Surgeon, Interrupted

Can someone still change medicine after they've left it? After returning from Hippocratic Collective's Los Angeles End of Academic Year celebration, Frances Mei shares a comment that stopped her in her tracks: "You walked away. Your credibility is gone." That criticism sparks a deeper conversation about one of the biggest questions in medicine today. Does meaningful change only come from people st...

What happens when grief collides with medical training? In this deeply personal episode of Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances Mei sits down with family physician, educator, and author Dr. Shanda McManus to discuss loss, caregiving, resilience, and the hidden emotional costs of becoming a doctor. Growing up in North Philadelphia, Shonda helped care for her mother through advanced ovarian cancer before...

What happens when your residency program suddenly shuts down mid-training? In this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances Mei sits down with internal medicine physician Dr. Julia Torrellas to discuss one of the most destabilizing experiences a trainee can face: the closure of a residency program during training. Julia shares what it was like to learn that her hospital was shutting down, how res...

What does it actually feel like to finish a plastic surgery residency in 2026? In this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances Mei sits down with graduating plastic surgery resident Dr. Liz Malphrus just days before graduation to reflect on the end of a six-year journey through surgical training. Together, they discuss burnout, confidence, identity, career choices, and what comes next after resi...

Why does the United States spend more on healthcare than ever before while chronic disease continues to rise? In this episode of Surgeon Interrupted , Frances Mei sits down with reconstructive plastic surgeon Dr. Joshua Mirrer to explore the systems behind modern healthcare. From residency burnout and preventive medicine to agriculture, economics, chronic disease, and the incentive structures shap...

What happens when a longtime magazine editor leaves the world of celebrity journalism and finds herself at the forefront of narrative medicine? This week on Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances Mei sits down with Donna Bulseco, editor of the literary and arts journal Intima and co-editor of Where It Hurts: Dispatches from the Emotional Front Lines of Medicine . Together, they explore the power of storyt...

In this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances Mei sits down again with her husband Colin for an unfiltered conversation about residency culture, hyper-productivity, and the psychological habits that follow physicians long after they leave the hospital. What begins as a discussion about planning Hippocratic Collective’s first West Coast event in the Hollywood Hills evolves into a broader examin...

This week on Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances Mei sits down with family physician and educator Dr. Joan Chan for a conversation about ambition, burnout, identity, and the myth of “having it all.” Together, they unpack the pressure many physicians feel to optimize every area of life at once — career, relationships, creativity, wellness, leadership — and why that mindset so often leads to exhaustion a...

One year after leaving the hospital, Frances Mei reflects on what actually changes when you step away from medicine, and what doesn’t. After a month-long Europe trip spanning Cambridge, London, Copenhagen, Paris, Rome, Naples, and the Amalfi Coast, Frances and Colin unpack identity, burnout, healing, neurodivergence, perfectionism, and the uncomfortable reality of personal growth after medicine. T...

What happens when life doesn’t wait for training to end? In this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances Mei sits down with ENT surgeon Dr. Kelly Schmidt to talk about a reality rarely discussed in medicine: navigating fertility, miscarriage, and pregnancy during residency. What begins as a straightforward plan to “just have a baby” quickly becomes something else—cycles that don’t work, loss tha...

What if the moment that almost broke you… was the one that made everything possible? In this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances sits down with cornea specialist Dr. Imane Tarib to unpack a journey that spans continents, identities, and nearly two decades of training. From medical school in Morocco to starting over in the United States as an IMG, Imane shares what it actually takes to rebuil...

This week on Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances Mei sits down with Dr. Kate Buhrke following their trip to the LMSA West conference—where one theme came up again and again: How do you protect yourself in a system that doesn’t protect you? From toxic power dynamics and inappropriate behavior in training, to the blurred line between self-advocacy and self-preservation, this conversation pulls back the c...

What if the traits that made you successful in medicine are also what made it so hard? In this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted , Dr. Frances Mei sits down with ENT physician Dr. Colleen Plein for a deeply honest conversation about neurodivergence, identity, and what it really means to “fit in” in medicine. They explore: ADHD, autism, and giftedness in high-achieving physicians Why so many doctors...

In this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances Mei sits down with Dr. Shay Taylor—newly matched at Yale Anesthesiology, and a story that has gone viral around the world. But this is not just a “feel-good” story. This is a conversation about what it actually takes to get there: the years of working full-time while in school, the rejection, the debt, the doubt, and the mindset required to keep go...

The Match is a monopoly. And now, it’s official. In this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances Mei is joined by Colin Royal for an emergency breakdown of a newly released congressional report from the House Judiciary Committee—one that directly calls the NRMP (residency Match) a monopoly with “destructive consequences” for physicians, patients, and the healthcare system at large. If you’ve bee...

In this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances sits down with Helena ( A.YoungDoctors. Journey), an emergency medicine physician redefining what early attending life can look like. Fresh out of residency, she chose a path many physicians are warned against: full-time locum tenens work. What follows is an honest, nuanced conversation about autonomy, uncertainty, and what it means to build a care...

In this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances Mei speaks with physician, writer, and documentary filmmaker Jessica Zitter, MD , whose work explores some of the most difficult, and most human, moments in medicine. Dr. Zitter first gained international recognition through the Oscar- and Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary Extremis , which captured the emotional reality of end-of-life care inside...

n this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances Mei sits down with urology resident and social media creator Maheetha Bharadwaj, MD —often known online as the internet’s favorite “dancing urologist.” What begins with viral TikToks and Kardashian-style medical skits quickly turns into a deeper conversation about advocacy, physician voice, and the hidden curriculum of medical training . Maheetha ex...

What happens when the dream you chased your whole life stops feeling like yours? This week on Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances Mei sits down with Sarah Rav — former doctor, former McKinsey consultant, and now a positioning and content strategist helping professionals build powerful personal brands. Sarah shares her journey from direct-entry medical school in Australia to corporate consulting, and ul...

Today is February 24th — release day. Frances Mei and Colin sit down on the eve of launch to talk about what it feels like to finally let Surgeon on the Edge go. After three years of drafting, redrafting, anger, resistance, breakthroughs, and letting go of control, the book is no longer a mirror — it’s an old photograph. In this intimate conversation, they unpack: Why the first draft “wasn’t true”...

This week on Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances sits down with her oldest friend—Executive Pastry Chef Rebecca Freeman —to talk about what happens when your childhood dream actually comes true… and it’s still hard. Becky is the Executive Pastry Chef at Coyote Café and Santacafé in Santa Fe, a National Pastry Chef of the Year, and a multi–40 Under 40 award winner. She knew at five years old she wanted...

What if the most radical thing you could do in medicine wasn’t being tougher, but being more human? In this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances Mei sits down with The ICU Doctor to talk about identity, intuition, and breaking the unspoken rules of medical culture. From immigrant roots and imposter syndrome to building clinical “spidey sense,” digital medical education, and creating work envi...

In this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances Mei sits down with bestselling author and former television producer Audrey Bellezza to talk about reinvention—professionally, creatively, and existentially. Audrey spent decades in television, rising from a Food Network intern to showrunner and development executive before pivoting (multiple times) into authorship. During the pandemic, she co-wrot...

Dr. Red Hoffman is a surgeon, hospice physician, and writer whose career has never followed a straight line—and whose life was radically reshaped by grief, chronic illness, and unexpected loss. In this episode, we talk about starting over more than once, entering medicine later in life, and what happens when your body forces you to renegotiate your identity as a physician. Red shares her journey t...

What happens when a doctor decides she doesn’t need more money - she needs more peace? In this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted , Frances Mei sits down with psychiatrist Dr. Claire Oduwo to talk about choosing a “soft life” after medical training—and why that phrase is wildly misunderstood in medicine. Claire shares her path from Kenya to Nebraska to the Pacific Northwest, how her immigrant upbring...