Mindfully Transforming Physician Burnout with Dr. Joe Sherman
"Medicine is merely a vehicle that I chose to be in relationship with other people while in service."
My special guest in this episode is Dr. Joe Sherman.
With a global background and extensive experience in pediatrics, Dr. Joe Sherman offers a holistic approach to healthcare and well-being for both patients and providers. Through his expertise in working with underserved populations in nations like Uganda and Bolivia, Joe deeply understands the importance of connecting with patients and understanding their unique cultural context. As a certified physician development coach, Joe supports healthcare providers through individual coaching, medical team support, retreats, and workshops. His unique blend of medical and coaching experience makes Joe the perfect resource for healthcare providers looking to improve their well-being and connection with their core values.
This is Joe Sherman's story:
As a teenager, Joe Sherman felt drawn to work with children, ultimately leading him into a career in pediatrics. His medical journey took him through inner-city hospitals, international work in Uganda and Bolivia, and a return to the United States. Along the way, Joe developed a strong foundation in mindfulness and spiritual practices, which helped him navigate the pressures of his profession. However, back in the US, he struggled to adapt to the changing landscape of healthcare and faced burnout. Through seeking help from coaches, spiritual directors, and therapists, Joe discovered the importance of balance and identity beyond being a physician. This newfound understanding inspired him to become a coach himself, helping other healthcare providers achieve well-being and fulfillment in their lives.
You can find out more about Joe at his website and on his profile at The Mindful Coach Association.
If you're a coach or other helping professional that values mindfulness in your life and work, join us with a free listing and membership in The Mindful Coach Association. You'll can list your services in the directory and be invited to weekly meetings.
Transcript
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::Hello, and welcome to this edition of the The Mindful Coach Association. I'm your host Brett Hill, and I'm delighted to be speaking this week with Dr. Joe Sherman. Let me introduce him a little bit before we get started. Joe is a pediatrician coach and consultant to physicians in healthcare organizations in the area of provider well being, leadership, and career discernment. His services include individual coaching, medical team support, physicians retreats, and workshops. He's a trained facilitator with the courage I said that wrong. It's the center for Courage and Renewal and master certified physician development coach with The Mindful Coach Association. He's been in pediatric practice for 35 years, concentrating on health care delivery to underserved and medically complex children in the District of Columbia, Tacoma, Seattle, Uganda, and Bolivia. He's held numerous faculty positions and is currently a clinical associate professor of pediatrics at The Mindful Coach Association. Whoa. Whoa. That's quite a pedigree you got there. Thank you so much for being on the show.
::Thanks for having me, Brad. I appreciate the invitation.
::Oh, yeah, it's great. And you just kind of stood out to me as like, I've got to have you on the show because you have a very unique position in the world, I think, where you have all this history with deep dive medical career. And then also you were talking about how you have organized your profession and the work that you do these days to not just provide help to the children, but also to help serve the other doctors and service providers in your field. And I'm really interested in that story. Like, eventually, somehow, one day, you decided, I'm going to be a doctor. And then I think the way that goes is, I'm going to be a pediatrician. Did that come at the same time, or did you wind up focusing on pediatrics later as you grew into learning more about being a doctor?
::That's an interesting story, Brett. Again, thanks again for having me. I think if I weren't a pediatrician, I probably would not be a doctor. I really feel like the first thing that happened was a feeling like I was called to work with kids, with working with children either as a teacher or a coach counselor.
::When did that start to wake up and how did you notice that?
::Probably when I was a teenager, I think. And I love sports, and I did well in school, so I would tutor younger kids and I would coach sports. And then my cousin who was younger than me got sick kind of all of a sudden with pretty severe heart disease, and I was only 16 years old, and I used to go visit him in the hospital. And there was a certain I remember that I felt kind of different because all of my siblings, I have like six older siblings oh, I see. They're all afraid to even go into the hospital. And I loved going to visit my cousin in the hospital, so I thought since nobody else wants to do health care and they're afraid I'll do that, oh, wow.
::So somehow that was like not only was it was everybody else not doing it, and so I'll step up. But you said you loved doing it, so what was it about that you liked it? Said, oh, I want to do that some more.
::So interesting, because I would say what I did for my cousin in that time was just sit and visit him in the hospital. I wasn't doing any type of curative work. I didn't know anything about what was going on with him medically, but I just enjoyed being with him and kind of comforting him when he was really suffering. And I think that's really what drew me to medicine and what drew me to pediatrics was probably that desire to work with kids and probably some good role models that I ran into in medical school that were pediatricians.
::What was your age difference between the two of you?
::Probably just a couple of years. I think he was, well, maybe he was twelve and I was 16. Probably just four years.
::Well, the difference between twelve and 16 is a lot when you're twelve and 16. Yeah, right, so I can see why that would fit. That's amazing. And so from there, somehow you said, I'm going to be a doctor, and you found your way into that career.
::Right, it was kind of a combination of things. I really enjoyed being of service, helping people, I love science and math and things like that. And then it was kind of like trying to figure out what type of profession was something to look forward to, that I could do what I chose to do and have the biggest impact on people. So I think that's what drew me.
::To medicine, to have the biggest impact.
::Yeah, I think so. In looking back, I think what I really enjoy about medicine is the relationships and helping people understand what's going on and becoming connected with them in that way and being of service in some way. So I think those are the things that drew me toward it.
::That's amazing. And so you went through medical school and at some point you said, did you start right out going, I'm going to have a pediatric focus. I don't think a lot of people actually know the path. It's like there's medical school and then there's a specialty after that.
::Right. So in the US. At least, it's four years of college and four years of medical school and then at least three years of residency training. And pediatrics is three years. Wow.
::So it's over a decade of study.
::Yeah, it was pretty much. My 20s are a bit of a blur. Well, all my friends were going out and adventuring through the world and some getting married, having families. I was still in the hospital.
::Man, that's quite a commitment. That's amazing. And so you began and then how did that go? How did that work for you when you started doing the pediatric work? Was it what you hope were there just appointments? Was it, like, exciting? I mean, people's careers can take different kinds of paths. I'm just curious.
::Yeah. What happened to me was during my training, I trained in an inner city hospital in Richmond, Virginia, and the population was primarily inner city families that were poor and had very poor access to health care, quality health care. So I was really kind of drawn toward that population. I almost feel like that's who trained me to be a doctor, to be a pediatrician. And so as I went through my career, first in Washington, DC. Where I was from, I returned back to my hometown, my city, and I worked primarily teaching pediatric residents in community settings in the city. So that's really where I got my start in my practice.
::So you did your work, your residency, and now did you choose that hospital, or was that just luck of the draw?
::Well, I stayed for residency training where I went to medical school.
::Oh, I see.
::Yeah. And that's part of this complex matching system that exists in residencies here in the US. You put in your choices and the programs put in their choices, and they come up with a match. And that's where I ended up.
::And that really had a big impact on you.
::Yeah, I would say that being able to work in that setting with those families, getting to know them well, getting to know the social determinants of health and how that impacted the health of my patients and the families that they were part of, really influenced me a lot. And I really think, in retrospect, I was either part pediatrician, part social worker, because I really enjoyed working with other people as a team, getting involved with really what's causing issues in health of the kids that I took care of.
::Well, I mean, through the thread, through all of this is just something about you if you don't mind me kind of saying, something about you that's really all about the connection and all about connecting to not just the person as a bundle of symptoms. But, like, there's a person here and they're in a context and really having a deep respect for that.
::Yeah. And I would say that that's really my primary draw to medicine. I always tell people as I get older, I start to understand as I look back, that medicine is merely a vehicle that I chose to be in relationship with other people in service that is so beautiful. So I think teaching, counseling, ministry, all these other things or other ways that you can do that, there's countless number.
::Of ways yeah, that's wow, okay, so now you've had this deep immersion into the culture of the medical needs and the social fabric of this underserved population. How does that align with your other colleagues experience? Was there a gap there? Was there an appreciation of what you were understanding? Or did you feel like that there needs to be some education in the general community there?
::Well, I think I was able in my career, early on in my career, to have some job opportunities that allowed me to work with a team of people who were dedicated, that recognized each other's gifts and talents, and to really support each other in utilizing those to the best that are our abilities. So I think that that was something I found fortunate to be in. And I also was fortunate to have experiences abroad, working as a doctor in many other countries and understanding that cross cultural aspect to health care and that cultural humility that comes from thinking that I know everything about what needs to be done and then ending up in a culture with people that really know more than I do. And I just have to understand and respect that.
::I hate to put you on the spot. Do you have, like, a story about that? Because it sounds like there's a story in there and I'm curious about it.
::Sure. I remember I had many short term stents abroad working in international health. But the first long term one was soon after I got married. My wife and I moved to Uganda, and we moved there and lived and worked in pediatric HIV work in Uganda.
::Okay, hold on just for a second. How is it that you decide, hey, honey, we're going to Uganda? What was that conversation like?
::Well, we both came from a background with some experience of living abroad. She studied in East Africa, in Kenya as a college student, and I worked a bit in Belize and the Dominican Republic as a doctor. So we both came with those common interests. And so the plan was to move abroad after she finished her okay, all.
::Right, that was the plan.
::So we were in Uganda, I went to Uganda. One of the biggest things there's different types of culture shocks when it comes to going from the US and practicing medicine in a low to middle resource country. You go there, and the first thing is you notice all the things that you do differently and probably better for patients than people who are working there in that country do. So that's the first thing you go, oh, my gosh, we would have used this medicine or done this test or all of these other things, but they don't have access to it. So that's a real shock, and that's hard. But then the second shock comes when you see what can be done based on the resources that they have, and it still doesn't get done. And that can be for a myriad of reasons, and that can be because they're just not aware of what can be done for patients, even though they have the ability to do it. But the other thing most of the time was that they knew so many more of the factors involved with what it means to have a specific illness or to be well in that country, and all the other social factors, economic factors, community factors that I didn't know. And so I had to switch and become the student with the residents that I was supposed to be teaching. And they taught me what tropical medicine was about, what it meant to take care of and make very challenging decisions about who received care that was available and who didn't. And so I became a student to them, and we kind of taught each other what we knew.
::Well, that's so great that you were able to kind of press pause on, hey, I got some catching up to here, and let yourself take on a role of being informed by the people around you, even though you're the one that's supposed to be doing the informing. Right. So it's kind of a nice modeling also as well, I think, for leadership to be able to do that. So you were there for some period of time then, right?
::We were there for two years, and then we got pregnant with our first child and moved to Seattle, Washington, from there because that's where my wife is from. That was part of the deal. We moved there.
::These travel plans kind of in your marriage kind of already mapped out.
::Yeah, some of them were mapped out. Yeah. I have to say that my wife kind of calls a shot.
::There we go.
::So we moved to Seattle and we had two children, and I was working teaching family medicine residents, actually. So I was a pediatric coordinator for our family medicine training program and did that for five years and enjoyed that. And we had two children. And then we went to a presentation about a family who had lived abroad with their kids and ended up, after much discussion, deciding that we would move abroad with our kids and, oh, wow, joined an organization, which was a mission organization, and we moved to Bolivia, and we lived there for four years with our two kids.
::So another trip overseas and extent in a different country.
::Yeah.
::You'd already had the experience of, I need to lay back and learn from the culture. Did that help you in your second excursion to Bolivia?
::Yeah, absolutely. And it's a whole different story when you have kids with you.
::Oh, of course.
::So we were in Bolivia. It's a pretty poor country, and yet very rich in Indigenous heritage, indigenous spirituality, indigenous medicine and health. And our kids went to school with our Bolivian neighbors, and we got to know everyone around us very well through our kids and their kids, and we parented together. And I worked in a clinic there, and I taught in the community. I took care of other Americans that were coming to Bolivia to learn language, to work there. I did a variety of things, and that's really where I felt like I truly found myself. It seems like when I'm overseas is something about the culture, the community based culture, how time slows down and being able to do a variety of different things instead of just direct patient care. That's where I really felt like I found my true self there.
::When I hear you say that, it's like something in me just begins to glow. It's kind of like, oh, that's so great, and it sounds so heartwarming and nourishing. So that's amazing. So somewhere in the mix here, then, you actually became would I be wrong to say you became a student of mindfulness?
::Yeah, I would say so, yeah. I've always been a kind of reflective person. I was raised in Catholic Christian tradition, so prayer was a part of something that I was very familiar with. And I have to say, getting through medical school residency, I really relied a lot on reading books, reading books about theology, spirituality. I also spent a lot of time journaling and reflecting on my experiences. Many times it seemed like other people who were in my class that were studying with me and everything, they just had this one track mind that they wanted to be a doctor, and they had it all figured out. Not me. I needed time to reflect, to meditate, to pray, to really understand those things, talk to other people. And I think that that was the beginning. And then I think as time went on, I started to understand and discover mindfulness practice as a way to have a meditative practice that enabled me to deal with a lot of the stressors and the trauma that I experienced in my work as a doctor.
::Wow. So did you take any formal mindfulness training? How did that help you in your work?
::The earliest thing I can remember was when I was practicing in Washington, DC. Even before moving to Uganda, I went on a silent retreat. That was the teacher was a Jesuit priest who spent his entire career in India, and he had a mindfulness institute. And I went on a silent retreat, on a mindfulness retreat. And it was challenging for me. I remember I'd never done anything like that before. And there was meditation for like 6 hours a day. There was sitting, meditation, walking, meditation, working, everything. And my head was killing me. At the end of the day, it was just an intense immersion into that. But I did come away from that experience feeling like it fed my soul. It was something that enabled me to have that time of quiet and that time of quiet that I could put into my daily life when possible, depending on how busy I was, enabled me to be more present to other people, enabled me to be more aware of my own thoughts and reactions as well as others.
::That's perfect. That's exactly what I would hope for in response. For someone in a role like yours where being present with other people while being present with your own experience is crucial in the work that I do in my training when I'm teaching coaches, that's exactly what we're going for. It's like being really finely attuned to your own experience of the client and then also their experience and paying very close attention to that. So you'd been doing this work in Bolivia and also all this whole time you had kind of just practiced mindfulness and had come into some appreciation of that. And so are you still in practice now or what's going on now in your practice?
::Well, after returning from Bolivia, there was a transition of reentering medicine here in the United States and I struggled with that, I struggled with that reentry back into the culture here. Things were much more productivity based. Medicine had become more corporatized. I got a position, teaching position and working with residents and also caring for patients. But I started to really put a lot of pressure on myself to fix everything that was wrong with the system that I was working and taking on this responsibility. And it's something that we doctors have a tendency to do. If we see something that's not working, we take it on ourselves, the responsibility to fix it and make it.
::You're going to heal the system just like you would a person.
::Exactly. So doing that and not being able to do that, I found myself really suffering with anxiety and eventually becoming pretty depressed and having to stop practicing completely well.
::So it sounds like you made some efforts and you had some resistance or things didn't go quite so well on that effort.
::Yeah, exactly. I tried to do it all myself. And I think, granted, the system had issues, and it was a huge system that I was working for, but I think it was a kind of a combination of me not having that perspective of being able to impact what I had control over and really to have the balance that I needed in my work and really not understanding what that was about as well as working within that system. So I had to stop and take some time and it was during that time that I spent time with a coach, a spiritual director, a therapist, everybody I could surround.
::I need professional help, everything.
::And I really started to look back and reflect on what it was that brought me life in medicine, what it was that I had discovered overseas, what it was that I discovered in great situations that I had as a doctor here in the US. And those core values were the key, the core values of connection, compassion and being with people in relationship and working together collaboratively as a team, that was really key. I started to go back part time, working in jobs that provided those opportunities to manifest those core values. But the other thing that came alive in me was that accompaniment. I really wanted to accompany other physicians, other health providers, in trying to discover what it was that brought them life in medicine and really where they could find that position, that they could have a balance in understanding what their role was as a doctor, as a physician, but also to be able to understand that being a physician was not your complete identity. And that's something that I feel many of us physicians need to learn. And I still everything, you know, as a coach and as a teacher of coaches. I'm just one step ahead of my clients and sometimes I'm right alongside trying to do the same work that they're doing. And that's really what drew me to coaching.
::So you decided, I'm going to help other professionals in my field connect to what really lights them up, what really is core value for them, rather than let them suffer on the racetrack, so to speak. Right?
::Yeah, exactly. I think a lot of times what happens to us in medicine is that we jump on this train that is pre med, then medical school, then residency, and then your career, and then there's just everything seems to be mapped out for us and we just keep going. And in the midst of that, we lose a sense of who we are, who we are at our core. And I feel like we're given this prescription of what it means to be a good doctor and that becomes what it means to be a good person. And then all of a sudden we are following someone else's path, someone else's program. So what I love to do with physicians is to go back and really try to understand what those core values are that drive them, that drove them even before they became a doctor, because those are the things that they're really going to seek out and really find life as a doctor.
::So what are you doing? How do you get this to people? What's the form factor? How do you engage with your professionals in your field?
::Well, there's usually about three or four ways that I do it. One is individual coaching. Many physicians will come to me because they're suffering from burnout, particularly recently, right?
::I mean, it's been crazy.
::Yeah. So burnout has just skyrocketed. It was there before the pandemic, but now it's up into 60% to 65% of physicians who are who are practicing consider themselves to be burned out. There's a lot of moral distress, feeling like I'm being forced to do things that are against my values. So trying to help physicians find their way through that and to understand what to accept or not accept with their conditions is one thing that I do. I also work with physicians that are in career transitions. They're wanting to try something different. They're wanting to move from one thing to another. So that's individual coaching and leadership. A lot of times leadership, how to let go of this control and authoritative type of nature that we've been drawn into and really have more of a collective leadership model. So those are things that I do individually and on retreats with physicians, getting them away to help them do a little reflection so that they can understand what path that they want to take in their careers. And also the last thing is working with medical teams, trying to get people who are working together as a team to understand what gifts they each have and how those gifts can be brought together to help their team feel supported and to really care for patients the best way they can.
::Wow. Well, that's a big scope of work there. So blessings to you for taking that on. What's over the horizon? Are you just taking this like a step at a time or do you have your eyes on some I'm going to arrive when or some future direction you're going?
::No. I think for me, I still am involved in international health, global health, but now instead of doing the actual medical care, I accompany the doctors who are going abroad and help them reflect on.
::Their experiences, cultural adaptation, facilitation.
::I still do some of that. I love being in person, giving retreats, facilitating retreats for medical teams, for office staff to try to improve communication. And I have like four day retreats that I offer for the physicians to get away and really take some time to dig deep. So I think I would love to continue to do a combination of that work, of the retreat work, the medical team work, and the individual client work. Coaching.
::That's incredible. I'm so glad that you're in the business, so to speak, and helping physicians where so desperately needed connect to what's really true and core for them because that way they can sustain their work and live the reason that they were called to serve in the first place. It's so powerful. I'm just moved by your story and it just kind of brings into focus, like, why I love doing this show, because I get to hear stories like this and help amplify that to whatever degree we can so that other people can hear it as well. How do people find you? If other people are out there and they want to connect with you, where do they find you?
::I have my own website. It's Joeshermanmd.com. So if you want to reach me, you can go to my website, you can contact me by email is Joe@joshermanmd.com. And I also am on LinkedIn for people that want to connect with me that way. But most of the time you can find out most of the information on my website to see the services that I offer.
::Thank you. And he's also a member of The The Mindful Coach Association Association, so you can look.
::Him up there I am, I am like what do you call a founding member?
::You are a founding member. And when it comes to our community meetings and so you can connect with both me and Joe at our community meetings. If you like to join up@themThe The Mindful Coach Association Association, it's free to join. And you can connect with the amazing group of coaches that show up there. And you've been hearing them just like this story, which is so inspiring and deep. And the thread that has moved through this whole thing is just about your passion, your commitment to connection in an authentic way. So I just want to kind of bow to you and then serve as an acknowledgment of that. So thank you so much for living your passion and your alignment and with helping bring great goodness into the world. If you were to give our listeners like, one piece of advice that is on the top two or three jewels of your learning, what would you leave them with?
::It's what I find gets me through every day, and that's self compassion. Is that for me, I have to say, for me, I start every morning in a practice of self compassion because I cannot show compassion toward anyone else. I can't be present to anyone else unless I am showing myself that same compassion that I am drawn to show other people. So start with yourself and just be aware of what's going on. Understand that you're not alone and give yourself that kindness and compassion that you desperately need.
::Words of wisdom. Thank you so much. It's been great having you on the show.
::Thanks so much for having me, Brad. I really appreciate it.
::You're more than welcome. Thank you.
::And that's a wrap for this edition of The The Mindful Coach Association Association. We hope you enjoyed this presentation, and if you did, follow us and leave us a review. If you're a coach or helping professional that values mindfulness in your work, browse over to The The Mindful Coach Association Association and create a free community profile describing your services so the.
::World can find you. And you'll be invited to exclusive community.
::Meetings where you can meet your colleague. I'm your host, Brett Hill, founder of.
::The The Mindful Coach Association Association.
::Coach and coach trainer. Teaching the The Mindful Coach Association method.
::You can find out more about me@themindfulcoach.com.
::Until next time.
::Stay present.
