Women MD Leaders

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here.  You have done the work. You have the track record. And you are still waiting for someone to tell you it's your turn. That permission is not coming. In this episode, Dr. Stephanie Yamout breaks down why so many high-achieving women physician leaders stay stuck at the threshold — and what it actually...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. You made a plan. A good one. And then something shifted — a staffing issue, a budget cut, a mandate from above — and suddenly that plan doesn't fit the conditions anymore. For most women physician leaders, that moment when your plan falls apart can feel like failure.  We were trained in straight lin...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. You've crossed every finish line medicine put in front of you. You have the degree, the title, the income. And still, something feels off.  Not wrong, exactly. Just… constrained. Like you're moving through your days without quite being in them. This episode is about the difference between indep...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. The weight isn't in the doing of tasks. The weight is in being the person who notices all the tasks that need doing. If you're the competent one — the primary parent, the leader of the pack, the reliable endpoint everyone routes through — you pay a tax for it.  More questions. More decisions. M...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. There is a friction that happens when you’re a doctor and a mom. Not the kind you can solve with a better schedule. The kind that lives inside you, quietly, every time you transition from one role to the other. In this episode, Dr. Stephanie Yamout names something most women physicians carry but rarely s...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. Summer break is about to torch my perfectly calendared life — and if you're a high-achieving woman in medicine, you already know that feeling. The grip on the calendar. The way it slips the moment life does what life does. In this episode, I get honest about something I've been wrestling with:...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here.  Burnout is a syndrome. Moral injury is a wound. Most of us in medicine have only been handed one of those words — and it’s the wrong one for what so many of us are actually carrying. In this episode, Dr. Stephanie Yamout breaks down a distinction that took her years to name out loud: burnout is what hap...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. You don’t have to keep up with the culture. You get to choose your values, and you get to build a life — and a career — around them. A conversation at a birthday party last week got Dr. Stephanie Yamout thinking about a question women physician leaders keep asking themselves, quietly: do I have to keep u...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. Last episode, we talked about the data between the data — the hallway conversations, the side glances, the offhand comments that carry more information than any report. That led me to reflect a bit deeper into one of the most important places that kind of listening applies: burnout. Not the burnout that...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. You are swimming in data. Reports. KPIs. Dashboards. Epic. Report cards. Middle school grades. The information just flows toward you, and your analytical brain — the one medicine trained to process and synthesize at a high level — catches it all and starts building the story. But here's what I want...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here.   There’s a moment every physician knows.  You’ve had a brutal day. The rounding ran long, the family meeting didn’t go the way you planned, and now you’re in bumper-to-bumper traffic — or chasing a toddler around the kitchen — and you can feel yourself unraveling.  Your thoughts are on autopilot, and th...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. We are the strong ones. In medicine, we’re trained for it. We learn How to deliver devastating news with composure How to hold space for patients and families in their hardest moments How to keep going, no matter what. But somewhere along the way, something subtle happens. We learn how to be strong for e...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. Resilience. It’s one of the most celebrated traits in medicine. We’re taught to build it, strengthen it, and rely on it in moments of intense challenge and pressure. Through our training, we learn to push through the hardest cases, keep going when the system doesn’t make sense, and show up — no matter wh...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. There are moments in life when you suddenly realize you’ve come full circle. Not in the sense that nothing has changed—but in the sense that everything has changed, and somehow the pieces are fitting together in a new (hopefully improved) way. This week is one of those moments for me. I’m leaving for my...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. There is immense power in reflection. So often when I’m trying to decipher the steps to solve a problem — whether it’s boundary setting, overcoming imposter syndrome, or recovering from burnout — the first step is always the same. Notice. Reflect. Find time, space, and energy to simply notice what is hap...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. For most of our lives, the path was handed to us. There was a legit curriculum. A next standardized exam. A next rotation. A next milestone. If you were anything like me, you moved straight through education and training knowing exactly what came next. The structure itself created focus. And then you arr...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. One of the most powerful tools I’ve used — both in my own life and in coaching physician leaders — is clarity. And surprisingly, many of us don’t actually have it. We might have a vague sense of what we want. A few ideas are floating around. Maybe even a list of things we should be doing. But clarity — t...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here.  People pleasing doesn’t look dramatic.  It looks generous. Helpful. Even accommodating.  It looks like being the “easy” one.  It can even feel good – like a quick dopamine hit.  But underneath it? It’s often the slow erosion of our own boundaries.  And the tricky part is that most of us don’t even reali...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. I was recently on a girls’ trip, and honestly… my jaw dropped at how much I still have to learn. I have this dear friend — super outgoing, fun, magnetic to be around. But what struck me most wasn’t her personality. It was her unfailing ability to ask for exactly what she wanted. And not in a pushy way. N...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. So many of the challenges we face in leadership — especially in medicine — come from people bunkering down inside a single story. We see things through our role, our training, our pressures… and we assume that’s the whole truth. At the same time, many of us feel like we’re living fragmented lives — one v...

Why Women Physician Leaders Need Friendship for Mental Health, Longevity, and Burnout Prevention Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. Last night I was telling my husband, Sani, about a conversation I’d had with some of the neighborhood ladies earlier in the day.  He looked at me, a little confused, and said, “Wait… when did you see them?” A...

A Guide for Women Physician Leaders Reclaiming Their Voice and Values Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. Have you ever realized you were feeling resentful… long after it had already taken root? Not just annoyed. Not just tired. But carrying something heavier — something that used to be passion, or pride, or purpose — that somehow curdled...

Decision Fatigue, People-Pleasing, and Values Alignment for Women Physician Leaders Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. Have you ever noticed how much time you can spend thinking about a decision — without actually getting any closer to making it? You replay it in your head.  You talk it through repeatedly with the people you trust.  You j...

Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here. Buy-in. It’s one of those words that sounds simple… until you actually need it. Buy-in hits differently depending on the situation — and honestly, depending on your gender. We’re often taught that if the work is good enough, if the data is strong enough, if we just explain it well , people will come alon...

Remember You’re in the Room for a Reason   Find the full transcript for this episode and more resources for Women Physician Leaders here.   Have you ever walked into a room and silently wondered: Do I actually belong here?   Will they find me credible? Am I saying the right thing?  Should I take the job that isn’t exactly what I was looking for… just because it might make me look more legitimate? ...