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. 2d ago

    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

  2. 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

  3. Aug 3

    The Milestone Trap: Reframing Time, Aging, and Expectations

    Whether it’s a birthday, an anniversary, or an academic marker, major calendar milestones in medicine carry a heavy, unquantified hidden load. We are conditioned to run a quiet internal audit, evaluating our self-worth against a rigid, linear timeline we created decades ago. In this solo episode, Dr. Santina Wheat shares her personal reflections from crossing another birthday threshold, taking listeners on a journey from pre-birthday expectation anxiety to post-birthday clarity and sovereignty. Dr. Wheat explores why mid-career healthcare leaders must stop viewing time as an enemy they are racing against and start treating it as the raw material of wisdom and pattern recognition. Tune in to discover three powerful coaching reframes to burn the imaginary checklist, trade performative urgency for strategic equity, and reclaim your personal horizon outside of institutional metrics. Resources Mentioned:Special Discount for August ! Code AUG2026 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. Jul 27

    The Stagnant Mirror: Knowing When to Leave Medicine Roles with Dr. Santina Wheat

    Deciding whether to pivot away from a healthcare institution is a massive, unquantified hidden load. In medicine, a profession built on longevity and institutional loyalty, walking away isn't just a logistical change—it can feel like a profound identity crisis. In this solo episode, Dr. Santina Wheat unpacks the invisible forces that keep mid-career physician leaders trapped in professional paralysis: the staggering operational friction of the Inertia Tax, the fear of the Greener Grass Mirage, and the frustrating phenomenon of the Stagnant Mirror. Dr. Wheat exposes how institutions often permanently typecast internal talent as the "junior rookie" who walked through the door a decade ago, ignoring years of incremental growth and strategic capability. Tune in to explore a cold, three-point diagnostic audit to separate universal healthcare friction from true institutional stagnation, learn how to stop paying the sunk cost fallacy with your potential, and discover why modeling values-driven career autonomy is a vital act of leadership for your trainees. 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 Follow on Instagram: @drtinawheat

  5. Jul 20

    Moral Injury and Hidden Squeezes with Dr. Gita Balakumar

    When a healthcare system demands absolute perfection but offers zero grace when you are hurting, clinicians experience something far deeper than simple burnout. They experience moral injury. In this episode of The Hidden Load, Dr. Santina Wheat sits down with Dr. Gita Balakumar, a pediatrician with 20 years of clinical experience and the founder of Dragonfly Coaching MD, to discuss what happens when a dedicated clinician hits the institutional wall. Dr. Balakumar shares a striking personal account of being forced to maintain a full productivity schedule on a scooter and crutches following an Achilles rupture, exposing the cold reality of how corporate "family" language collapses when it runs into a transactional contract. They also unpack an unyielding hidden load that is rarely discussed in medical education: the crushing invisible labor of a mid-career physician navigating the decline of an aging parent while holding a peak clinical workload. Resources:Dr. Gita Balakumar’s Website: dragonflycoachingmd.com — Connect with Dr. Balakumar to learn more about her physician development coaching programs.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: Listen to this episode and claim your FREE Reflective CME/CE credit via the Learn at Pinnacle App. 👉 Claim Your CME Credit Here

  6. Jul 13

    The Context Switching Tax: Setting Operational Boundaries

    We often treat modern physician burnout as a time-management flaw, a scheduling hurdle, or a lack of personal stamina. But what if your exhaustion isn't a logistical issue, but a pure physiological tax? In this solo episode, Dr. Santina Wheat conducts a cold clinical autopsy on the hidden load of Pajama Time and the invisible, unmanaged secondary timeline of data navigation that follows clinicians straight home. Dr. Wheat exposes the "overfunctioning trap"—the dysfunctional cycle where clinicians absorb systemic operational failures with their own personal time to make a broken institution look flawless on a leadership dashboard. Tune in to explore why high-frequency jumping between tasks every two minutes leaves a heavy "attention residue" that bankrupts your prefrontal cortex, and learn how to use the evidence-based DESC framework to shift from passive compliance to true operational assertiveness. Key Takeaways for Leaders and Educators:The Context Switching Tax: Why shifting your operational focus every 120 seconds drops your heart rate variability and traps pieces of your cognitive bandwidth in "attention residue."The Structural Illusion of Medicine: Confronting the cultural myth that your cognitive and emotional shift ends the moment your scheduled clinical coverage concludes.The Overfunctioning Trap: How hiding structural flaws from institutional gatekeepers by working late or hunting down equipment yourself accidentally subsidizes a broken system with your own longevity.The Cultural Ceiling: Why a leader’s inability to set boundaries inadvertently creates an environment of fear-based perfectionism where trainees hide mistakes and abandon the leadership pipeline.Operational Assertiveness: Shifting communication from emotional complaints to a direct, metric-centered boundary directive that protects both patient safety and institutional KPIs.The DESC Communication Protocol:An evidence-based script to manage an unmanaged operational expansion request: D – Describe the Facts: Strip out the emotional framing. State the unvarnished data. ("Our service has reached its designated cap for safety and rounding.")E – Express the Impact: Connect the data directly to safety, systemic burnout, and resident education. ("Exceeding these parameters increases documentation backlogs and eliminates required resident teaching.")S – Specify the Target Route: Propose an explicit, immediately actionable structural alternative. ("I need us to activate our secondary cross-coverage system or hold further admissions.")C – Outline Positive Consequences: State how this adjustment directly safeguards the institution’s core quality and discharge metrics.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.comClaim your FREE Reflective CME/CE credit via the Learn at Pinnacle App. 👉 Claim Your CME Credit Here

  7. Jul 6

    The July Reset: Lowering the Threat Defense on the Wards

    July is the most exhilarating, volatile, and fragile month in the medical calendar. Across every inpatient floor and ambulatory clinic, the badges are brand new, the short white coats are stiff, and everyone—from M3 medical students to first-year attendings—is navigating an overwhelming wave of transition anxiety. But for the clinical educators, department chairs, and residency program directors who hold these systems up, July carries a massive, unquantified hidden load: the labor of the structural reset. In this episode, Dr. Santina Wheat explores the professional grief of saying goodbye to polished graduates and inheriting a raw, terrified cohort overnight. She breaks down the "overfunctioning trap" that snaps shut when clinical timelines slow to a crawl, and why trying to survive through micromanagement destroys long-term capacity. Tune in to learn how to explicitly "set the container," use the vulnerability dividend to dismantle your team's hyperactivated threat defense system, combat "pajama time" with boundary routing, and bridge the isolating silence that swallows new attendings. Key Takeaways for Leaders and Educators:The Overfunctioning Trap: Why grabbing the mouse or calling the consultant yourself to save time in July borrows against your own biological longevity and halts crucial team capacity building.The Vulnerability Dividend: Shifting away from generic speeches about "excellence" to explicitly budgeting for imperfection, lowering the baseline cortisol in the room, and establishing absolute transparency over perfection.Explicit Expectation Routing: Bounding cognitive load for perfectionist trainees by defining exact parameters for success (e.g., requesting a 3-minute clinical synthesis focusing on a diagnostic pivot rather than a 15-minute chart dump).The Off-Duty Permissive Clause: Combating systemic burnout by establishing a hard time cap on pre-charting and granting explicit, top-down permission to completely sever digital connection outside of clinical shifts.The Silence of Autonomy: Recognizing the profound, isolating psychological shock of transitioning from fellow to first-year attending, and why senior leaders must actively reach out to bridge the gap before a clinical crisis occurs.The Growth Feedback Protocol:How to correct a critical operational mistake without triggering a destructive shame loop: Establish Shared Goals: "We both want to ensure that our patients are safe."State the Objective Observation (Zero Drama): "The potassium level wasn't checked before the morning dose."Ask a Diagnostic Question: "What broke down in the morning workflow that caused this to get missed?"Resources Book Your Call with Dr. Wheat — Navigating the stress of a new academic year or a departmental reset? Let’s spend a few minutes seeing if I can support you!Dr. Santina Wheat’s Website: santinawheat.comFollow on Instagram: @drtinawheatReflective CME Opportunity: Listen to this episode and claim your FREE Reflective CME/CE credit via the Learn at Pinnacle App. Claim Your CME Credit Here

  8. Jun 29

    Nervous System Capacity & Sustainable Regulation with Becca Mattie

    We frequently evaluate burnout as a simple time-management issue, a scheduling hurdle, or an administrative failure. But we rarely step back to analyze our daily exhaustion through the lens of nervous system regulation. In this episode, Dr. Santina Wheat interviews Becca Mattie, an occupational therapist, speaker, and the founder of Honey BOT and the Grow Beyond Collective. Becca breaks down the "biological back door" of chronic stress, exploring why healthcare professionals excel at compartmentalizing their own needs until they hit an absolute wall. Introducing her powerful Manifest, Disrupt, and Build framework, she shifts the conversation away from generic wellness advice toward a practical, physiological toolkit. Discover how to transition from feeling "caffeinated but not capable" to cultivating a leadership style built on genuine co-regulation and physical safety. Resources Mentioned:Becca Mattie’s Instagram: @beccamattie — Connect with Becca directly to learn more about the Cultivating Capacity Program.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

See All (49)

Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

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.

Information

You Might Also Like