Surgeons with Purpose

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In this episode I speak with Dr. Mandy Rice, a dual board–certified General Surgeon and Surgical Intensivist whose path to surgery was anything but traditional. She began her career as a pediatric ICU nurse at 22, carrying the belief that she “wasn’t smart enough to be a doctor” - until a physician challenged that narrative, and she chose to believe him.
Mandy loved medical school: the chaos, the autonomy, and the sense of purpose. Only later did she realize that the chaos she gravitated toward mirrored the chaos of her childhood, and that comfort and disorder had long been paired in her nervous system. After graduating medical school at 36, she entered residency and discovered stark differences between nursing and medicine, mentorship and hierarchy. A strong female role model in medical school contrasted sharply with a toxic training environment in residency, where lack of support - particularly from women in leadership - left her asking, “Why would people who are paid to train me treat me this way?”
We talk openly about the pain and disorientation of being fired from a training program, and the rude awakening that truth, logic, and “first, do no harm” do not always govern surgical culture. From there, Mandy navigated her first job out of training, reimagined the life she wanted, and ultimately designed a practice on her own terms, including direct-care surgery and later, community-based women’s health and hormone therapy.
Along the way we examine burnout, depersonalization, and the subtle spectrum between over-empathizing and dehumanizing patients. The middle ground, we learn, is compassion and skillful empathy. We also explore the gifts of palliative medicine and how it reshaped her ability to have difficult conversations, confront uncertainty, and meet suffering without collapsing into it.
Today, Mandy practices community surgery through a circuitous and self-authored route - proof that there are many ways to practice surgery, many ways to serve, and many ways to live a life in healthcare that is meaningful, humane, and your own.
Learn more about Dr. Mandy Rice here.
Join us inside Empowered Surgeons Group here.

Have you ever felt like you were on a moving sidewalk toward retirement, as if you had committed to a life path long ago and now you’re simply being carried along it? If so, you’re not alone, and you won’t want to miss this episode.
This week I speak with Mark Shrime, MD, PhD - Head and Neck surgeon, researcher, and former Chief of the Harvard Program in Global Surgery - about discernment, vocation, risk, and the search for meaning in medicine. Mark talks candidly about disliking medical school, nearly quitting, and ultimately choosing ENT after spending time with a surgeon who modeled what it means to balance work and play - a theme that never stopped mattering.
We explore how physicians make consequential decisions under uncertainty, how intuition can be trained, and why medicine treats vocation almost like the clergy: you choose young, never leave, and give your whole life to it. Along the way, we discuss administrative bloat, the profit motives of healthcare, the indoctrination of not listening to our inner voice, and the question of whether doctors are truly risk-averse or simply trained to be.
A turning point comes with Mark’s service work on Mercy Ships, where he performed head and neck surgery in a purely service mindset. An epiphany in Monrovia - punctuated by a near-fatal car accident - clarified his path in a way that finally felt aligned rather than obligatory. Conversations in Madagascar later informed his paper Trading Bankruptcy for Health (Value Health, 2018), a study I referenced in my TEDx talk Seeing Beyond the Red Swans.
We talk black swans, white swans, and red swans, and the privilege of being present with people in their deepest truths. Ultimately, we circle back to what humans crave most: to be seen, accepted, safe, and unjudged, even though safety is not incentivized in modern healthcare.
We close with positive psychology, the inner judge and its saboteurs, and the uncomfortable but necessary skill of falling in love with failure, especially in surgery, where complications become harder emotionally even as skill peaks.
Watch Mark's TEDx talk, Putting Purpose Over Path.
Work with him and buy his book here.
Follow him on instagram here.

After returning from our inaugural women surgeon's retreat in Cabo, Steph Sheldon and I debrief about the lessons we learned.
Please enjoy this special episode of Surgeons with Purpose.
The "Pain to Power Workshop" will launch on Jan 18th. Get on my email list here to get all the updates about the program.
And if you are ready to join us in Empowered Surgeons Group, click here.
Steph Sheldon is a creative entrepreneur, business coach, website designer, and brand strategist who works primarily with women founders and coaches to help them clarify their voice, build intentional digital spaces, and grow sustainable, aligned businesses. She blends her background in architecture with business strategy and creativity to support her clients in creating meaningful, effective online presences and offerings.
Steph frames business not just as technical work but as creative and personal expression, rooted in clarity, intention, and connection between the founder and their audience. Her content and coaching often explore how inner beliefs, creativity, and somatic experience inform business success.
Follow her on instagram here.

Are you a woman surgeon who wants to retreat with us in Norway in August? Get on my calendar for an interview here.
Join Empowered Surgeons Group here.
In this episode, Dr. Lauren Umstattd shares her journey through otolaryngology training, a painful facial plastics fellowship experience, and the difficult decision to leave a path that no longer aligned with her values. First drawn to ENT as a medical student by its breadth and clinical complexity, Lauren enjoyed the precision of endoscopic and microscopic surgery during residency but found herself emotionally weighed down by head and neck cancer care. A rotation in facial plastic surgery changed everything, offering her clarity, creativity, and a sense of elective choice that resonated deeply.
Fellowship, however, became one of the most difficult chapters of her training. Despite being a strong student, Lauren felt profoundly out of alignment with her fellowship director and increasingly isolated, questioning herself in ways she never had before. As the experience deteriorated, she began simultaneously building her future practice, ultimately making the terrifying decision to resign just ten months in, despite fears about certification and professional identity. Ultimately, she chose her hard.
Lauren goes on to describe building a facial plastic surgery practice rooted in trust, transparency, and psychological safety. She discusses leveraging social media, thinking like an entrepreneur, and learning to separate the certainty required in surgery from the experimentation required in business. Central to her work is reframing perfectionism and failure, setting honest expectations with patients, and acknowledging that neither surgeons nor outcomes are ever perfect.
This conversation explores what it means to design a life and practice on your own terms, build culture intentionally, and fall in love with the hard parts of the work. It’s a powerful reminder that sometimes the bravest move in surgery and life is choosing alignment over approval.
Dr. Lauren Umstattd is a facial plastic surgeon and entrepreneur known for her commitment to autonomy, ethical patient communication, and psychologically safe practice culture. She is passionate about building systems that support excellence without sacrificing humanity. Follow her on instagram here and TikTok here.

Dr. Kat Hudon shares her journey from enthusiastic learner to an employed physician slowly beaten down by a system designed to keep doctors exhausted, constrained, and disconnected from their creativity.
In this convo, we explore how medicine places an impossible mantle of perfection on physicians, why resilience is a finite resource, and how the system punishes anything that falls outside the narrow definition of “excellence.” Dr. Hudon reflects on moral injury, middle management challenges, the growing administrative bloat in healthcare, and how she realized she always had a choice.
This episode is about reclaiming agency through values, connection, collaboration, and the courage to design a life and practice that actually aligns with who you are.
Key Themes:

From Idealism to Disillusionment

Kat describes the arc many physicians experience: entering medicine as a high-achieving, enthusiastic learner and slowly realizing, “I thought this was going to be better.”
Residency forges some of her most meaningful, lifelong relationships—even as the system itself begins to erode joy and creativity.
As leadership changes in employed medicine, conditions often worsen rather than improve.

The Myth of Infinite Resilience
Medicine demands perfection while punishing anything less.
Resilience is not endless—it’s a bucket that must be actively filled and resourced.
The dream of post-training life rarely matches reality; the clinical work is often the easiest part of the job.

Moral Injury and Systemic Failure
Five years ago, Kat witnessed a dramatic rise in loneliness and anxiety among children without adequate training, resources, or systems to support them.
The moral injury of feeling like she was causing harm simply by working within a broken system shook her willingness to participate in it.
Healthcare has become an industry of industries, bloated by layers of administration and confusion designed to perpetuate itself.

Insurance, Power, and Autonomy
Insurance companies dictate care decisions, limiting physician autonomy and patient-centered care.
If given a magic wand, Kat would eliminate the outsized power insurance holds over medical decision-making
The growing number—and salaries—of administrators contrasts sharply with the lived experience of clinicians.

Choosing a Different Path
Disillusionment with healthcare helped catalyze Kat’s move toward building a direct care clinic focused on longevity and age management.
Starting a business required clarity around core values and identity.
Physicians have highly transferable skills and more freedom than they are often led to believe.

Relationship Over...