Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective Ep 6 with Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer (Pediatric Resident based in New Hampshire)

Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer is a pediatrician in Concord, New Hampshire, she has 2 kids and a proud mom to her fur babies. Join as today as she shares her wins and overcoming challenges.

Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: The, definitely the talking it out was a big part. And, um, I was, I feel very fortunate. The group that I was with and the attendings that I had, and a lot of hands-on learning, which made a huge difference in comparison to just having to read it out of a book

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Hi, welcome to beyond ADHD, a physician's perspective podcast. I am your host, Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh. I'm a family medicine doc, with ADHD, practicing in a rural setting in Texas. I am a mother to two very energetic toddlers for three and four years of age.

And in the past year, I have undergone radical transformation after discovery, ADHD coaching, and life-coaching. For the past decade, my typical day consisted of having 300 charts, backlog, a graveyard of unfinished. And a lack of time awareness. I didn't realize that I was not filling my own cup. I was running on fumes the last year I figured out the secret; learn to stay in your lane. So now my mission is to help others develop systems that tap into their zone of genius. So they too can reclaim their personal lives back. Like I have.

So as we know ADHD, is in depth, it's just going to show up in different people, but it's going to affect us sometimes the same, sometimes a little different.

So I created this podcast to bring awareness that ADHD is a lifelong disease and I will be sharing with you interviews with many great physicians and some of them have asked to remain anonymous. And their name has been changed, but some have said, they're cool with telling us who they are and what they're all about.

So we are super excited about that. So we're going to share their wins and their challenges, and some tips on how ADHD can be a gift that can be unwrapped if you just know how to handle it. Right. So my aim is to stop the mental stigma that is associated with this condition. When most people think of ADHD, sometimes we just automatically think of a hyperactive boy running around.

Maybe with a lot of energy that we wish we could bottle. They are pretty smart. And sometimes we don't realize that an adult mother, a teacher, a physician can also have it. And so that's what we're here to talk about today. And before I go further, Give you the awesome speaker that we have today. I have to just give a small little disclosure while me and my guests are medical physicians.

We are not your medical physician. So the advice that we share here is not meant to substitute any of the advice or treatment that you are receiving from your own physician therapist or coach. In addition, anything that you hear here is not representing any of our employers or hospitals or any particular healthcare systems or organizations who that was a handful.

I just had to make my lawyer happy. So here we go. We got that out of the way. So today I have the pleasure of speaking with a very special person. Very excited about it. Her name is Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer and she grew up in New York and she went to the American University of Antigua College of Medicine.

And then she went to Crozer-Chester Medical Center for her pediatric residency in Pennsylvania. And now she is practicing in New Hampshire and she is married has 2 kids and lots of fur kiddos and she loves the New York Yankees and she's actually coaching her son's baseball team. So exciting.

All right. So here we go, Dr. Brittney, tell us all about you. How are you this morning?

Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: Good. I'm great. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Awesome. Tell me, we all want to know what were the circumstances that led to your ADHD diagnosis? Did you suspect anything yourself when you tell us the story?

Dr. Brittany Davis-Schaffer: So mostly when I was a teenager, I did feel like something was just off and I didn't know what it was. I honestly did not know much about it, hyperfocus, hyperactivity, any of those types of things at the time, I feel like it was looked at very differently than it is now. And much more recently it's been know a lot more.

I would notice that, I could study for a test. I could read something and I knew I had read it. I had done some highlighting and then I would go back and look at it and was just not remembering what I had read. And there were certain subjects like math that I just got and did well in. And it didn't take a lot of effort.

There were things then like reading English, language, reading comprehension was the big thing. Like I said, that I could read through and it just, it felt fortress. You know, doing the passages where you had to answer the questions afterwards. I remember as a kid crying about this and just how stressful and fr...