The Hidden Load: For the educators and leaders in medicine who hold everyone up.

Dr. Santina Wheat
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Personal Journals

This podcast talks about the challenges of Burnout, Balance, and the Burdens Healthcare Faculty Rarely Name and feel that they struggle through alone.  This is for the educators and leaders in medicine who hold everyone up — and deserve to be held, too.

  1. 6d ago

    Beyond Grin and Bear It: The Art of Standing Up for Yourself

    Have you ever actually learned how to stand up for yourself? Not advocating for a patient, a trainee, or a clinical protocol, but standing up for your own boundaries, workload, and personal needs inside a high-friction healthcare system. In this solo episode of The Hidden Load, Dr. Santina Wheat explores the high-achiever reflex of "grinning and bearing it"—swallowing institutional friction to keep the peace outside while igniting a fire of resentment and burnout inside. Dr. Wheat shares a personal story of coaching her daughter to find her voice, contrasting it with how adult professionals execute complex risk calculations that keep them silent. Moving past the fear of being labeled "difficult" or a "complainer," she presents an objective, three-part diagnostic rubric to know exactly when to stop enduring and start speaking up using a low-emotion, high-data framework. The Three-Part Self-Advocacy Rubric:Stop grinning and bearing it when your situation hits even ONE of these criteria: Criterion 1: You Are Considering Leaving / Walking Away: If you are mentally packing your bags or updating your CV, you have nothing to lose—use your voice as an unvarnished quality-control exit audit.Criterion 2: It Impacts More Than Just You: When your silence enables an unsustainable workload that hurts your colleagues, residents, or staff, self-advocacy transforms into community defense.Criterion 3: Greater Than 0% Chance of Improvement: Most institutional friction stems from organizational blind spots; bringing data over drama gives a good-faith system the chance to self-correct.Your Monday Morning Challenge:Identify one area in your personal or professional life where you have been quietly grinning and bearing it for months. Run it through the three-part rubric. If it hits even one criterion, schedule the meeting this week. Bring your data, offer a viable operational alternative, and show the junior colleagues coming behind you that we don't have to swallow friction to be worthy of the room. Resources:Looking to work 1:1?: Book Your Call with Dr. Wheat — Ready to disrupt your overworking patterns? Let’s spend 15 minutes checking your operational capacity.Free Download: Career Alignment WorkbookDr. Santina Wheat’s Website: santinawheat.comReflective CME Opportunity: True leadership stamina requires an understanding of your own biological baseline. Listen to this episode and claim your FREE Reflective CME/CE credit via the Learn at Pinnacle App. 👉 Claim Your CME Credit Here

  2. Sep 21

    The Vacation Firewall: Hustle Culture, Identity, and the Power of the Switch

    What does it take for a high-achieving physician leader to truly stop checking email on leave? In this solo episode of The Hidden Load, Dr. Santina Wheat expands on her SoMeDocs article, "I Had to Leave the Country to Stop Checking My Email." Sharing a humorous yet profound realization while standing in the sweltering heat of the Vatican, Dr. Wheat explores how the pervasive American hustle culture bleeds into our vacations, our family dynamics, and even our wellness routines. Dr. Wheat tackles the modern dilemma of identity in medicine: Should we feel guilty for taking pride in a discipline we sacrificed decades to master? Moving past the binary of toxic overwork vs. anti-hustle cynicism, she makes the case for "managing the switch." Tune in to discover how modeling a clean disconnection isn't just a personal wellness boundary—it is an essential act of leadership that protects the next generation of physicians from performative exhaustion. Resources: Looking to work 1:1?: Book Your Call with Dr. Wheat — Ready to disrupt your overworking patterns? Let’s spend 15 minutes checking your operational capacity.Free Download: Career Alignment WorkbookDr. Santina Wheat’s Website: santinawheat.com"I Had to Leave the Country to Stop Checking My Email."Reflective CME Opportunity: True leadership stamina requires an understanding of your own biological baseline. Listen to this episode and claim your FREE Reflective CME/CE credit via the Learn at Pinnacle App. 👉 Claim Your CME Credit Here

  3. Sep 14

    The Trailblazer Tax: Women in Medicine and the Burden of Legacy

    September marks Women in Medicine Month, anchored by National Women in Medicine Day on September 17th. As we look back at historical pioneers like Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and honor the mothers and mentors who cleared our paths, women physicians today face a unique, unquantified hidden load: the Trailblazer Tax. When you know how hard earlier generations fought just to get into the room, an internal mechanism takes over, convincing you that you cannot complain, show weakness, or admit exhaustion. In this solo episode of The Hidden Load, Dr. Santina Wheat explores how female leaders turn legacy into a high-stakes performance contract. She breaks down the systemic lag that expects women to lead executive departments while carrying the majority of domestic and emotional coordination at home. Tune in to discover three powerful coaching reframes to drop the guilt, shift from individual endurance to system redesign, and honor your predecessors without sacrificing your humanity on the altar of medicine. Three Reframes to Drop the Trailblazer Tax:Martyrdom Is Not Gratitude: True gratitude isn't working until midnight to prove you belong—it's using your earned authority to set boundaries and enjoy the life made possible by past sacrifices.Normalize the "I Need Support" Stance: Dismantle the "Superwoman" myth by treating domestic help, neighborhood support, and administrative delegation as acts of operational intelligence rather than personal failures.Shift to System Redesign: Honor those who came before you not by surviving a broken system, but by actively redesigning workplace structures for the women who walk behind you.Resources:Looking to work 1:1?: Book Your Call with Dr. Wheat — Ready to disrupt your overworking patterns? Let’s spend 15 minutes checking your operational capacity.Free Download: Career Alignment WorkbookDr. Santina Wheat’s Website: santinawheat.comReflective CME Opportunity: True leadership stamina requires an understanding of your own biological baseline. Listen to this episode and claim your FREE Reflective CME/CE credit via the Learn at Pinnacle App. 👉 Claim Your CME Credit Here

  4. Sep 7

    Unlearning Independence: The Skill of Asking for Help

    Did you ever actually learn how to ask for help? For most high-achieving clinicians and leaders, early academic ease created an automatic reflex loop: When things get hard, just work harder. In medicine, this natural tendency toward self-reliance is codified into a professional requirement, conditioning us to view independence as the ultimate proof of competence. In this solo episode of The Hidden Load, Dr. Santina Wheat explores the invisible burden of extreme self-reliance and why treating support as a last-resort crisis tool destroys our long-term capacity. Sharing a deeply personal story about a family crisis following her mother's stroke, Dr. Wheat contrasts the rigid, pre-calculated backup plans of a physician with true relational support. She breaks down how overworking in isolation starves your team of the opportunity to bring their own brilliance to the table, and delivers a concrete, two-step framework to transition from a lone hero into a connected, collaborative leader. Key Takeaways for Leaders and Educators:The High-Achiever Reflex Loop: How early academic success conditions leaders to rely solely on internal grit, insulating them from developing the essential human skill of seeking support.The Codified Requirement: How medical training transforms natural self-reliance into a rigid expectation that doctors must always appear all-knowing and completely independent.Relational Support vs. Crisis Management: Moving away from viewing help as a last-resort failure and learning to lean on organic community connections as an everyday strategy.Delegation as a Multiplier: Recognizing that white-knuckling every project doesn't protect your team—it deprives them of the chance to contribute their own expertise and grow.Resources: Looking to work 1:1?: Book Your Call with Dr. Wheat — Ready to disrupt your overworking patterns? Let’s spend 15 minutes checking your operational capacity.Free Download: Career Alignment WorkbookDr. Santina Wheat’s Website: santinawheat.comReflective CME Opportunity: True leadership stamina requires an understanding of your own biological baseline. Listen to this episode and claim your FREE Reflective CME/CE credit via the Learn at Pinnacle App. 👉 Claim Your CME Credit Here

  5. Aug 31

    The Courageous Partner: Strategic Followership in Mid-Leadership

    In healthcare, training programs, workshops, and titles are explicitly engineered to teach us how to lead. But almost nobody explicitly teaches us how to be a great follower—especially when sitting in the high-stakes middle of the healthcare matrix as an associate program director, vice chair, site director, or medical director. In this solo episode of The Hidden Load, Dr. Santina Wheat pulls back the curtain on Strategic Followership and what organizational psychologists call being a "courageous partner." Dr. Wheat explores how mid-level leaders get caught in the squeeze between Horizon 1 (internal academic/clinical survival) and Horizon 2 (external financial/institutional reality). She breaks down the three toxic followership styles—the sheep, the yes-person, and the break-room saboteur—and delivers a tactical blueprint for practicing loyal resistance behind closed doors while maintaining an unbroken, unified front in public. Key Takeaways for Leaders and Educators:The Mid-Leadership Squeeze: Navigating the friction between Horizon 1 (ACGME surveys, resident well-being, duty hours) and Horizon 2 (margin pressures, RVU targets, C-suite budget cuts).The Three Flawed Followership Styles:The Sheep (Passive Compliance): Passing friction straight to frontline staff without testing ground-truth parameters.The Yes-Person (Performative Alignment): Promising the world to executives while knowing the team lacks the bandwidth or morale to execute.The Alienated Follower (Break-Room Saboteur): Staying silent in executive meetings and complaining about leadership in the faculty lounge.The Courageous Partner: Serving as a high-intensity co-pilot who tests execution parameters behind closed doors so the core mission can actually succeed on the ground.The Closed-Door / Open-Door Rule: Practicing fierce, loyal resistance and debating trade-offs in private, but eliminating all "hairline fractures" to present a unified WE front in public.Completed Staff Work: Moving away from transferring unanalyzed operational noise to an executive's desk by always pairing a identified problem with a vetted, one-page SBAR solution.Resources Mentioned: Looking to work 1:1?: Book Your Call with Dr. Wheat — Ready to disrupt your overworking patterns? Let’s spend 15 minutes checking your operational capacity.Free Download: Career Alignment WorkbookDr. Santina Wheat’s Website: santinawheat.comReflective CME Opportunity: True leadership stamina requires an understanding of your own biological baseline. Listen to this episode and claim your FREE Reflective CME/CE credit via the Learn at Pinnacle App. 👉 Claim Your CME Credit Here

  6. Aug 24

    The Efficiency Delusion: Why Leaders Need White Space

    Look at your calendar right now. Is it an unyielding, multicolored game of Tetris filled with back-to-back clinic blocks, committee meetings, and evaluation reviews? When you spot a rare 15-minute gap, is your immediate reflex to clear your inbox or sign off on compliance modules? In this solo episode of The Hidden Load, Dr. Santina Wheat dismantles the performative "badge of honor" surrounding relentless productivity, exposing The Efficiency Delusion: the false belief that high-speed micro-tasking is synonymous with effective leadership. Dr. Wheat explores the cognitive architecture mapping Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 (fast, clinical pattern recognition) against System 2 (slow, deliberate, strategic calculation). She breaks down why forcing your brain to operate at maximum velocity all day locks out your prefrontal cortex from handling complex, nonlinear organizational challenges. Tune in to learn how to reframe staring at a wall for an hour as high-value executive labor, script hard operational boundaries using the DESC protocol, and model a healthy relationship with time for the next generation of healthcare leaders. Resources Mentioned: Looking to work 1:1?: Book Your Call with Dr. Wheat — Ready to disrupt your overworking patterns? Let’s spend 15 minutes checking your operational capacity.Free Download: Career Alignment WorkbookDr. Santina Wheat’s Website: santinawheat.comReflective CME Opportunity: True leadership stamina requires an understanding of your own biological baseline. Listen to this episode and claim your FREE Reflective CME/CE credit via the Learn at Pinnacle App. 👉 Claim Your CME Credit Here

  7. Aug 17

    The Re-Entry Whiplash: Protecting Your Vacation Peace

    In healthcare, we spend massive energy preparing for the handoff before taking time off. But when we return, we are immediately hit by the re-entry whiplash—a chaotic storm of unread emails, delayed meetings, and home clutter that can evaporate two weeks of rest within 48 hours. In this solo episode of The Hidden Load, Dr. Santina Wheat breaks down the complete vacation life cycle and shares her personal 48-hour tactical re-entry protocol. Learn how to bridge the gap between "vacation mode" (parasympathetic recovery) and "work mode" (high alert demand) without spiraling into immediate burnout relapse. Resources Mentioned:Blog Post: Transferring Trust & Effective Handoffs — Read Dr. Wheat's guide on building robust coverage systems before leaving for vacation.August Birthday Coaching Special: Email Dr. Wheat directly during August for an exclusive discount code on all 1:1 coaching packages.Looking to work 1:1?: Book Your Call with Dr. Wheat — Ready to disrupt your overworking patterns? Let’s spend 15 minutes checking your operational capacity.Free Download: Career Alignment WorkbookDr. Santina Wheat’s Website: santinawheat.comReflective CME Opportunity: True leadership stamina requires an understanding of your own biological baseline. Listen to this episode and claim your FREE Reflective CME/CE credit via the Learn at Pinnacle App. 👉 Claim Your CME Credit Here

  8. Aug 10

    The Posture of Steady: High Performance vs. True Wellness with Dr. Devina Wadhwa

    In healthcare culture, as long as you are performing, achieving, and outwardly managing your responsibilities, the system assumes you are perfectly fine. But there is a devastating hidden load carried by high-achieving professionals: the gulf between functioning and actually being well. In this episode of The Hidden Load, Dr. Santina Wheat sits down with Dr. Devina Wadhwa, a psychiatrist, assistant professor at NOSM University in Northern Ontario, writer, and mindfulness practitioner. Dr. Wadhwa shares her lived experience practicing in rural and remote communities and discusses what she terms the "posture of steady"—the unspoken expectation that clinicians can sit with trauma, panic, and pain all day while remaining entirely untouched. Following the tragic loss of her father, Dr. Wadhwa’s understanding of grief, suffering, and nervous system capacity was profoundly reshaped. Tune in to discover how to identify subtle "somatic bankruptcy," move past emotional flatlining, and use simple micro-regulation tools to bring authentic humanity back into healthcare leadership. Resources Mentioned:Dr. Devina Wadhwa’s Book: What Lives Through Loss (Available on SoMeDocs, Healthy Debate, and KevinMD)August Birthday Coaching Special: Email Dr. Wheat directly during August for an exclusive discount code on all 1:1 coaching packages.Looking to work 1:1?: Book Your Call with Dr. Wheat — Ready to disrupt your overworking patterns? Let’s spend 15 minutes checking your operational capacity. Free Download: Career Alignment WorkbookDr. Santina Wheat’s Website: santinawheat.comReflective CME Opportunity: True leadership stamina requires an understanding of your own biological baseline. Listen to this episode and claim your FREE Reflective CME/CE credit via the Learn at Pinnacle App. 👉 Claim Your CME Credit Here

    The Posture of Steady: High Performance vs. True Wellness with Dr. Devina Wadhwa
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This podcast talks about the challenges of Burnout, Balance, and the Burdens Healthcare Faculty Rarely Name and feel that they struggle through alone.  This is for the educators and leaders in medicine who hold everyone up — and deserve to be held, too.

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