Ending Physician Overwhelm

Megan Melo, Physician and Life Coach
  • 4.9 (40)
  • Medicine
  • Updated Weekly

I'm Megan Melo, board-certified Family and Obesity Medicine Physician and Physician Coach. In this podcast we talk about the many ways that burnout shows up in our lives, and what we can do about it. I'm on a mission to help Physicians take steps towards to heal burnout by unlearning the habits of perfectionism, people-pleasing and limiting beliefs so that we can lead healthier, happier lives.  The healthcare system is broken; but you don't have to wait until it's fixed to feel better. I'm here to help. Thank you for tuning in! Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review. Until next time, take care. Connect with me: Website: www.healthierforgood.comInstagram: @MeganMeloMDEmail: megan@healthierforgood.comBookshop.org Book Shop: https://bookshop.org/shop/meganmelo

  1. 6h ago

    Mid-Year Check-In (Don't Skip!!!)

    Send us Fan Mail You are halfway through 2026 and I have a feeling you have not stopped once to notice what you have actually done. That is exactly what this episode is for. Not a performance review, not a goal-setting hustle session, just a real pause to look at where you are, what you want for the rest of this year, and what is honestly getting in the way of you having it. We are going to do a little of the work that good coaches do with their clients, right here, right now, together. I walk you through seven questions in this episode, and I want you to have something to write with because this one is worth doing, not just listening to. We start with celebrating what has already gone well, because you are almost certainly skipping that part. Then we get into what you actually want for the next six months, in the order that matters: personal first, then family and friends, then professional. And we get honest about what is getting in the way, how to make things easier, what needs to get on the calendar now, and what you can finally just drop. If you have use-it-or-lose-it PTO sitting there quietly judging you, your dentist appointment is six months overdue, or you keep putting the same five things on your to-do list and never doing them, this episode was made for you. Grab something to write with and hit play. Want more of this in your inbox? Join the email list at healthierforgood.com and get weekly messages made for physicians like you. Connect with Megan: Instagram: @MeganMeloMD Website: healthierforgood.com Email: megan@healthierforgood.com Support the show To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me. Want to contact me directly? Email: megan@healthierforgood.com Follow me on Instagram! @MeganMeloMD

    34 min

  2. Jun 23

    10 Things I Would Tell You If I Was Your Doctor

    Send us Fan Mail When was the last time you actually saw your own doctor? If you just cringed a little, you are exactly who this episode is for. I take care of a lot of physicians in my practice, and I have heard every version of the story: self-prescribed thyroid meds, skipped physicals, and a very impressive collection of coping strategies that are working just well enough to keep going. I get it because I live it too. But there are things I say to my patients, including my physician patients, that I want to say directly to you. In this episode I walk through 10 things I would tell you if I was sitting across from you in the exam room. Some of them are the basics you already know and are not doing. Some of them are the harder truths about rest, stress, and the lie we have all been sold about what it means to handle everything. And one of them is about Botox, because we need to have that conversation. This is not a lecture. This is what peer-to-peer honesty sounds like when your doctor actually knows what your life is like. Hit play. You have earned this one. If this resonates and you want support actually living it, let's talk. Schedule a free discovery call here: https://calendly.com/healthierforgood/coaching-discovery-call Connect with Megan: Instagram: @MeganMeloMD Website: healthierforgood.com Email: megan@healthierforgood.com Support the show To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me. Want to contact me directly? Email: megan@healthierforgood.com Follow me on Instagram! @MeganMeloMD

    33 min

  3. Jun 16

    The Costs of (Misplaced) Guilt

    Send us Fan Mail (Trigger Warning: This episode does briefly reference physician suicide) Have you ever looked up and realized you've slid back into a pattern you thought you'd left behind, and immediately wondered what is wrong with you? That moment of recognition, the one where you feel like you've undone all your progress, is exactly what we're digging into today. One of my clients came to a session recently carrying something heavy. A patient had died unexpectedly. And in the days that followed, she found herself spending hours consoling the patient's spouse, plus building out this ever-growing to-do list of promises she'd made to other patients. Things that were genuinely above and beyond what anyone could reasonably expect of her. When we looked closely at what was actually driving all of it, the answer was guilt. Here's the thing about guilt: it doesn't just sit there. It moves. It shapes what we do, what we promise, how we spend our time and energy. And for us as physicians, it gets even more complicated because so much of our training was shame-based in ways we may not have fully unpacked. There's a difference between "I did something wrong" and "I am something wrong," and that line gets blurry fast when you've been trained in environments where a bad outcome means someone has to be responsible, and that someone is usually you. We also get into something I think is becoming more and more urgent: the patients who are making significant health decisions without looping us in. GLPs sourced online, compounded peptides from a doctor friend, supplement stacks from a wellness influencer. And when something goes sideways, guess who feels responsible? We talk about what it actually means to be a consultant to our patients, not the owner of their choices, and why drawing that line isn't about caring less. It's about being able to stay in this work at all. This one is worth your time. Come listen. If this resonates and you want support actually living it, let's talk. Schedule a free discovery call here: https://calendly.com/healthierforgood/coaching-discovery-call Connect with Megan: Instagram: @MeganMeloMD Website: healthierforgood.com Email: megan@healthierforgood.com Support the show To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me. Want to contact me directly? Email: megan@healthierforgood.com Follow me on Instagram! @MeganMeloMD

    30 min

  4. Jun 9

    10 Things to Stop Apologizing For Now

    Send us Fan Mail How many times have you apologized today? Not for something you actually did wrong. Just for existing, taking up space, having needs, being human? This episode is about that. We're going through 10 specific things that women physicians have been socialized to apologize for, and we are done. Not because we're going to become difficult or stop caring, but because the apologizing is costing us, and it's not serving anyone. Some of these will feel familiar. A few might surprise you. One of them is about what happens when you're the patient, not the doctor, and you still find yourself folding the table paper after your own exam. Another is about medical uncertainty, and why your willingness to sit in that uncertainty is actually what makes you safer than the ChatGPT accounts your patients are consulting. And a few are about the things we've been quietly told not to want, feel, or say out loud. This is inner work with real-world application. We're talking about what it actually looks like to stop apologizing in the exam room, in the OR, in the portal, and in your own life. Come listen. You'll probably find yourself nodding along, and maybe feeling a little less alone in all of it. If this resonates and you want support actually living it, let's talk. Schedule a free discovery call here: https://calendly.com/healthierforgood/coaching-discovery-call Connect with Megan: Instagram: @MeganMeloMD Website: healthierforgood.com Email: megan@healthierforgood.com Support the show To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me. Want to contact me directly? Email: megan@healthierforgood.com Follow me on Instagram! @MeganMeloMD

    35 min

  5. Jun 2

    They Let You Go. Now What? Part 2

    Send us Fan Mail You did the hard part last week. You sat with the feelings, let the thoughts tumble out, and didn't immediately sprint toward a job board. Good. Now we figure out what's actually next. Part 2 is where we get practical, but not in the way medicine trained us to be practical. We're not just dusting off the CV and hitting LinkedIn. We're doing something harder and more useful: getting clear on what we actually want before we start telling people we're available. Because the goal isn't just to land somewhere. It's to land somewhere better. We start by looking honestly at the finances, not from a scarcity mindset, but from real numbers. Because a lot of us feel more financial pressure than the math actually justifies, and that pressure is what sends us straight into the first job that looks familiar. We also ask the question that tends to stop people cold: what would you tell your friend to do if she were in your exact situation? And then, more importantly, why won't you allow that for yourself? From there, we work through a set of questions designed to help you use your lived experience as data. What did you tolerate that you won't anymore? What actually lit you up? What does your ideal Tuesday afternoon look like? And then we talk about how to get out there in a way that opens doors most people don't even know exist, because the best opportunities rarely show up on a job board. This one is worth listening to whether you've been laid off, are thinking about leaving, or are just quietly starting to wonder what else is possible. If you want to work through these questions with someone in your corner, I'd love to help. Book a free discovery call at https://calendly.com/healthierforgood/coaching-discovery-call and let's figure out your next move together. Connect with Megan: Instagram: @MeganMeloMD Website: healthierforgood.com Email: megan@healthierforgood.com Support the show To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me. Want to contact me directly? Email: megan@healthierforgood.com Follow me on Instagram! @MeganMeloMD

    34 min

  6. May 26

    They Let You Go. Now What? Part 1

    Send us Fan Mail Raise your hand if you or someone you know has been laid off. Not fired. Laid off. It's happening more and more, and if you've been watching what's going on in healthcare right now, it probably doesn't surprise you. What might surprise you is how complicated it feels, even when part of you is relieved. In this episode, we dig into something that doesn't get talked about enough: the emotional experience of being let go when you had no say in the matter. Because being laid off is fundamentally different from choosing to leave, and pretending otherwise doesn't serve you. When you resign, you write the first line of the next chapter. When you're laid off, someone else does. And even when you know it had nothing to do with your competence, even when you can see the financial writing on the wall, something in your physician brain starts asking: was it me? It wasn't. But we have to do some work to actually believe that. We talk about why the instinct to jump straight into job search mode can actually backfire, why the feelings underneath the anger deserve more airtime than we usually give them, and what complicated grief looks like when the thing you lost was something you were already half-ready to leave anyway. This is Part 1, and it's the part that most of us skip. We're not skipping it today. Part 2 is coming next week, and that's where we get into the practical next steps. But you can't build a good next chapter on top of unprocessed feelings. So we start here. If you're in this place right now, or you can feel it coming, let's talk. Book a free discovery call at https://calendly.com/healthierforgood/coaching-discovery-call and we'll figure out what you actually need and where you want to go. Connect with Megan: Instagram: @MeganMeloMD Website: healthierforgood.com Email: megan@healthierforgood.com Support the show To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me. Want to contact me directly? Email: megan@healthierforgood.com Follow me on Instagram! @MeganMeloMD

    28 min

  7. May 19

    The Hassle Factor

    Send us Fan Mail Let's talk about the hassle factor, and why that term doesn't even begin to cover what we're actually dealing with. I'm coming into this episode a little fired up, and honestly, that's the point. In the last two weeks, I've been flooded with prior authorization requests for patients on GLP-1 medications. Patients who already have approval. Patients we know don't have coverage and have been paying cash. Patients whose prescriptions are not new. And yet, there it is, over and over in my inbox. None of it required action. But I still had to look. Every. Single. Time. Because the consequence of missing one that actually matters? A patient doesn't get their medication. That is not a hassle. That is moral injury stacked on top of administrative burden stacked on top of the very real risk of patient harm. In this episode, we dig into what the hassle factor actually is, why physicians are leaving medicine because of it, and what we can do to take care of ourselves when we're living inside it. Here's what we cover: Why "hassle factor" is both useful and inadequate as a term, and what's really underneath it The three-step process I use to move from reacting to responding when the system is piling on Radical acceptance and what it does (and does not) mean Why naming your emotions matters before you try to fix anything How I personally handled a workplace policy I disagreed with, and what intentional non-participation looks like in practice Why leaving medicine or your job is sometimes the right answer, and why you still want to do it from a clean, grounded place The hassle factor is real. The moral injury is real. And you deserve to navigate all of it with your whole self intact. Ready to get some support? Let's talk. Book a free discovery call at https://calendly.com/healthierforgood/coaching-discovery-call Connect with Megan: Instagram: @MeganMeloMD Website: healthierforgood.com Email: megan@healthierforgood.com Support the show To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me. Want to contact me directly? Email: megan@healthierforgood.com Follow me on Instagram! @MeganMeloMD

    36 min

  8. May 12

    The Three Words That Might Change Your Entire Week

    Send us Fan Mail Whole. Capable. Perfect. Just as you are. Go ahead and sit with that for a second. Because if you're anything like most of us in medicine, those three words probably don't come naturally when you think about yourself. We weren't trained that way. We were trained to find what's wrong, what's missing, what needs to be corrected. And that lens? It doesn't always stay at work. In this episode, we're trying something on together. What happens when you choose to see yourself as whole, capable, and perfect, right now, inside a broken system, with imperfect tools and an inbox that never fully empties? And then, what happens when you extend that same belief to your patients? To your staff and colleagues? To the people you love? We're walking through all three, and I think you might be surprised where this lands. A few things we get into: What it actually looks like to separate your worth from the dysfunction of the system you work in Why seeing your patients as capable adults might be one of the kindest things you can do for yourself How this framework quietly shifts the way you set limits and stop carrying what isn't yours The one-week experiment I want you to try, and why you don't have to believe any of this is true to benefit from it Note: we are making a deliberate carve-out for vulnerable adults, minors, and anyone who doesn't have full decision-making capacity. This conversation is about the capable adults who make up much of your practice, and the capable adults in your personal life too. Ready to try it on? Hit play. If this resonates and you want support actually living it, let's talk. Schedule a free discovery call here: https://calendly.com/healthierforgood/coaching-discovery-call Connect with Megan: Instagram: @MeganMeloMD Website: healthierforgood.com Email: megan@healthierforgood.com Support the show To learn more about my coaching practice and group offerings, head over to www.healthierforgood.com. I help Physicians and Allied Health Professional women to let go of toxic perfectionist and people-pleasing habits that leave them frustrated and exhausted. If you are ready to learn skills that help you set boundaries and prioritize yourself, without becoming a cynical a-hole, come work with me. Want to contact me directly? Email: megan@healthierforgood.com Follow me on Instagram! @MeganMeloMD

    26 min
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4.9
out of 5
40 Ratings

About

I'm Megan Melo, board-certified Family and Obesity Medicine Physician and Physician Coach. In this podcast we talk about the many ways that burnout shows up in our lives, and what we can do about it. I'm on a mission to help Physicians take steps towards to heal burnout by unlearning the habits of perfectionism, people-pleasing and limiting beliefs so that we can lead healthier, happier lives.  The healthcare system is broken; but you don't have to wait until it's fixed to feel better. I'm here to help. Thank you for tuning in! Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review. Until next time, take care. Connect with me: Website: www.healthierforgood.comInstagram: @MeganMeloMDEmail: megan@healthierforgood.comBookshop.org Book Shop: https://bookshop.org/shop/meganmelo

Information

  • Creator
    Megan Melo, Physician and Life Coach
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    235
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Ending Physician Overwhelm
  • Show Website
    Ending Physician Overwhelm

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