Radio Front Desk
Radio Front Desk is a podcast that talks to real people in real clinics about what it takes to build a health and wellness business.
Host Denzil Ford, Editor-in-Chief of Front Desk magazine, digs into the inspiring stories of folks building their practices from the ground up — including what works, what hasn’t, and everything in between.
Created by the team at Jane App, this podcast is your source for discovering fresh ideas and proven strategies for clinic life. Join us on this journey of building a practice you love.
Radio Front Desk
How to prevent burnout in healthcare with boundaries and AI
Burnout isn’t just a buzzword in healthcare. It’s a lived reality that shows up as exhaustion, pressure, and a slow erosion of joy.
In this episode, Denzil revisits her conversation with five practitioners from across North America — a chiropractor, a psychotherapist, a trauma psychologist, and two physiotherapists — to discuss their experiences with burnout.
Together, they reflect on the emotional and administrative toll of care, and how tools like AI can help bring us back to the work we believe in.
What You’ll Learn
- The hidden weight of running a clinic — and how financial and administrative pressures compound stress
- Why just taking time off isn’t enough to heal burnout
- How AI tools can relieve clinic documentation and administrative burden without replacing human connection
- The boundaries of AI in care, and why human presence will always matter most
Our Panelists
- Roxanne Francis – Psychotherapist and public speaker
- Amanda Buduris – Clinical psychologist and trauma therapist
- Emma Jack – Physiotherapist and owner of Press Play Physio
- Josh Satterlee – Chiropractor and educator
- Roni Glassman – Physiotherapist and movement specialist
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Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional medical, legal, or financial advice.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast host or its affiliates.
Welcome back to Radio Front Desk by GNAP. I'm your host, denzel Ford. Today's episode is a tender one. We're talking about burnout. It's something a lot of us have felt, whether we've said it out loud or not, and in this episode we wanted to name it and talk honestly about what it takes to move through it. Earlier this year, we brought together five incredible practitioners on a live panel a psychotherapist, a trauma psychologist, a chiropractor and two physiotherapists. In this episode, we're narrowing in on their stories about what it actually means to carry the emotional, physical and administrative weight of care. They talk about the pressure, the exhaustion, the disconnection, but also about the small, powerful shift that can help bring us back to the work we believe in, including how new technology like AI tools, might help us make more space for care. Let's begin with a moment that really stayed with me. Here's Josh Satterly, a chiropractor and clinic owner, sharing one of the hardest days of his professional life.
Speaker 2:JOSH SATTERLY, chiropractor. I can remember a distinct day. I had again a different EHR and it was the early days of electronic clearinghouses and I pushed at the end of friday. I had to stay late that day because I knew that if I didn't collect the money from that week I could not make payroll the following wednesday. And everybody else on my team had left and I was like, okay, I'm gonna run these and it runs.
Speaker 2:And I just want you to picture like a bunch of visits for the week, like say, 45 visits, and next to every one of them is the red error, error, error, error, error, just everything. I was like, oh my God, so I call their support. They didn't have really support, so I literally had to carve out. I called two patients, canceled them on Monday morning so I could get on support with them to carve out. I called two patients, canceled them on Monday morning so I could get on support with them. And over the weekend this is tough to say, the worst day of my life I had to call my in-laws and say like I'm not going to make payroll. Can I borrow a couple thousand dollars? And so I had to put it in my account and just all weekend long. I'm like laying on my back staring at the ceiling like this is the worst day of my life.
Speaker 1:That story. It's about more than just tech trouble. It's about the sheer pressure of running a practice. It's about the weight you carry when your business isn't just a business. It's your livelihood and your team's security and your patient's care all rolled into one. And it doesn't take long for that pressure to cross the line into burnout. Sometimes burnout is loud and acute, but often it's quiet, a slow erosion of joy, a persistent feeling of dread. For physiotherapists Ronnie Glassman and Emma Jack, burnout didn't come all at once.
Speaker 3:It built over time. When I'm thinking from a professional perspective, as a working person in an outpatient orthopedic clinic where you're expected to see sometimes you get lucky and you're with one patient that hour, but a lot of times it's two, three, a few times it was four patients in one hour and as someone who spent seven years getting this education and working hard to just touch lives, having that realization that this is not what I'm supposed to be doing and I'm actually more so just a cog in a wheel, on a number, on a spreadsheet, that sort of instilled the sense of burnout that I was afraid was going to happen. And it didn't take very long. So after a year, six months even, of working in the outpatient environment, I started to feel that burnout.
Speaker 1:So what did it feel like? What did you notice about yourself?
Speaker 3:Dread it felt like dread, like getting up in the morning and being sad that I had to go to this workplace where I had envisioned myself working for so long, had worked so hard to get there, and then when I'm there, it's almost like I can't be present because I have to focus on all these other things to get my day done.
Speaker 1:Ronnie's story reminds us how quickly the grind can wear you down, especially when your job is built around caring for others. And that's what makes burnout in healthcare feel so personal, because when your identity is wrapped in helping people, where do you fit in? Here's Josh again, on how easily we can lose ourselves in the process of caring for others.
Speaker 2:I would say it's important when you look at health care, we're people people, right? We all committed years of our lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to learn how to take care of people better, right? And I think that the fault in sometimes in burnout is we give of ourselves and give of ourselves and give of ourselves and forget that we are a person too, that we need to be taken care of, and that's inherent in all of healthcare. So when you know somebody needs something I mean in the US healthcare system, in his insurance I will treat that person long, long, long before I ever expect repayment. Right, and I would never do it any other way.
Speaker 2:Well, I shouldn't say that I would prefer to do it another way, but if, given the choice of treat the person, get paid later or wait till payment to treat them, I will always treat them first. And I think everybody I know has shown up early to take care of a patient who needs something before vacation or before competition and stayed late, and we will do that to our end. But you forget somewhere along the way. You often lose yourself.
Speaker 1:That last line you often lose yourself is the one I keep circling back to, Because for some people, burnout looks less like a total breakdown and more like slowly losing track of your own reflection. And that's exactly where physiotherapist Emma Jack found herself trying to remember why she started doing it in the first place.
Speaker 4:My solo practice was built out of burnout.
Speaker 4:I started my practice because there was a point where I didn't want to be a PT anymore.
Speaker 4:I remember literally being jealous of the Starbucks barista going to Starbucks and being like, oh, I just wish I could do this all day. They have health benefits. And you know, I really think for me it came down to I had spent spent so much time, energy and money becoming a PT and then to realize I sort of had this expectation hangover of, oh, this isn't what I thought it was going to be. And I really had to get back to myself and remember that, like I'm a human first, a therapist second, and you know, really making sure I was doing things outside of clinic that nourished me as just that human, as Emma, and not spending all of my waking hours thinking about clients, which can be hard, because you really, I really care about what I do and how I do it. But, yeah, really getting clear on what are the things that bring me energy, what fills my cup and what are the things that bring me energy, what fills my cup and what are the things that take that energy away and how can I kind of mitigate those.
Speaker 1:Emma focused on getting clear about what gave her energy and what took it away. But that kind of clarity doesn't always come easy. Sometimes it takes a little unraveling before we really see what needs to shift. For psychotherapist Roxanne Francis, the unraveling actually came twice, but the second time she faced a deeper question. That helped change how she approached managing burnout.
Speaker 6:I just want to tell you a little story. So before I started my private practice, I worked for a community agency as a therapist right, and I was getting really burnt out. We were seeing a lot of clients a day and management you know, they weren't like Jane, they weren't very compassionate towards the staff. And so I got to a place where I knew I needed a break, otherwise I was not heading in the right direction. Went to my doctor, we had a solid talk and she said okay, I'm gonna write you a note so you can get three weeks off as a stress leave. And I said oh, thank goodness, I went home, I slept, I played with my kids, I put my feet in the grass, I felt better. I went back to work. Six months later I was back in her office and she looked me directly in the eyes and said Roxanne, I I'm going to write you this note again.
Speaker 6:But when you go back to work, what is going to change? Right, and that's something that we need to think about with burnout, a lot of people take a break, or they go on vacation or they take time off from work. But what you don't? You don't necessarily need a break. You need change, but you don't necessarily need a break, you need change. So you have to ask yourself what needs to change in order for me to be in a better place.
Speaker 1:Roxanne's story reminds us that burnout doesn't just resolve with time off. It asks something more from us, a real shift. And that shift won't look the same for everyone. For some it means setting new boundaries. For others it means finding new ways to work more efficiently. For Emma and Josh, part of that shift came with the use of technology, specifically AI.
Speaker 5:AI scribe.
Speaker 4:Right, right, when I think about AI in my practice, there is an element of safety for our jobs in terms of physical touch is just such a healing property, and the human connection and that therapeutic alliance that we build can't be built the same way, but I think there are so many ways that AI can support us, especially in the stuff we're not particularly good at you know things like documentation, reminders. I think there's lots of ways that it can leave us to do the work that we have trained for and the work that's really impactful and that a computer can't necessarily replace.
Speaker 2:I think there's this interesting aspect because, as a, I mean, I'm sure everybody on the stage would tell you at 8 AM with your first patient of the day, you're fresh, you're clear and everything.
Speaker 2:And at 4 45, when your patient shows up without having done their online paperwork and they're a few minutes late and you're thinking I got to get to my kids' soccer practice at six. You're just not as sharp as you know you were, and so in that case AI makes you better, because as I'm examining a patient, they might say, hey, you haven't addressed anything about her right knee that she also talked about in the intake, and that's a really great use of it. But to Emma's point, one of the things that you see in all the research around healthcare is any profession that actually physically puts hands on their patients chiro, physio massage, acu will always score higher in patient satisfaction scores, and I think the reason for that is we all crave human connection. There's something in our DNA that needs to be around people and have a hug, a consolation from a person, and that aspect is not a great use of AI. One of my mentors had a great line where he says you can't automate a hug.
Speaker 1:You can't automate a hug. I love that line from Josh because it outlines this tension that so many of us are experiencing with AI these days. But the thing is, when it's used thoughtfully, ai doesn't take over the work. It takes off the work. It catches what we miss. When we're tired, it helps us show up sharper, clearer and, according to Ronnie, more present.
Speaker 3:I mean patients, from what I've seen, view it as an opportunity for you as a therapist to be more present. And I mean, since it's one-on-one nowadays, like rarely am I on my computer anyways, but sometimes in the off chance, like maybe I get a free minute, I'm writing things down and having the knowledge that it's just being transcribed and I don't have to worry about it. I'm not looking at my laptop for six hours a day and they remember that and they go home and they tell their family, their friends, like yeah, she was totally there, she was totally present. Like you've heard the horror stories of you went to PT and they were just facing a laptop the whole time. So yeah, it's an opportunity to just give the quality care that we want to give so badly and just be with the person in front of us treating them as a patient and worrying about all the other stuff later.
Speaker 1:There's something so grounding about the way Ronnie puts it. She was totally there. That's what patients remember Not perfect notes, not the data entry, but your presence. And even though the use of AI can make room for more presence and less paperwork, it also opens the door to something new, Because while practitioners are using AI to offload the tasks that drain them, patients are starting to use AI too. They're walking through the door more informed than ever. Sometimes they're even turning to AI instead of therapy. So we asked our panel can AI be helpful for patients too, and where do we draw the line between helpful support and human substitution? Roxanne and trauma therapist Amanda Budaris shared some thoughts that were clear, passionate and refreshingly human.
Speaker 6:All right, all right. Did I mention I'm a Jamaican woman? It's about to come out, so I just made a post about this recently on social media. Ai cannot be your therapist. Repeat after me, ai is not my therapist. You can definitely check in with AI around trying to find some facts, trying to find some statistics. You know what are some strategies for helping to reduce my anxiety, what are some things that I would need to do in order to ground myself if I'm feeling really flustered. That's helpful.
Speaker 6:Ai, on the other hand, cannot assess you thoroughly. Ai cannot detect if you are a danger to yourself or someone else. Ai cannot tell you that you need to go to the emergency room. Ai will not be able to console you if you start to cry, and those things might seem really simple to cry and those things might seem really simple. But the interesting thing when I made that post is I actually went to ai and I said what are the top 10 reasons that I should not come to you for therapy? And that thing spit out the answers so quickly. So even ai agrees don't come to me with your trauma right now if you are trying to book an appointment with your therapist and they're not available for the next two weeks three weeks and you need something right away. You can definitely go to ai for strategies, right? Just the way that if your back hurts, you're going to go to google and see what you can find. But be careful about what you look for, because AI is not your therapist exactly.
Speaker 5:I think for me especially again as a trauma therapist and someone who views so much pain that happens in the world as relational trauma you can't heal that with an AI robot. That kind of healing happens through connection, real human connection, which is only something that safe people can offer, and AI is not a safe people it's, you know, codes and stuff like that. So there are obvious safety concerns to it, as well as this very missing piece of human connection.
Speaker 1:Roxanne and Amanda brought us back to something essential that real care comes from human connection. Ai can support us in meaningful ways, but it can't listen with compassion or hold space when someone starts to cry. It can't help someone feel safe or truly seen. But it can help lighten the load, and that matters, Because when the weight just keeps piling up, it's easy to miss the signs that something needs to change until you're already bogged down. And, as we heard today, burnout doesn't always arrive with a bang. But if AI can take on even a small part of that load the notes, the documentation, those tasks that pull you away from being present, then maybe it's not just helping you work faster, Maybe it's helping you remember why you chose this work in the first place, and for something that can't even give a hug. That's not nothing. As always, thank you for spending this time with us here on Radio Front Desk and thank you to our panelists for showing up with so much clarity, care and courage.