Life After Medicine: How To Make a Career Change, Beat Burnout & Find Your Purpose For Doctors

The Sneaky Way Doctors Are Indoctrinated to Sacrifice Everything—And How To Reclaim Your Life

• Chelsea Turgeon

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Do you feel like the only way to be a doctor- is the all consuming way? Like unless you are sacrificing your hobbies, down time, relationships- you aren’t taking the calling seriously enough?

Does working in medicine have to come at the expense of yourself, or are there ways to work in medicine that don't require all of this personal sacrifice?

This is exactly what we'll explore with Dr. Kristine Goins of The Nomad MD

You’ll discover:

The exact strategy she used to create time freedom—so she works 2 days a week and spends the other 5 on travel, hobbies, and rest

A 3 min practice you can start doing today to open up more freedom and fulfillment

A clear example of how you can practice medicine part-time without sacrificing income or purpose

Click play now to stop sacrificing and start living.

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Life After Medicine explores doctors' journey of finding purpose beyond their medical careers, addressing physician burnout, career changes, opportunities in non-clinical jobs for physicians and remote jobs within the healthcare system without being burned out, using medical training.

as you know, this week as I'm prepping for Pivot potentials I am going through the archives and finding the episodes from my Pivot Potentials speakers, and today we are revisiting Dr. Christine Goins episode. And so Christine Goins is the Nomad md. She's very much a kindred spirit to me. She's a digital nomad who also travels around the world while working, while living her life. And this podcast episode is really a fantastic intro to her story throughout the episode itself. We're really tackling the question like, is sacrifice required? Do we have to go all in and give up everything to live our calling? Or like, is there another way? Is there a way to make a difference? That also gives you the freedom to enjoy your life? Then her session for Pivot Potentials. It's like continuing the conversation because in this episode you'll see that she walked away from the grind, she built this life as a digital nomad where she has basically reversed her weekends, like her weekend and weekdays, where it's like instead of. A weekend for two days and working five days a week. It, she does the opposite. She lives five days a week and works two days a week. And her session on Pivot Potentials is about reimagining your relationship with work. And so what she's doing is she's gonna help us really unhook from this idea of overworking, of really using work to validate you being. Tied into this scam of productivity, and she's gonna give us this four part framework for creating a career that's rooted in freedom, fulfillment, and service. You don't have to settle for a life that doesn't fit. You can start to reimagine work as a tool for freedom, not just this source of burnout that's the conversation we'll be having at Pivot Potentials. So if you listen to this episode, you enjoy it and you want to get more of Christine, which I know you will because who doesn't, um, then come join us@coachtellsmd.com slash summit. Get registered for Pivot Potentials, sign up and I cannot wait to see you there.

Speaker 3:

Welcome to Life After Medicine, the podcast helping millennial health professionals leave the system and build a fulfilling career. I'm your host, Chelsea Turin, residency Dropout turned six, figure entrepreneur and World Traveler. I'll help you discover your unique path to making an impact without the burnout, because you were meant for more than 15 minute patient visits under fluorescent lights.

Speaker:

Has anyone ever told you medicine is a calling? Let's talk about that. I have honestly only seen this phrase used as a weapon, as a way to indoctrinate us and essentially perpetuate the idea that when you sign up to work in medicine, you are also signing up to sacrifice all your other passions, your interests, your humanity. Have you ever thought to question it? Does this actually have to be true? Does working in medicine have to come at the expense of yourself, or are there ways to work in medicine that don't require all of this personal sacrifice? I will be honest. I personally have never experienced or found a way to work in medicine that doesn't require it to be all consuming. So I brought in an expert, someone much more highly qualified than me to help answer this question. Dr. Christine Goys. She is a board certified integrative adult and pediatric psychiatrist and world traveler. And without giving too much away, she left her traditional medical practice and now uses her medical expertise to work remotely with different mental health organization. She does contract work around patient care and advocacy two days a week and then. Is traveling the world, exploring her different hobbies and passions on the other five days. So in this episode, she shares her secrets on how she's managed to set this up for herself and to create this freedom to enjoy her life while still working in medicine. And she also talks about one practice you can start doing today that. Literally only takes three minutes that can start to open you up to more freedom and more fulfillment. And in the episode when Christine is describing it, I immediately am like, oh my gosh, this is the gateway drug to a freedom lifestyle. So, but it's the gateway drug that you actually want to start, not avoid. It's not super common to meet somebody who's gone through all of medical training and then also transitioned into a nomadic lifestyle. Give us the overview of how you became Nomad MDs, and how you ended up in Buenos Aires.

Speaker 2:

I knew that I wanted to be a doctor since I was eight years old, but I also knew since I was 16 that I wanted to travel the world. I was a voracious reader. And so I would read all of these novels about, from a particular author, Eric Icky, who wrote about black women who would be these professional, uh, world travelers, polyglots. And I was like, oh my gosh, I be one of these women. So I, I really kept that with me in college. I minored in Spanish and I was like, okay, I'm gonna go study abroad. And I paid for it. It was like really scrapping up like. Everything. I stayed from like my work study job to go to study abroad and about a month before I was headed off, I was accepted into a program that allowed you to start medical school during your last year of college. And so the program required that I give up this opportunity to travel. So it was like my first abroad and a trip and I had to give it up. So it was like the beginning of this thought to me like, wow. Going into medicine means sacrificing other things that I'm really passionate about. I kept looking for opportunities though. Year after medical school you have this little summer break, and so that summer break I went to go live with a family in Costa Rica and studied medical Spanish and travel. Then in my fellowship, I took a month off and went to stay in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Nepal and studied mindfulness and meditation and. It really was an experience that allowed me to, again, center and really think about what was important to me. And I was like, wow, I have to travel, like I have to get out. So like, okay, I need to come up with a plan. I need a five year plan or something of how I'm gonna travel the world. I was saying to myself, if this is the kind of life you want, you have to create it. Nobody's just gonna make this space for you. But there was a lot of fear. There was a lot of apprehension. What are people gonna think? How am I gonna do it? I have student loans, so we're responsible. And so I kept going until slowly bit by bit. Every organ system started to have an issue. It would be chest pain, it would be. Neurological. I had started to have spasms all over my body, and of course by that time I was like, oh my gosh, I have a terrible illness. I have to go see someone who knows what's going on with me. I ended up in a neurologist's office and I was just so stressed. I was like, you know, work is. Overwhelming, and I'm doing all these activities and I love the community I'm working with and I love my colleagues, but I'm just so overwhelmed working over 60 hours a week and it just stopped me. Just said, stop. Do you want Lexapro? And I was just like, what? That's the answer. So at that moment I was just like, okay, I have to just get out of this and just go my own way because it was obvious that the prescription wasn't gonna be SSRIs. There's this imbalance, and it wasn't of serotonin, it was this imbalance in my life values. During that year of quarantine, both in my grandmother's died and that was like the time. Aspect that I really needed to say to myself, you don't have five years. You don't even know if you have five more days. Like you need to come up with a plan today of how you're gonna start living the life that you really wanna live. And so I changed my five year plan into a five month plan. I booked a one way ticket to Columbia without telling anyone, and I left.

Speaker:

As you were talking, one of the things that came to me is this Glennon Doyle quote. She says, I guess women have to almost die before we give ourselves permission to live how we want. And I think all of us require some version of being jolted out of that. In medical training, we're conditioned to power through. It's a way of suppressing. Longer term desires, wants and needs, but also even shorter term things like, I'm tired, too bad. Let's override that I have to pee. Well, there's not time, so let's hold it. So it's like we override the bodily sensations and then we start to override how what we actually want in life. And it just becomes this whole process of suppressing who we are and what we want to power through for this goal. That then becomes like. Why are we doing this again?

Speaker 2:

Exactly. And I would even go as far as to say there were aspects of medicine that caused me to suppress aspects of just humanity in general. Moments where I. You could be chastised for crying, you know, in front of a patient just experiencing human emotion and empathy. So it was learning how to unlearn all of these behaviors that I had been taught through working in that system, and then learning all of these other things about myself and. I realized there could be so much power and so much wisdom in just going your own way and figuring out what the journey needs to look like for you as an individual.

Speaker:

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I love that you've been on this journey. One thing that is so interesting is that moment when you had this sort of study abroad experience. Book did, paid for and ready to go. And then you had this conflict of interest and it was the first time you had this experience where you learned that following the medical path can mean sacrificing things that you want, things, other parts, other interests that you have.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. And I remember, I. In that time I was in this program, they had me go to the front in one of these events and tell my story. And the story was about the fact that this is what it takes to be a medicine. You have to be willing to give up other things. You have to be willing to sacrifice other passions and things that you might really love. And so it was almost like going up there and sharing that and like that being the cheer, that being the rah rah was like. More instilling that like, okay, yeah, this is how it's supposed to be. Instead of like, you know, another way that I could have like processed that or thought through that of like, okay, what does this mean? Like, how am I gonna still integrate the things that are really important to me during this journey?

Speaker:

I wasn't able to. Really connect to myself and find myself and you know, become a more well-rounded person until leaving medicine. I don't think that has to be the case, but What are your thoughts around medicine being this all consuming profession where there's no time for anything else versus there are ways to have a more well-rounded life within medicine? Yeah,

Speaker 2:

I think it's really possible to do. Within medicine, what I learned is that when I created the life that I wanted. I put medicine in its proper place in my life. I loved it even more than I ever loved it before. Because it was there and I had that passion, but I also had room for everything else in my life that I really wanted to do, that I was passionate about. So it was able to provide me with all of these therapeutic benefits, and I could have the time freedom to enjoy my life, to be more introspective, to gain more clarity to the point that it became easy I could make. Every decision consistently and in alignment with my highest values. And without time freedom, I wasn't able to do that because I couldn't think. I couldn't have enough time to even think my way through as to what the next step was and as to what was most important to me. So I really do think that there's a way of practicing medicine. There's a way of engaging in medicine that can be in alignment with your highest values and your best self. But. It's up to you to create that. It's not up to the system. If we're waiting on a system to change before we're gonna live the life that we wanna live, we may never get to live it. And so it's really about empowering ourselves and recognizing that, hey, nobody is keeping us back from living the life that we want except us.

Speaker:

Yes. Oh my gosh. I'm like, could say, preach to all of this because this is exactly the thing that I talk about. So one of the things you said, which I think everyone's gonna be like, how did you do this when you're like, I put medicine in its proper place. Like you designed the life you wanted and then you put medicine in its proper place. How did you do that? Yeah. What are some of the like logistics around how you created this for yourself?

Speaker 2:

So I think there's ways in which I. Consciously made decisions and set intentions and created the lifestyle. And then I think there are ways now looking back, that I unconsciously was creating all along. So there were certain practices, certain philosophies that I was already putting in place. I have began to practice essentialism and minimalism. And so it, it was already ingrained in me to begin thinking about. How do I live my life in a way that I can create this vacuum where I can take things away that are not necessary so that I could fill up my life with everything that I really wanted and even more of it. So those things were there, and it also impacted the way I circulated my money. There was a way that I had already set up my life where. From the get go financially, I didn't have fears about what this would mean to go off and do this new thing, which I think comes up a lot for physicians. I was thinking about student loans, of course. I was like, okay, well I can't do this because there's only one way to do it. The only way to pay it off is working for a hospital. And I was like, I don't think that's true, Christine. I think you are. Making it up. I think there's other ways, you know, the only way that I can have a great impact in the communities that I've been striving to work in my whole career is by working through the hospital, working through these schools, or working through these nonprofits. That's not true. It was just things that I was telling myself, and so. I think those self-limiting thoughts were the biggest barrier more than anything else. When I left training, another thing, this is like part of that unconscious, like when I left training, I automatically started in academia and started my own LLC. It was always from the get go, it was this idea that I didn't wanna rely on one stream of income. I never liked relying on one avenue, and I always liked doing a lot of things anyway. So when I left academia, I still had my own business where I could consult and I could contract, and so I could still practice and engage in medicine that way. And so. It was really about just thinking through the options and setting things up in a way, and talking with other professionals too, just for that added amount of confidence in the road that I was taking that really allowed me to make the jump.

Speaker:

Yeah. I also love that you talk about how you had to release a lot of the boxes that you were kind of putting yourself in before you could really start to open up and really, truly look at. What could be possible and what your options are, because I have so many people who come to me and they're messaging me about what are my options or what can I do? And it's like I don't have a secret list That's other than what you see on Google. Like you, you know the options. I don't know what you're wanting from me. In order to really find what you want, you have to work through the beliefs first. And then the options become more clear. So I'd love to hear your take on that whole mental part of the process.

Speaker 2:

For sure. There's a way that we've been taught in the way that we've been kind of groomed within medicine is you follow the roadmap, you follow the algorithm. There is a way for you to do it and don't veer to the left or to the right. I think I went through the same thing. That's why I was thinking about this for years, right? I wanted to travel the world since I was 16, but. I didn't leave until I was 35. It's, it was still a lot of box checking and so I, I think that, um, it's true. There's this, it almost feels like maybe there's another box I can get to if you can just give me a list of, of the options. But what I realized is that there's no greater options than the ones that you create for yourself. It's magical when you get to this point in your mindset, when you realize that actually the best road for me, I've never seen it. I've never heard anyone talk about it. There's no books about it because it doesn't exist. It's only within me. It's only my vision and my imagination, and the only way the world is even going to see it is that I manifest it. So it's up to me to do the work. That's the place I think, where people. Would be able to find something that fits. I, I see a lot of physicians look out and they might, maybe they go to nonclinical work, maybe they go to other kind of medical work and it's a shift. But when you talk to them, they're not actually passionate about what they're doing. They're not actually really fulfilled or happy. They don't have time freedom. They just spend their time in a different way than they did before.

Speaker:

It's such a shift from kind of approaching life based on someone else gives you a list and you pick from there what's best. Someone else is sort of imposing what's real and what's true on you versus you take it from within yourself and then you bring it out into the world and you create it and it feels really daunting, but it's not. It's just a step-by-step process. It's like one thing at a time, and it's not that you're doing something that literally no one has ever done anything like it before. It's just sort of like. It's your version of it, or like the combination of the different things. It's not like you're reinventing the wheel in a really dramatic way. I mean, you might be, but it doesn't have to mean that both of us, like other people are digital nomads, other people are coaches. It's not like we're doing something that's so, so crazy. We had to invent things. It's just sort of like you kind of create your own formula of what it's all gonna be together.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. It's just like you said, it's about really having a courage to do it. I can't lie, I'll be transparent. It is terrifying. Like again, is, it's scary. It is scary to, to have a vision, to hold an idea about something and then to actually bring it to fruition. It takes a commitment. It takes courage. Then there's all of these skills that you are gonna learn along the way. So throughout that, you're not feeling very confident because you are not yet, you are developing that, and so you don't feel confident yet because the confidence come after your confidence. So you have to be willing to go along this journey. And if you don't wanna be miserable the whole time, you also have to be willing to learn how to enjoy the journey along the way.

Speaker:

Yes, a hundred percent. All the things that I am telling my clients all the time. So can you walk us through your sort of like a week in the life?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. So for me, the two days are my contract with different mental health organizations, institutions, so kind of working with them around. Patient care and patient advocacy. Same thing with my consulting work is, is still in that field about mental health, children, families, and so it's all of the work that I've always been passionate about that I really, really love to do. That's what the medical, let's say, aspect of those two days. The non-medical aspect of those two days is physician coaching and helping physicians create. Their own life changing transformations around location and time freedom. So those are my like two days. And then outside of those two days are the time that I get to play and have all the engaged myself and all the other passions that I really care about. And so it changes over different seasons. Some seasons it's about my wine study because I became a wine professional, and so it kind of. Intense study, but in another area of life. But there's fun in it too. Uh, with travel, of course, it's like traveling the world because I, I switch countries every two or three months. So it's travel, it, engaging in different passions. Like right now I'm taking singing lessons and that's its own. You realize when you start working through these other passions that they just open up different aspects of your life? Yeah. I learned that I wasn't an alto, which I thought I was my entire life being in chorus and my singing teacher told me all this time, you've been a soprano that is actually afraid to sing high notes. And I was like, what? Are you kidding me? So, you know, I'm learning so much about myself. That's the thing that I, I really love about travel and time freedom, is that I have this ability to dive deep into things that I'm curious about, and it really means diving deeper into who I am and learning more about myself. And it allows me to be not just like a better physician, but a better. Sister, daughter, friend, partner, just human being, more creativity, more cognitive flexibility, learning how to create more meaningful and deeper connections in a really small amount of time. And I realized that that is really a gift of travel. It's been a way to really deepen connections with people from all over the world and really gain friends from so many different. Aspects of life that I think I otherwise wouldn't have experienced.

Speaker:

Yes. I love literally everything that you're sharing about. And when I think of your, like your five days that you have, I almost think of it like you sort of choose a major every season. It's like, okay, this, this and that. We, I joke about that with my travel friends too. It's like, what's your travel major? And like for some people it's scuba diving and for other people it's like architecture. And like for me it's spirituality and healing and. That sort of thing. Coffee, maybe like, you know, it's like you all sort of, you have your little interest.'cause traveling in and of itself is, it's like you really wanna find things within that that really interest you. So I think that's so cool. And I totally agree with what you're saying about the connections, the way that they become deeper, more quickly. And I think one reason for that, for me at least, is there's sort of a like skip the small talk mentality that happens and it's not necessarily even conscious.'cause even when you're interacting with locals, it's like I'm a foreigner. There's an initial question of like, why are you here? What are you doing? And I have a story. And so there's a depth that starts right away because I share a little bit of my origin story of why I'm here, and then that sort of inspires other people to share it more deeply too. And then especially if you're meeting other travelers, everyone has a reason they're there, why they're not living the traditional life. And so I think that just starts to inspire. This intimacy and this depth that can happen more quickly. So one thing that I know you are passionate about and that you've had a lot of experience with, and you kind of started talking about it, is the way that travel can be healing, the way that you can heal from burnout, heal, stress, all of these pieces travel can sort of be a vehicle for healing. So I'd love to hear more about how that's been for you and what that healing journey has looked like.

Speaker 2:

Yeah,

Speaker:

and some of

Speaker 2:

it, like you mentioned, I. One of the initial pieces of it that become clear right away is that travel allows you to experience novelty very often and sometimes on a daily basis when when you're in a new place. And for me. It really creates this moment to moment awareness and joy of living and facilitates this openness that otherwise I wouldn't necessarily notice by being in the same place all the time, getting getting into a routine. Um, another thing for me, like I mentioned, the time freedom. It allowed so much clarity and time for me to do deep introspective work. I really can't stress that enough, like having time to really know what it is that you want out of your. Life experience here on the earth, like you only have a certain amount of time, and knowing how you wanna spend that time is so important. It's so crucial. It makes every day that much more meaningful and it becomes a lot easier when things pop up to the side. Is this worth doing or is this a chance we're taking? Like, you know, because you only do things that align with what you really want in life. And so that was really amazing for me. It's. All of those things. And a big thing also was the confidence. There's a lot, like you mentioned, that fear, and it's that exposure. You keep doing it and you keep doing it, keep doing it. And you realize at some point that you trust yourself. You trust yourself to. Lean on your intuition to lean on your own inner knowing that you actually know the path, that you don't actually have to ask anyone else. You can, you know, for, for wisdom or you know, to help with your own inner guidance, but it's really inside of you that. All the answers lie, and you really get to know that.

Speaker:

Oh, that's so good. And it's like, one of the things I'm sort of hearing from you is time free. You did not say this specifically. I'm paraphrasing. Time freedom is like the gateway drug for healing. When you have more time, then you have this ability to sit with yourself, to get to know yourself, to trust yourself, and then it's like without that time. None of this is possible.

Speaker 2:

No, because where do you get the energy? Where do you get the psychological freedom? If you are busy constantly, if there's always something that you have to do, if there's always this thought that you have to be someone to someone else, where do you have that? Space to be silent, to tap into something higher than yourself or some aspect of yourself. I don't know how you get there if you don't take the time to get there.

Speaker:

Yeah, it's such a good point. And so for people who are busy, who are overscheduled, who like, you know, every moment of the day is accounted for, how can they start to like open up pockets of time so that they can start to drop in?

Speaker 2:

It's good to start small if you can. Maybe it's that. Three minutes in a day and during your lunch break, instead of scarfing down all your food in front of a computer, that you just take that time to look at greenery, that you take that time to just be in your office and eat slow, eat mindfully, taste the food. It it, it can be that small and then it can grow from there. It can be that you decide that you take half a day in a week. To spend time with yourself and you construct whatever it is, if you need support, if you need help, whatever you need to do to create that space where you have that half a day and then you grow from there. I would write down every single thing that I do. I mean every single thing that I do, and I would say, do I enjoy doing this thing? And if I don't enjoy doing that thing, I put that in my delegation. Or either I take it off like this is not a thing that actually needs to. If it's something that someone else can do, figure out a way to delegate that thing so that the things that you spend your life energy on are actually things that give you light. That's how I would start. I would try to start small because making really big changes at once can sometimes seem really overwhelming, but creating space for yourself is a practice in itself.

Speaker:

Yeah, I think that's such a good insight. When we kind of present our stories, it seems this whole glamorous, like. One day I was doing this and the next day I quit my job and booked a one way ticket.'cause that's my, my story as well. But there were so many moments that led up to that, that you can start cultivating now. And one of those moments, one of those practices is just making space for yourself in your own life. Which sounds like for some people it can sound so revolutionary because especially women and moms, they're just giving themselves to anyone and everyone. Even like signing up for these unpaid committees that they need to volunteer for, and there's the amount of unpaid labor that goes on in the medical field is wild to me. So stopping doing that and then taking some time for yourself and making that a practice and just starting there. Is there any sort of like final advice that you wanna give people who feel like they're trapped in a situation that's not right for them?

Speaker 2:

I would say some of the most profound advice. If there is a passion, if there is a deep desire and a burning to do something, do that thing. If you feel it inside, don't say no to it. Just lean into it. Ugh.

Speaker:

I love that so much. Such powerful advice. So Christine, where can people find you? How can they connect with you and how can you help them?

Speaker 2:

Right now I'm working with physicians, helping them to break free from traditional medicine and really guiding them to a place where they can listen more to their inner knowing where they can. Design their own path, the life that they've been dreaming of, what they wanna kind to manifest and put out to the world. And for me, that looks like you've seen how I've designed my life, but for every position that can look different, location freedom for me looks like a different country. Every three months location, freedom for someone else can look like. They can be at their kids' playground in the afternoon, or they can pick their mom up from the doctor's office. It can look different for everyone. It's just having that flexibility, having freedom. Being able to transform your life into something that allows you to really have your deepest values exemplified and out into the world every single day. So if someone is really looking for that kind of transformation, where they have the freedom of location, they have the freedom of time. That for me allows you to fast track into financial freedom. You can find me online, the nomad md.com. They can find me on IG at the Nomad MDs and on Facebook at the Nomad md.

Speaker:

So there you have it. It turns out it is possible to still incorporate your passion for medicine and have the freedom to enjoy your life. Christine's created her own recipe for doing this, which gives her five days a week where she can still travel and explore all of the extra passions and hobbies that she has. Two day work week is that is goals that is so remarkable and she is yet another example of how possible it is to make a living, make a difference, and still have the freedom to enjoy your life. It does require you to start freeing up some pockets of time. To sit in stillness and connect to what you really want, and it requires you to start thinking outside of the box and designing something that maybe you haven't seen before, but it is entirely possible.