The Worthy Physician

The Art of Healing: How Creativity Shapes Medicine with Dr. Baumgaertel, MD

• Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque MD

Share episode

Send us a text

What happens when a high-producing physician decides to walk away from a successful 25-year medical career? Dr. Susan Baumgartel shares her transformative journey from traditional internal medicine to patient advocacy and authorship in this candid conversation about finding meaning beyond metrics.

Dr. Baumgartel's story begins with a familiar scenario—working nonstop, taking minimal vacation, and feeling the mounting pressure of productivity demands. Yet amid the chaos, she found ways to maintain her humanity by incorporating her passion for art into patient care. The paintings by her late mother that adorned her office walls created unexpected healing connections with patients, illustrating how medicine and creativity can intersect powerfully.

The conversation takes a fascinating turn as Dr. Baumgartel explains her preference for the term "moral injury" over "burnout." While burnout can affect professionals across various industries, moral injury refers to the violation of a physician's ethical code when corporate interests overshadow patient care. This distinction resonates deeply with doctors who struggle to reconcile their calling with the administrative demands of modern healthcare.

Now as an MD Advocate, Dr. Baumgartel has created a unique model that supports rather than competes with traditional medical care. She helps patients navigate complex systems while providing physicians with the backup they need for thorough discussions that today's time constraints often do not allow. Her book, "The Menopause Menu," further extends this mission, providing accessible, evidence-based information structured like a meal—appetizer, entrée, palate cleanser, and dessert.

Perhaps most inspiring is her commitment to daily walking—3 to 5 miles regardless of weather—where she solves problems, connects with neighbors, and maintains mental clarity. This simple practice embodies her philosophy that self-care is not selfish, but essential for physicians who want to provide compassionate care without sacrificing themselves.

Whether you're questioning your medical career path or simply seeking to reconnect with your purpose, Dr. Baumgartel's parting wisdom rings true: "Listen to yourself, listen to your soul, listen to your passion." Your authentic journey in medicine may look different than you imagined, and that might be exactly what you—and your patients—need.


Listen

Pattern Life
Discover unbiased disability insurance with Pattern Life and protect one of your greatest assets.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Though I am a physician, this is not medical advice. This is only a tool that physicians can use to get ideas on how to deal with burnout and/or know they are not alone. If you are in need of medical assistance talk to your physician.


Learn more about female physicians' journey through burnout to thriving!
https://www.theworthyphysician.com/books

Let's connect for speaking opportunities!
https://www.theworthyphysician.com/dr-shahhaque-md-as-a-speaker

Check out the free resources from The Worthy Physician:
https://www.theworthyphysician.com/freebie-downloads

Battle of the Boxes

21 Day Self Focus Journal

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

Welcome to another episode of the Worthy Physician. I'm your host, dr Sapna Shah-Haque, reigniting your humanity and passion for medicine. With each episode, we bring you inspiring stories, actionable insight and expert advice. Get ready for another engaging conversation that could change the way you think and live as a physician. Your income is your greatest asset, protected with Pattern Life. The easy, stress-free way to find the right disability insurance, with unbiased comparisons and no jargon. Pattern helps you to choose the best policy for your needs. Secure your future today at Pattern Life. The link is in the show notes. Let's dive in. Welcome to another episode of the Worthy Physician. I'm your host, dr Sapna Shah Ha, reigniting your humanity and passion for medicine. And today I have Dr Susan Baumgaertel, who is I'm really excited to have this conversation with. You're going to tell us about your advocacy work and the book that you've written, which I'm actually very curious, but I'll save those questions for when we get to that. Is that okay?

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

Absolutely.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

Thank you for having me I'm delighted to be here. I'm excited about this, and so thank you for your time. 20 years ago, where were you in your career? Because it's very different than what you're doing now.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

Yeah, golly, 20 years ago, 2005. Oh my gosh, time flies. My daughter was five years old. I wasn't new, but I wasn't old in terms of my profession. I was working like so many positions, nonstop, 20%, taking call for myself. I mean, like a vacation was one week a year and of course you know what happens on vacation. Before you go on vacation, you work twice as hard. You come back and you work four times the craziness, that kind of, dare I say, that era. But that's how it was and I'm not complaining, but really just peddled to the metal all the time. And I feel, 20 years later, which is now, I look back and it's like I don't recognize myself. Perhaps that's really commentary on how all of us progress in our life. We all grow, we change, we get older and we look back and hopefully learn from some of our mistakes but gain a lot of wisdom going forward. And so I hope to think that's added to my expertise and my ability to really navigate things now. So I worked in a very large multi-specialty physician-owned group in the biggest in our region. I live in Seattle, washington and I joined 1996 and ended up leaving in 2021. So that's 25 years later and along the way.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

I did many different things. I had a very booming internal medicine practice Back in that day. Hospitalists weren't necessarily on the horizon yet, so I did hospital work as well. Ultimately I ended up just in the outpatient world. I ran a couple of practices within my practice one called Many for Change, which was a seven-year program I invented, called Many for Change, which is a weight management and wellness program, and I had a lot of different moving parts to that. It was really something that spoke to my inner passion of really helping people.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

I piloted telemedicine before the pandemic era, so that was also different. Interestingly, when the pandemic hit I was just like boom poised to help people. So I didn't even miss a beat and I could really help people. My business for most of those 25 years for much of it was a kind of a concierge light or a mini concierge practice. So there were a lot of other kind of perks that people had, so very fulfilling, very full, and the bean counters were happy because I was productive. But ultimately, as many position stories kind of end, I was not quite succumbing but feeling all of the pressures that so many of us do in terms of the modern burnout, and actually I didn't even use burnout, I used the word moral injury. You can talk about that at work. So I pivoted that great big pivot and have been the happiest ever, and thank you for sharing that.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

I think you encase so much where you're absolutely right. The way a lot of us start out practicing and there will be there may be shifts and there might be twists and turns and we might. The way we practice medicine or the way we live our lives might be different compared to what we had thought about initially. How did you reconcile the fact that there was change, Because a lot of us may not be so welcoming?

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

Yeah, oh, that's just. That's a $64,000 question. I think that how I look at change now is very clearly different than how I thought of it, or maybe even didn't think of it when I was in the midst of everything and I know that phrase is kitschy, hindsight's 20-20, but truly, looking back in time, I realized that I was adjusting to change and kind of fits and spurts Some of it were just really things that were imposed on me. I have to do this, have to do that in terms of metrics, so forth, working for a company that was ultimately bought out by another company that's not so good. But I think I go deep inside when I went in this kind of question. I think about what's grounding to me. What is my passion? Of course, almost everyone going into medicine, I hope, is passionate about helping people, service to people, yeah, but it's more than that. It's more than that. So for me there was art and makeup are very grounded and I always sprinkled that into whatever I did in the kind of tangible, visible sense.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

My late mother was an artist and I had 25 of her paintings in my very large office suite two exam rooms, an office hallway, front office, back office, coffee area so lots of wall real estate pictures and the thing that I take really great pride in is how this would be interwoven into the patient experience and a couple of things bubble up Story. They're all stories. I remember one woman walking my nurse was walking her into the exam room and she stopped and paused in front of one and I was in my office and my door was open so I could hear and she goes oh, is this a Mark Tobey? I'm thinking like, oh, my God, mark Tobey is a prominent artist, especially in Northwest Virginia. I'm thinking like, oh, she thought my mother's work was Mark Tobey, wow. And then another story this very brave woman who was actually living in Montana and drove all the way to Seattle to see me. I walked into her, she came in for her annual exam and she's already in her robe, changed, ready to go and gallery looking at a painting. You're leaning forward, you're steadying it, maybe you're reading the plaque on the wall. And she was doing this to one of my mothers. And when I walked in the room I almost felt like I was derping her, like I should have left because she was having a moment, and she looked at me, regained her composure and then we did her physical and she went on with her day.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

A couple months went by and she sent me this long email and she goes.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

Dr B, I just want to let you know what was going on that day when you walked in and I was looking at your mother's painting and I, just I just started crying and she said I want to let you know that this, just, I was catapulted back to the early 1970s on the Jersey Shore, the New Jersey Shore, and I saw these kind of.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

My mother's painting was pretty abstract but it looked like there were like birds on the seashore and I, just I was hearkening back to a day when my child was young and we were playing on the beach and I was literally speechless when I read this, I, just, I, actually I think my heart stopped because the title of this abstract painting was Migration and it was like the imagery of these are not birds but just abstracted bird on a beach and I was just, I saw, saw a course, wrote back and I just thought, wow, so it can go on and on, but that, to me, is important and that was so important to carry forward into what I do, be it being my best advocate role for a patient, or helping a colleague with their pivot journey, or writing my book, or blogging or giving lectures all of that kind of spirit is there and it was still there previously, but I think it was squelched by all the burnout and the moral injury.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

I just, I love that part of it and it's great that I was able to share that with you.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

No, I appreciate it, but you kept that at the forefront and center, who you were, who you are, and you made your decisions based off that. I think so many of us in medicine and on this rat race that we call life, we forget those things very well squashed out of us, or they try Well yeah.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

And I think, dare I say, that many or most people make decisions based on money, based on financial, and I'm not saying that's not important. If you're the breadwinner and you have a family to support, god forbid you have kids or college funds and mortgages and all that. Have a family to support, god forbid you have kids or college funds and mortgages and all that. We need to be able to support ourselves and our families. But to me, even though I was doing well in that regard, it was important to. If I didn't center myself on those things that were so passionate and valuable to me, everything else would not have been fulfilling.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

That makes perfect sense. Now I'm going to give a little detour and then I'll come back this way back to the main road, if that's okay. One thing that really stuck out to me was two things. One of your recent LinkedIn posts I did read that and you had been walking in your neighborhood and one of your neighbors recognized you. You had a conversation over a tree, Is that right?

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

Yeah, so I walk every day and for many reasons health, sanity, physical, all that. I was treated for cancer a year ago so I upped my game and I do a lot of things on my walk. Sometimes I put my earbuds in and I listen to music. Many times I don't have them in so I can chit chat with people or just listen to the bird. I have that Merlin Bird ID app and, oh my gosh, I don't even use it anymore because I know all the bird sounds.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

That's cool, it's pretty neat. I've educated myself. I love flowers, I love trees, I love plants, I love trees, and so I'm always taking pictures oh them in many ways. So often the picture will then start a story and then I'll write about it, and so it just. It's not like the pictures, the be all, end all, although occasionally, like every 50 pictures, like one turns out really cool.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

There's this one yard that I walk by and the Hellebores, early, like buttercup family, but as tough as primrose, they come out, and we had two a week and a half of snow Wow, very rare for Seattle and cold, bitter cold weather, and they were just punchy and perky and looked beautiful. And I took this picture and it was a perfect lighting. It was one of my really good pictures. And so, as I walked by the same yard a few days later, I saw this woman bent over doing some clearing out of old debris and I just thought I'd say something. So I said hello and she said hello back and I said, like, a couple of days ago I took this picture, so she walked over and I showed it to her. Her jaw dropped oh my God, this is beautiful. And she said can you text it to me?

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

And so we sat there with our iPhones, I airdropped and she had her and of course, when you airdrop you see the person's name and it said Yvette. And she said I'm Yvette. My God, three degrees. So I was beaming as I walked home. I thought what are the odds? That's cool. That's your connection, yeah, the connection. I love these connections. That just that feeds my soul.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

And that's beautiful. And I bring this up for several reasons. First off, before the recording, you were saying that you walk three to five miles every day, regardless.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

Yeah, bomb cyclones. For those who aren't aware, that's a Pacific Northwest version of a hurricane Atmospheric rivers, which means we get a couple inches dumped on us like super fast, the temperature, no matter what. I'm out there and it's therapy. It's my mental, physical, everything. And you know what, when I walk, which is about 45 minutes or sometimes close to an hour, I solve all of my problems, like this fits in your head. I'm an overthinker. Oh my God. Many of us sorry. I just, oh my God, the T crossing the eye dust like I'm my own worst enemy. I solve my problems. I used to say I solve my problems in the shower, but my shower only lasts like five minutes. Oh my gosh, this 45, 50 minute, 60 minute walk. I just I come back and I feel so good and I immediately go up and write a couple notes to myself, things I've been thinking about and everything seems easier. Oh my gosh, it's more than just physical activity that for a couple of reasons.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

One, the connectivity. You're allowing yourself to slow down, but also you're doing something that is important to you, you're prioritizing it, you're getting it done every day, truly like the mail must go through, and so does Dr B. I love it. Yeah, I was just listening to a podcast about self-care and it's not selfish. And we can give all psychological reasons, we can give religious reasons why it's not selfish, but I love that you're practicing that and that it comes out through everything that you do. So that's why we went on that little detour, a long detour Me too. That's where you find some of life's most fun experiences. I'm an off-the-beaten-trail gal, yeah for sure. Can't tell you how many times we've gotten lost, and it's been the best, it's been the best part of the trip Serendipity. So tell me, tell us all, more about your book. I'm enthralled because I find it very helpful, particularly maybe with patients that aren't really keen on meds or looking for a more natural way.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

Yeah, oh, so the book's called the Menopause Menu and this I think I was writing it in my brain for many years. I, early on in the pandemic, my passion project was creating a free website for everyone, and it's called Menopause Menu, of course, and it's really an information hub. But it also has three blogs, and so I'm still active on it blogging, writing, blogs, video podcast will be up there at some point, and then recipes as well. But I just knew that I was going to write something about menopause as well. But I just knew that I was going to write something about menopause, and the way I put it together in my mind was I wanted women and men, but women to have a resource that wasn't highly technical, medical, where they have to look up every third word.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

But I didn't want to dumb it down and have God forbid the Hollywood, whatever snake oils. I wanted it to be in the center information that was easy to get to, that wasn't too complicated but straightforward and, of course, getting my art flowing in my veins. Again, I created this format or structure for the book that reminded me of an art book. So back in the 60s and 70s, being an artist, we had a lot of books Right, massive books like Renoir Descartes, whatever you want, and you'd open this big book very heavy very big, put it on your lap and maybe look at one or two pages.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

Maybe you look at one painting, you read something about it and that's it, Like you'd interact with it for five or 10 minutes maybe and then move on and your day got busy. And so I want people to be able to do that with my book, not read from cover to cover, not feel like, oh, my God, I have two hours looking, but okay, I want to go to chapter eight and learn about weight management and menopause. Boom flip to chapter eight. You get a little quickie intro, Of course. You get a pitch happens to be a painting of my mother's, two of hers, and that's actually the cover one.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

There's an appetizer, little minute bits. There's the entree, which is all the information. There's the palate cleanser, which is a recipe, in the very end, which is desserts, kind of like a wild card. So it's almost like courses of a menu. And I think when people experience this they feel like, oh, they've gotten a little bit of information that's helpful to them or to someone they know who's going through menopause, they're supporting and they're not overwhelmed. It's evidence-based, it's not woo, but it's very much inviting of holistic, poor in a way. That's grounding, at least to me. So it's not just a bunch of take these drugs, take these medicines. It's not a book all about hormones although of course you can't talk about menopause without talking about it. So I just to me, I was very happy with how it ended up turning out and I'm very grateful that it's been very well.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

So the the cover is of your mother's painting.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

Yeah, it's a huge painting, a very large painting that was the title, if I remember correctly is called Look to the Sea and it's a picture from behind. It's abstract but it's a naked woman she did a lot of drawing from. It's called life drawing from the nude. So it's from behind. It's very stylized and imagine this woman's looking off into the distance, into the sea. The colors are vibrant. They're also a little disturbing in terms of some of the darkness, so it's both inviting and a little kind of punchy as well, and it just I felt like it was the perfect cover, as women are peri or pre or peri, or going into menopause and there's some angst about the journey. But, like there's a lot of things going on, you feel very vulnerable. This woman didn't have clothes on and just also becoming more in tune with your body, reintroducing yourself to your body because changing, and all those things to me wrapped up in that front page, the front piece painting.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

Yeah, I think that the cover is absolutely beautiful and, for those that have not seen it yet, the links in the show notes. So I think it's well done the coloring, and it's so spot on for menopause, right. This is something that, as women, I'm not looking forward to it, but that is the way life is. It's inevitable. Enjoy the journey, embrace it, curse it, whatever, but it's beautiful, right, it's our body, it's physiology, it's beautiful. The painting is very fitting and it's a great tribute to your mom.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

And physiology. It's beautiful.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

The painting is very fitting and it's a great tribute to your mom, and today would have been her 91st birthday, so what a perfect day to have a podcast and remember her work. I 100% agree, and just I had a love for the art as well, so I'm glad that we can highlight that today and also it's a beautiful nod from your work to hers. Thank you for that. You're welcome. Now you are also an advocate. What does that mean? I can I know what the word means, but explain to us what Dr B does as an advocate?

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

Yeah, oh, it's just a lot of fun to be of service to patients in a different way than how I was in the past. So of course I was primary care doc for all those years. Now I don't scribe, I'm not a doc in the box, I don't do a bunch of referrals. I list, I help people navigate, I help them discern what their symptoms and signs and so forth mean. Are they sick? Is there a concern? I help them kind of deal with juggling a lot of things. Maybe it's cancer diagnosis, maybe it's chronic illness, maybe it's caregiving for an older relative, maybe it's stress management. God forbid, we all need that. It's a little bit. Of course, menopause and weight management those are my favorite subjects, but it's very humbling to recognize that people need this and want this and will hate this business that I run.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

My empty advocate was never to make a killer profit. It was to pay the bills. Otherwise that would be an expensive hobby. No-transcript, that's advocacy. Our systems now are just beyond broken. They're stressful both for physicians and for patients. It's a nightmare trying to get into somebody. God forbid. You want a new primary care doc. You're SOL. I feel like I can be that c-net. I can be that kind of release valve.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

And the thing that I didn't know when I started this three years ago, that I'm really also enjoying now very much so, is partnering with my. So this was never meant to take away their patients. I'm not challenged. It's meant to augment, to support them, to add to what they're doing. A great example would be, let's say, a cardiologist who's plunked someone on a statin and we'll see in six weeks for labs and so forth, and the patient's. I don't want to take that. I can peel back those layers and have a very, very good, thorough discussion because I have time, and at the end of that discussion I'm reporting my colleague yep, this is the right drug and here's what to think about it. And I do support cardiologists' follow-up plan and this page is. Oh, I'm so glad I had this discussion with you. I'm definitely starting this tomorrow and I'm super happy to follow up the biologist repeat lab. So to me that rank the name, current system that's already shaped. So I love that as an exam.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

I really appreciate that example because that illustrates what you're doing and thank you for that because you're right, we don't have time and it does the patient a disservice because we're not able to answer all their questions, even though we try. I'm not putting my colleagues down because I'm in the same boat, so thank you for that and a part two of that would be the portal.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

Oh my God, that sends chills up the spine of most docs, where they're like oh my God, I spent all this time as pajama time.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

It's like time away from work that I'm just still working, and I remember what it was like and I was the master of the portal. I remember you would have okay, let's just say, 25 messages. Gulp, you crank out 10 replies and then you realize you have 12 more. Oh, not only have you five, you have 27. Oh my God, it's never ending.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

And unfortunately, for right or for wrong, the pandemic kind of put that on the speed dial. And so patients want instant care and if they've messaged you and haven't heard back in 20 minutes, they message you again. That is not helpful for anyone in the medical and they also don't want it for care. And so, unfortunately, primary care physicians are it'd probably be our own doing are constantly free. That's not okay. When I started my MD advocate, I realized that I wanted to charge for my time, no different than attorneys do. If a patient has a quickie message in 10 minutes or less, like I, let it go, unless they're doing it all the time. But if they have an issue, then we schedule a session and I bill for it. And when in my entire career, the answer is no, have I ever done that. So it was very freeing to be able to help people navigate systems and circumstances, medical issues and their current care, but to also get reimbursed for that and have that be the kind of the backbone of my life.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

It's absolutely fair, because I think medicine is about the only place that we can't or don't do that it's changing, but not fast enough. I agree 100%. Thank you for being an advocate, for yourself too, yeah, and I think we have to constantly think of the trade-offs.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

If we just approach it from what's going to help me, that's a bad way to go through the world. But I gave a lecture not that long ago it's on my YouTube site about how to get the best kind of teamwork with your care team, and my lecture was for patients. But I think also my colleagues appreciate it too, because I look at both sides and I did talk about, like, the patient portal example too, and I give patients who are listening, strategies to be more efficient, don't pester their medical team with a million questions how to get better care, both in the exam room or on the phone or through a portal. Set expectations, but in a very helpful way, not just don't message, don't call. That's terrible. So I think it's important for us to constantly think of both sides of it, because that's where the solutions are going to lie Absolutely.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

And for the physicians listening also, remember we're patients. At some point in time we're going to be taking care of older parents, if we're not already. So remember that what it's like to be in the patient seat, not just physician, for sure, and those links will be in the show notes for your website, your YouTube channel. And what is the best way to connect with you?

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

Is it on LinkedIn, instagram, I have a big toe into the social media world. I do LinkedIn and I would say LinkedIn is my primary platform. I do Facebook really just because I have a menopause menu page and a couple of private groups that I attend. I do post there, but truthfully, I think LinkedIn professionally is the best way. My contact information is all at mymdadvocatecom. It's also at menopausemenucom, but mymdadvocatecom has most of the goodies in terms of my email and phone number and so forth and, yeah, I'm happy when anybody's out.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

I love your openness. One question I do have for you. You mentioned at the beginning that you use the word moral injury versus burnout. Why is that your preference?

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

Burnout, I think, is a global term that can apply to almost any industry. Teachers are burned out, restaurant servers and owners burned out. Nowadays, anyone in politics, really everyone's burned out for different reasons. Parents of kids but I think moral injury speaks a bit more to what are your moral and ethical code or your values that drive what you do in your profession. And when you look at the field of medicine this could be a three-hour-long talk, javi. But you think about the decomposition or the destruction of that kind of sacrosanct doc-patient relationship where that was what mattered, and that was only what mattered, certainly when I started Hint from, not my Shingle in 1996.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

Now what matters is metrics and the bean counters and administrators who are practicing medicine but they shouldn't be practicing medicine and the whole corporate practice of medicine kind of scam, if I say that word. Right, absolutely. There is so much pressure taking care of patients. It's either going to be have you met your dollar bill, your production goals? Have you seen the number, the volume? Have you seen a number of patients 25 people per day or whatever it is? And that has just taken this massive side trip away from what it really means to care for someone in the true sense of caring and so that moral injury is something that is so compelling and that's why, when I stepped away, I literally on a dime, went from probably one of the biggest producers if you're talking about financial in my huge group to earning zero dollars.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

But I did it because it was necessary to keep going and, of course, I slept for several weeks, regained my sanity, my activity and my passion and my focus on caring for human beings, and it's all good now.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

But I do find that's probably a much bigger motivator for my physician colleagues when they pivot or change shift in their careers than, quote unquote, just burnout. I don't want to minimize burnout and that's also why I started this second kind of leg of my business. So not only do I advocate patients, but I'm also supporting colleagues. I've been doing that for several years and then a light bulb went over my head one day and I thought, oh, I've been doing this but I haven't really advertised it. So I have a second section on the website, which is physicians, and they can learn about that. And in fact this week and next week I have physicians from Massachusetts and one from Pennsylvania who are engaging my support for their pivot journey. So I love to do that because it's one-on-one and I feel like I really I make a difference and it really makes you feel good.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

To those listening. There are so many pearls of wisdom. Medicine's not just a one track and you have to stay on it. And wherever your journey takes you, please don't forget to stay true to yourself, whether that incorporates art, music, whatever lights your soul on fire. That is inside medicine, outside of medicine. Don't forget your humanity, because we need to put on our own oxygen mask first before we help others. This conversation has been beautiful and very energizing, so thank you.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

These are really subjects that are near and dear to me, and I know many other physicians believe that too. But I'm so happy we were able to chat and also I'm talking more about art and its meaning to me, and I love to keep those front and center, that's for sure.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

I appreciate that and I love the candidness and the fact that you're open with it, because I think, physicians, we get a bad stereotype that you don't care about all that. You just care about dollars, cents and your BMWs, right? No, I drive an SUV, never owned a BMW, and I'm just saying. It plays against the stereotypes, and I love it.

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

Yeah, no, I think so, and it makes hopefully it makes everyone just pause and recognize those of them and their circles and around them. There's a lot of kind of connectivity we can encourage. And, by the way, I had many words last year, but my two words for this year are C words One is creativity and the other one is compassion. Last year included connectivity, so it's a nice spectrum, yeah.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

Yeah, I think that we need to have those words, don't we? How it's going to frame our year, how it's going to frame our day Now what is one last pearl of wisdom you would love to leave us with?

Dr. Baumgaertel, MD:

Oh my gosh, so many. Yeah, listen, that's a good word. Listen to yourself, listen to your soul, listen to your passion, listen to your patient, Listen to your doctor. You know we need more listening. We need more kind of use of our. It's important Listen to pay attention and listening will, I think, guide. Listen to pay attention and listening will, I think, guide many people. Thank you for that.

Dr. Shah-Haque,MD:

Embracing what we've heard as children, what I tell mine you have two ears, one mouth. Turn on your listening ears. I thank you for that reminder, dr B. I truly thank you for your time and your wisdom. Thank you, it was my pleasure to be here. I really appreciate it Absolutely. Thanks for tuning in to another episode from the Worthy Physician Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who'd love it too. Don't forget to follow us on YouTube, linkedin, instagram for more updates and insights. Until next time, keep inspiring, learning, growing and living your best life.