29 - Dr. Sarah Smith, founder of the Charting Coach

10/15/23 • 47 min

Dr. Kevin Mailo welcomes back Dr. Sarah Smith as his guest to discuss the topic of sustainable clinical practice, what it means, and how to achieve it. In this episode, they discuss the struggles physicians face to organize their day, combat burnout, and take time off. Dr. Smith shares tactics she learned through her struggles as a physician in Australia and Canada and how she overcame them.

Dr. Smith shares her best practices for physicians to manage their days, shift their mindsets, and set goals at a sustainable and manageable pace. You’ll hear the impact of small decisions, and little shifts can lead to big changes both in your personal and professional life. They also discuss ways physicians can feel more empowered and make proactive decisions to provide quality care and balance their own mental and physical health.

About Dr. Sarah Smith

Dr. Sarah Smith is the Charting Coach for Physicians. She is a Rural Family Physician and Certified Life Coach through The Life Coach School. She helps physicians get their admin and paperwork done more efficiently to create time for the things they love.

Dr. Smith has spent the last three years coaching hundreds of Physicians, over 1000 hours of coaching, in the specific area of “getting home with today's work done”.

Resources discussed in this episode:

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Physician Empowerment: website | facebook | linkedin

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Transcript:

Kevin 00:01

Hi, I'm Dr. Kevin Mailo, one of the co-hosts of the Physician Empowerment Podcast. At Physician Empowerment. We're dedicated to improving the lives of Canadian physicians, personally, professionally, and financially. If you're loving what you're listening to let us know we always want to hear your feedback. Connect with us. If you want to go further, we've got outstanding programming, both in person and online. So look us up. But regardless, we hope you really enjoy this episode.

Kevin 00:36

Hi, I'm Dr. Kevin Mailo, one of the co-hosts of the Physician Empowerment Podcast. And I am very, very glad to have a returning guest, Dr. Sarah Smith joining us again. So for those of you that have been following the podcast, we had Sarah on in one of our earlier earlier episodes, talking about charting and boundary setting. And Dr. Smith is known as the founder of the Charting Coach. And, yeah, and it's an outstanding program where she helps Canadian Family Physicians truly manage their practice, and more importantly, get to a better place personally and professionally. So that we are not feeling overwhelmed, that we feel like we can manage our work and our lives and your episode, the last time was just so powerful. It really connected with a lot of people, I got a lot of positive feedback about it. And so I'm very, very glad to have you back again, Sarah, and why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do. And I'll just introduce the topic today, which is sustainable clinical practice. And I'll let you tell us what that means to you and what that should mean to the profession.

Sarah 01:49

Sounds good. Thank you so much for having me back. Yes, last time I was on, I did promise to come back and talk about sustainable clinical medicine. So I'm back. I am a family physician, rural in Alberta right now and originally from Australia. And you'll find out how I got to Canada if you have listened to the last episode. But this time, we're talking from a slightly different perspective. So I went and did the hard work to become a different doctor. So originally, I was in that pain of hours and hours after work evenings, weekends, charting, inbox paperwork as a busy family doctor, and this particular painful experience had followed me from an Australian practice to a Canadian practice. So it wasn't the country at fault.

Kevin 02:41

We’re looking at a global phenomenon.

Sarah 02:43

It wasn't the EMR. And it wasn't the government. It was a me problem.

Kevin 02:47

You're kind of an interesting test case, in that sense, Sarah, right, because I think we always view our issues as hyperlocal. But I do I myself do look at some of this data in health care across the western world. And you can see it, it's actually a global phenomena. That's there are many factors driving it. And I don't want to get into all of them. But you are the interesting test case, I don't know that anyone else has moved across the world, only to discover the problems...

Sarah 03:...

About Dr. Sarah Smith

Dr. Smith has spent the last three years coaching hundreds of Physicians, over 1000 hours of coaching, in the specific area of “getting home with today's work done”.

Resources discussed in this episode:

—

Physician Empowerment: website | facebook | linkedin

—

Transcript:

Kevin 00:01

Kevin 00:36

Sarah 01:49

Kevin 02:41

We’re looking at a global phenomenon.

Sarah 02:43

It wasn't the EMR. And it wasn't the government. It was a me problem.

Kevin 02:47

Sarah 03:...

Previous Episode

28 - The Physician Entreprenuer

Dr. Kevin Mailo interviews fellow Physician Empowerment co-founder and co-host, Dr. Wing Lim about entrepreneurship. Wing is an accomplished businessman, entrepreneur, and real estate investor in addition to being an excellent doctor, and he talks with Kevin about what it took to make his journey from Med School to where he is now.

Wing recalls how risk averse he was when he initially graduated from Med School thirty years ago. He looks back and see how dramatically he has grown and changed and a lot of it had to do with mindset and learning how to develop the entrepreneurial side of being a physician. What physicians aren’t taught is how to manage the clinical side, the business, the “dark suit” side of their careers outside of patient treatment, often to the detriment of personal fulfillment and smooth-running clinics.

In this episode, Dr. Kevin Mailo and Dr. Wing Lim address how physicians can encourage their entrepreneurial sides to grow. They talk about not being the know-it-all and becoming comfortable with being “the dumbest guy in the room” in new situations because it offers a chance to learn. Failure is part of growth as much as embracing dormant dreams and learning to feed other aspects of smarts besides simply intelligence. Kevin and Wing share their ambition to help all physicians realize their entrepreneurial sides through mentorship and Masterclass advice of the sort Wing offers in this episode.

Resources Discussed in this Episode:

Physician Empowerment Masterclass

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Contact Information:

Physician Empowerment: website | facebook | linkedin

Transcript

Dr. Kevin Mailo: [00:00:01] Hi, I'm Dr. Kevin Mailo, one of the co-hosts of the Physician Empowerment podcast. At Physician Empowerment we're dedicated to improving the lives of Canadian physicians personally, professionally and financially. If you're loving what you're listening to, let us know. We always want to hear your feedback. Connect with us. If you want to go further, we've got outstanding programming both in person and online so look us up. But regardless, we hope you really enjoy this episode.

Dr. Kevin Mailo: [00:00:34] Hi, I'm Dr. Kevin Mailo, one of the co-founders and co-hosts of the Physician Empowerment podcast. And on today's episode, I'm going to be interviewing my fellow co-founder and host Dr. Wing Lim. Wing is, as many of us know, is a very, very busy, ambitious dreamer within our profession. And it's truly admirable what you've done, Wing, over the years. And I thought that today we should explore a little bit about your journey, because when we look at you as, you know, an entrepreneur and a real estate developer and a highly successful clinician, there is a lot there. But I have the feeling that it hasn't always been the case, that you were something else when you started 30 some years ago. So with that being said, Wing, why don't you tell us about how you journeyed from being, you know, a physician to becoming a physician entrepreneur because we see that a lot in our Masterclass attendees. So a lot of our attendees in the Masterclass with Physician Empowerment are entrepreneurial. They're trying to build something, whether it's something they're building in real estate, building in their practice, we even have some that are kind of working more in a tech space. So it's really, really interesting to see how physicians come to this point of moving from being strictly a professional to being a professional who's also an entrepreneur. So tell us a little bit about your journey, Wing.

Dr. Wing Lim: [00:02:02] Yeah, sure. So yeah, so I go to a local med school, went to U of A like 30 some years ago. And I just finished my 30th year of practice in family practice. So the journey is torturous. There are ups and downs and if you have a time machine and just bring me back to the me 30 years ago and just the present Wing and the Wing that is just out of practice, I think if you say this is going to be you in 30 years, I say that it's a lie. I couldn't even believe that, the metamorphosis is like unbelievable. Right? I was at a larval stage.

Dr. Kevin Mailo: [00:02:41] You were just a little grub.

Dr. Wing Lim: [00:02:44] I was just crawling on the space. Right? It's like the primordial soup. So where I was was I was risk adverse. I was diligent, hardworking, medical graduate, just like anybody else. But then life, life has its twists and turns. Right? Yeah. So to recap one of the stories is my preceptor had a really good faith in me more than I had faith in myself. He actually spent the money. He wanted to build a clinic. He spent all the money to p...

Next Episode

30 - Why Your Dreams Matter

Dr. Kevin Mailo is interviewed by Physician Empowerment co-founder and co-host, Dr. Wing Lim, on the topic of dreams. Kevin once gave a talk on this subject at an accredited CME event in Mexico; about what dreams really are and why it’s so important to have them. And in this episode, he shares a bit of that talk.

Wing asks Kevin to first define dreams and differentiate them from goals, which are not the same thing. Something Kevin says in giving his definition is that “dreams are what help us keep going forward in our lives despite the struggles”. That is part of why dreaming is such an intrinsically vital part of wellness and forward motion.

In this episode, Dr. Wing Lim and Dr. Kevin Mailo explore dreams, dreaming, why we have dreams, why they matter, what dreams give to us, and what dreams offer the world at large. Dreams not only give meaning to our lives but give us the ability to enjoy the pursuit of them and to flourish in the journey toward them. This episode will shake you out of going through the motions, which is a source of burnout, and leave you inspired to dig deep to reconnect with your own dreams.

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Contact Information:

Physician Empowerment: website | facebook | linkedin

Transcript

Dr. Kevin Mailo: [00:00:01] Hi, I'm Dr. Kevin Mailo, one of the co-hosts of the Physician Empowerment podcast. At Physician Empowerment we're dedicated to improving the lives of Canadian physicians personally, professionally, and financially. If you're loving what you're listening to, let us know! We always want to hear your feedback. Connect with us. If you want to go further, we've got outstanding programing both in person and online. So look us up, but regardless, we hope you really enjoy this episode.

Dr. Wing Lim: [00:00:34] Well, welcome everyone to our next episode of podcast in Physician Empowerment. So I'm Dr. Wing Lim, I'm one of the co-founders of Physician Empowerment, and today I'm really glad to interview my co-host and co-founder, Dr. Kevin Mailo, who is an emerging physician out of Sherwood Park. And we're going to talk about a topic that he delivered in an accredited CME event in Mexico a couple of years ago. And it's about dreams, why dreams matter in your life, and how it ties into your wellness. So welcome everyone and welcome, Kevin. So why do you pick a topic like that? Strange topic, dreamy weamy stuff.

Dr. Kevin Mailo: [00:01:16] Yeah, so this one actually, this was actually an accredited talk that I delivered when we, when we got invited to Mexico. And at first I was actually overwhelmed with this one. And today on the episode, I'm not going to go into it in its complete depth. There's a lot, a lot there. But boy, at first it was, like I said, overwhelmed. And I'm like, where do I start? And then I started and I just kept going and it was incredible. And this topic specifically represents really, I would say, my falling in love with Physician Empowerment, because in many respects, Physician Empowerment represents a dream for me to help transform the lives of Canadian physicians. But what was so powerful is that in this journey of teaching, I was forced to learn the material myself. I was supposed to take it. I was forced to take a very hard look at my personal life, my professional life, my financial life and making a lot of incredible change, and I'm just so much happier for it. And so this topic of dreams became very powerful for me because it brought a lot of focus into my life. And so, yeah, again, I could go on and on about about this, but yes, this was an accredited talk. You could claim main Pro Plus credits for it. Really far from blood pressure management. Really far.

Dr. Wing Lim: [00:02:41] Manage your own blood pressure.

Dr. Kevin Mailo: [00:02:42] Manage your own blood pressure. Exactly. By being better.

Dr. Wing Lim: [00:02:45] So tell us. Tell us, Kevin, how does, why do our dreams matter to our wellness?

Dr. Kevin Mailo: [00:02:50] Yeah. So. So dreams matter in our lives. And I'm not talking about goals, okay? Goals I'll get to later, that's a much narrower thing. Dreams are those things that we truly want that are part of our self actualization. Okay? Dreams are. When I think about a dream, I think about our life as a landscape. So I look at my life like it's a landscape. It's got hills, it's got paths, it's got fields, it's got forests, it's got mountains. It's got whatever in front of it. And on the horizon is a destination. That is a dream to me. That's the visual imagery I use to describe dreams, and that you can have multiple dreams in your life's journey, that you can walk across the landscape of your life, and you can go to all these vistas, all these points. All t...