna be good at all the things. I wanna be good as a mom. I wanna be good as a dad. I wanna be a good spouse. And I also have big financial goals. I have big personal goals. I have big professional goals. How can I make this all happen?” And I help people sort that out because sometimes I think people get a little bit stuck, and it's just kind of a fast pass to figuring it out.
A: So not only does she do that, but she also has other businesses on the side, mom of twins, like we told you. This, Shideh, is an expert in stress and managing things beautifully. But I'm also excited to share that you're going to be starting a medical malpractice coaching section of your businesses too. Will you tell, tell us more about that amazing collaborative effort?
A: Sure. I am working with Gita Pensa, who is another ER doctor actually. She was at Brown with me for a long time, and she is a medical malpractice expert. She has her- her podcast is called “The L Word.” It's litigation and doctors. And if you are getting sued and need a resource, that's like a first resource that most people get referred to by word of mouth. And we are putting together a program to help doctors through that space. So I would love, if you have any questions about litigation or litigation stress to reach out, and I will set you up with the form to figure out if you may be a potential person who could come to those focus groups.
A: I love it. So I, I have, because I know you personally, have referred some people going through litigation already to Gita's podcast, and they said it's just absolutely amazing already. So that resource is free. It's already out there, but there's gonna be tons of people that you know, when it happens to them, need to get ahold of you. So how do they find you? Where, where's the best place to contact you?
S: The easiest place to find me is on my website, www.shidehshafie.com. So it’s my name. Or on Instagram. I’m always on Instagram. Just check on Instagram.
A: For real. She is. She is so much better than we are on Instagram. So is it @ShidehShafie on Instagram too? Okay. Any other places they should check you out or is that good?
S: That's the two main places.
A: Perfect. All right, well thank you for coming. Are there any closing thoughts before we head out?
S: No. Just to remind ER doctors out there that the work you're doing is so valuable, and when you do valuable work, there's stress associated with it. Just take the time to put down that stress because you deserve it, and we wanna preserve you so that you can still be this valuable community member that you are. Right? Like ER doctors are such badasses. And we definitely need you to be whole, happy and healthy.
L: Awesome. Thank you.
K: Well, that's awesome. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Shideh, for being on our podcast today and sharing not only your amazing testimony, but what came of that was so much to offer all of us, our EM tribe. But not just emergency medicine docs, women docs and mom docs and all the other tribes that we represent. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And we are grateful that you've found our podcast today. So stay connected. Go to our website, www.thewholephysician.com to sign up for our Weekly Well Check—it’s delivered right to your inbox.
So until next time, you are whole, you are a gift to medicine, and the work you do matters.
