Enhance Your Wellbeing: Cultivating Physician Empowerment for Success

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

Preface The Patient and Physician Dilemma I think we've all had a sense that our medical system is flawed. Patients are getting sicker, and feel disconnected and unserved. We physicians and healthcare workers are sick too. We feel as isolated entities unable to exercise our skills and choice when it comes to our work.

Many physicians have lost their sense of agency and dignity in their work. This great state of dissatisfaction hurts us all as a society and threatens the future of the care that our children can expect or give if they chose to pursue a medical career.

I want to share with you my personal experience having faced these same issues, and offer you, through my journey, some of the solutions I discovered gave me back my humanity, joy and self-mastery over my life. I hope that through this book I can inspire you as to how you can enhance your wellbeing. I can help you achieve selfmastery and sovereignty of your life.

In this book I share with you how we can enrich our lives and well-being. In a world of suffering, our ancestral traits clash with modern challenges environmentally and in the organizations we work. It's time for transformation.

1

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

Introduction The Woman’s Journey I am a mother, physician, and artist. Being an artist has been a lifegiving part of my life. I use art to heal me and to help my patients. Art has the capacity to take us to places and give language to things that we all don't understand or cannot say.

I'd like to start this book with this mixed media piece. The woman depicted has a belly which represents potential for life and creativity.

This is her journey, my journey as an immigrant woman and physician.

In front of her is the challenges we go through in our process to becoming physicians.

Behind her is the discipline that we've all had to become physicians, and her cup and mortar is the magic that comes from our medicine, the knowledge we bring to others, the relationships we forge with patients, and the fullness we bring to our work and dignity as physicians.

My journey of transformation began a long time ago, but it was the COVID pandemic that brought to light the suffering of healthcare workers, such as physicians and nurses. Our medical colleagues stressed to the max.

2

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

It was a tipping point for us physicians. We had serious mental health issues. Many doctors were committing suicide. Many doctors then and since are or have left medicine. Many of us are not recommending to our children that they become doctors. So, this has been a significant period of transformation for us physicians and an already failing medical system. A system that has made us healthcare workers sick.

In my own experience, at the beginning of COVID, I had my mother, my father, and my brother who nearly died in a hospital in New York, and I was managing this with three different doctors on three different floors in a hospital. And I truly thought that my family was dying, and that I might die too.

I thought if I'm going to die, what would I regret? What would you regret if you knew that you were going to die? Well, for me, two of the things were that I have not done enough to help prevent epidemics in patients, and I had not become involved enough to lessen the suffering of my colleagues, given all I knew.

I needed to use my knowledge differently before I died. So, writing my book "Mind Body Secrets" was a response from my soul to address my first desire to help people become aware how to become healthier empowering them to prevent obesity, diabetes, and other related conditions which are preventable.

Mind Body Secrets became a bestseller and is a true guide for well-being to counteract and prevent epidemics we all face.

My second intention was to become involved to speak to my colleagues in medicine, and to engage us in conversations that can cultivate our wellbeing as physicians and to reclaim our sense of humanity and agency in our jobs.

Together we can begin to make changes for the future of medicine, our children and future generations.

3

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

4

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

Chapter 1 My Early Journey and Great Expectations Let's start at the beginning. I was born in Cuba, and my family left as political refugees in 1970. The journey out of Cuba was very difficult. My father was a professor of Pediatrics at the University of Havana, and he refused to join, unlike his colleagues then, their communist rhetoric. Because of the public display of dissidence, he was kicked out of the University of Havana.

We were kicked out of Havana, and he was separated from us when we were young. He was able to return to the family when our quota came to leave Cuba, through Spain, to come to America. Early on in my life, I saw a lot of suffering within my family, but I also knew that it was worth sacrificing and standing up for our freedom and our choices.

We came to America with Great Expectations. I had big expectations of my career as a physician. I hoped to make a difference for our patients and to create wellbeing with my patient and physician relationship. I hoped that I would have abundance in my life and time freedom that I could share with my family.

I expected that the sacrifices and the delayed gratification that I made as a medical student would be rewarded and I would receive benefits from that as being a doctor. I would believe that it was worthwhile.

I was fortunate to receive education from great academic institutions and after my endocrinology fellowship worked as clinician scientist at the National Institutes of Health. My husband, Eric, an orthopedic surgeon, then worked at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. We both hoped to continue to pursue academic medicine carriers.

But the universe had a different plan. Our family’s wellbeing was deeply affected by my husband’s six-month deployment to Haiti, as an army surgeon. We lost him within two days, we didn't see him for six months, and we could not communicate for months.

5

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

This was extremely stressful for my girls, Eric and me. I needed to protect my girls with my love and increasing presence. This experience changed our life’s priorities to make choices that nurtured our young family, above all. We decided to explore private practice.

In 1996 we moved to Connecticut. My husband joined a private orthopedics practice. This was the age of early managed care. The local hospital had no need for an academic endocrinologist and Yale University, an option for me, was too far away from us given the needs of our daughters.

Then I was lucky enough to meet the late and the great doctor and academic endocrinologist and professor, Tom Amatruda. He was an amazing mentor and guide. He was Yale University faculty and had a small private endocrinology practice. He taught me how to run a private practice, and in 1996, when he retired, I acquired his medical practice.

Private practice was nothing like being a clinician in an academic medicine. Patients were not so clearly defined, and the wanted to have an endocrine diagnosis to justify their lack of wellness. Often, I couldn't offer that to them. I recognized that all of my academic training was disease-centric or limited to caring for sick people with manifested disease.

Just at that time, Eric and I were extremely lucky that we trained in Mind-Body medicine and Ayurveda with Dr. Deepak Chopra. We learned from these Eastern ancient systems medicine the new perspective that manifested disease is at the end of a spectrum. There's a spectrum from wellness to disease (what conventional medicine taught me to do).

If this was true, it appeared that we have the capacity to actually reverse and prevent disease. I needed to engage patients in a different conversation where they could become responsible for their self-care, their nutrition, their lifestyle and alter outcomes.

From 1997, I became an integrative endocrinologist, by combining academic endocrinology with mind body medicine. Patients thrived by having access to my panoply of skills. Over those years, working and learning from other

6

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

complementary medicine colleagues, we came to appreciate the power of other healing traditions to bring wellbeing to humans.

We could then use this knowledge to provide a more integrative and holistic approach to the care of our patients. This was transformative and changed the way I practiced medicine forever.

7

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

Chapter 2 Growing Dissatisfaction and Soul Distress I participated with medical health insurances for the first 12 years of my medical practice. In 2008 a nurse from Blue Cross Blue Shield called my office and told me that they did not like that I had had too many level 4 visits.

I said “Yes, I know because I'm pretty thorough during the first visit and on the second visit I have discovered significant things that need to be discussed with the patient, such as the finding of both thyroid cancer and diabetes or CKD that they are unaware of.”

I explained I had to take the time to explain to patients the impact and approach to their newly diagnosed conditions. You can't rush and go through this with patients.

Being diagnosed with a chronic condition or two requires integration and support for the patient.

Their response was "Well, we'd like you to deal with one condition at a time because we want follow up Level 3 visits. And if you don't change your ways, we're going to go to your office and find fault with you." After I hung up the phone I felt this incredible visceral sense of disgust. The sickness and the punitive threat of the conversation created massive Soul Distress.

8

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

This interaction brought back memories of my childhood in Cuba, my parent’s suffering and the impact of the punishments we received from authoritarian communist people. People that take agency and choice are dangerous and must be avoided. Here was one of them. My mind crazed, I went home that night and I said to myself, " I can't continue to do this."

What to do? One thought was to leave medicine altogether and go to art school.

Another choice was to stop accepting insurance and take a chance. But if I did this, I feared all of my colleagues would criticize and reject me because I wasn't playing the game like everybody else. They would no longer refer patients to me and that would affect my lifeline as an endocrinologist.

Why couldn't I behave like everybody else? On the other hand, if I stayed where I was, I would reject my integrity and my dignity, and I couldn't live that way.

My childhood experiences had activated a life changing reaction in me. I was primed as a child to identify the authoritarian systems that hurt you. My colleagues did not have my background; so even if they too were unhappy, they would go on accepting and conforming to medical and insurance system requirements as the aperture to their professional freedom and choice narrowed.

9

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

Chapter 3 Rise Beyond and Take a Leap of Faith

My answer was to Rise Beyond. We have to rise beyond our soul distress, and there's many ways out of there to do this. Ultimately, I loved medicine, I loved my patients, but I decided that I didn't want to work with a system that was going to constrict me. I decided to take a leap of faith with great trepidation, and opened my cash-based practice.

As I feared, I received nasty letters from my community doctors, shaming me for abandoning patients, for my carelessness in leaving health insurances, and with the disbelief that I the gall to charge patients money for the value of my services. I felt such a deep sense of loss. I had liked being a part of the community. I belonged.

I felt the shame bestowed by them onto me, but I had to rise above this to feel whole again. I had to move on. No longer being able to collaborate with my local medical community physicians, I joined Yale as adjunct clinical faculty. I brought my cases there for presentations and treatment. By this time, my girls were older, and I could travel an hour away where I felt I could grow professionally and my work mattered.

I was so ashamed about the fact that I was going to charge money, that for many years this limited my capacity to charge enough money to make my practice successful early on. Doctors are not taught about business, I had to became a businesswoman.

I want to share with you some surprising discoveries. When I told my patients that I was going to now have to charge them cash for their office visits most of my patients stayed in my practice!

Slowly my practice continued to thrive. Then I found that patients were recommending their families and friends to me. So, my practice became quite busy.

More and more patients came.

10

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

The patients continued to receive value because they were getting direct solutions for their problems in one visit. They didn't have to pay ten copays to get the same help.

As time has gone by, I have become very busy and there are more endocrinologists in my community. I kept raising my prices, but this did not dissuade patients from coming. Now I have a waiting list for new patients, and I have a waiting list for people that want to return or get in right away.

What has helped me throughout all of my journey is that I've never lost faith in the power of trusting and using my inner values and integrity to guide my way.

11

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

Chapter 4 A Systems Problem That Makes Us Sick

While for the last 15 years, I have not received one referral from the community, I have seen my colleagues refer their family and the people they love to me, so I could help them. And that gives me pride and opened my heart to revisit what had happened to us and reconnect in a different way to my old community.

None of us had clear foresight or the understanding of what was happening to us then. In fact, it wasn't personally about me; and it wasn't about them. In a managed care system, they had to refer to people within the system and I was no longer part of that which was expected or rewarded.

Over time we have gone from calling ourselves physicians to now calling ourselves providers and ultimately, we have become cogs of the wheel of profitability for private health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and medical industries.

Yet at the same time with all of these changes, our patients and us healthcare providers got sicker. Now, many of the old doctors that felt entitled to criticized and reject me are dissatisfied themselves, and are leaving medicine or getting new training to become concierge or lifestyle medicine doctors.

I started to think differently about how this went so wrong for me and for my colleagues.

I've come to understand that we were having a systems problem. The problem wasn't about our medicine, instead is about how we unknowingly compromise ourselves as physicians in the systems that we train in and subsequently work at.

So, what is a systems problem? We physicians and healthcare providers are stuck a medical system that has various components that have slowly compromised and disregarded our humanity.

12

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

We have all been compromised in so many different ways that many of us have become sick. We're sick physically and emotionally. Many of us experience soul distress manifested by increase depression, anxiety, burnout, loneliness, or suicide.

We self-medicate with alcohol and drugs. We suffer the moral injury of not being able to give patients what they really need and also for not tending to our own suffering.

Many of us don't know how to get out of the narrow space we find ourselves in.

We cannot see that there are indeed many ways out, and that this is a common experience for all of us health care workers. Women have it harder. Did you know that forty percent of women leave medicine or work part-time within six years of finishing their residency programs? We women are caretakers, and often mothers of children.

I believe that our disenfranchisement to sickness begins early in our training, probably before or at medical school. It takes high performance in high school and college to get into medical school. Medical schools cultivate a particular type of human that knows to delay gratification and perform to succeed in the system. All of us are very hardworking; all of us learn to comply and conform to the system.

We learn early that we can't be vulnerable, we can't say how we feel emotionally what we truly need to be well. We have to be strong, and we learn early that other people expectations and patient needs are more important than us because in this profession, we always have to take care of others.

With time, we become very good at disregarding our needs. All of a sudden, we become a particular type of human that has fully conformed to the system. Then we're so disenfranchised, and we don't realize it when we are not well anymore within and without.

Our careers can be damaged or negatively affected, and we are deeply criticized if we happen to express our feelings, stand out, be different or be vulnerable. This prevents us from asking for help even if we have mental health issues.

13

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

This is why we have such dire outcomes and silence pervades after physician suicides. New programs in medical schools are beginning to address this pervasive lack of disconnection and disregard for the humanity of each other as colleagues.

We also don't think or talk with our colleagues about that medical-related industry systems have progressively constricted the way we practice, how it limits what we can do as healers, and shrinks and dilutes the value of our expertise.

We are tasked with duties that have nothing to do with our training, we’ve become separated from the patient-physician experience that caused healing and satisfaction for physicians and patients alike.

The fact is that we cannot continue to trust and accept a system that is only focusing on profit under the guise of effective patient management, we are losing our humanity as physicians and patients.

We have been taught to not work together and this further isolates us and our capacity as a group to reclaim the humanity and treatment we deserve. So, the question for me was how can I enhance my well-being? How can we continue to work with systems that disregard our skills, dignity, and needs?

14

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

Chapter 5 Self-Mastery In the end, I realized that I had achieved some level of mastery and by doing so, found a way for my practice to survive and thrive out of the system. I have my way; other practitioners have other ways.

The benefits I gained from self-mastery were an empowered mind, increased body confidence and enhanced well-being.

Now that I'm older I feel such deep responsibility for people and particularly my medical colleagues, some of which I lost. One colleague who I worked at Yale committed suicide, he was an amazing guy, so it was very unexpected.

Because of recognizing the needs of the community, I now teach self-mastery transformational journeys to patients and doctors. I also work with larger groups to counteract the sickness that is dissatisfaction and the lack of agency that each of us is experiencing.

15

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

Chapter 6 The Process of Self-Mastery I have used this process of self-mastery with my patients over time that I have share with you here. This is what I do with each of my patients when they're trying to do something different. There is a process to this that I have come to understand.

Objective Understanding The first element of this is objective understanding.

It's hard for each one of us to see the forest when we're a piece of work on the tree; somebody has to show us the surrounding scenery. This brings light and a greater scope to our global experience, and as I share mine you may find something that I've said touches you.

We need objective understanding and conversations, and to understand that it's not our fault that we can’t see the bigger picture. It wasn't our moral failure and that our suffering was part of a system that we trusted. We trusted, we conformed, and trusted the system because what we were told to do.

Personal Power The next step is personal power.

Sometimes we forget, but we need to be reminded that we have the ability to achieve amazing things. We have the capacity to reclaim our personal power and sense of choice. I tell that to my patients so they make decisions that are different and helpful for them.

We are all having a shared experience, each of us has a different experience but we're sharing an experience. And as physicians have been trained the way that we have been, we share specific mindsets as a group that was cultivated within us.

16

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

We make certain assumptions that we learned in the process, and it is these assumptions which are limiting us.

How can we change this? The system limits us from working individually or together as groups so we can counteract the damaging effects of a progressively toxic system.

So, when we do this work, we have to be curious and very compassionate towards ourselves. As you may know, we physicians are known not to be selfcompassionate. We are compassionate to others but less to ourselves.

We need to trust that we're resilient enough to be able to overcome the criticisms and rejections that we might experience because we're trying to do something different. We also need to know our why, what gives us joy and why we do the things we do.

Taking Ownership The third step is taking ownership.

It's not our fault that this has happened to us, but it is somehow our responsibility to try to fix it. We need to understand what has happened with us, to work together and to have more discussions and find a solution.

We can remove toxicity from our lives, or we can develop resilient skills to continue to work with the toxicity. We can learn new skills and directions. It takes courage to do these things, it takes courage to be vulnerable and to say something happened to us and that's okay, it takes courage to say we're human.

We can change things to be different. It takes the support of each other — each other as colleagues and the support of our family, to be able to begin to create new stories and change the old limiting stories. This allows for changes in our mindsets to enable the creation of new possibilities and opportunities.

17

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

Expanded Mind The fourth element is that if we embody these elements that we have the capacity to have expanded mind and visualize different horizons that are beyond the ones that we experience when we think we're stuck. It is possible to continue our work, if we love medicine, from outside the system - there's many ways to do this.

18

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

Chapter 7 ENHANCE Your Well-Being Actively enhancing our well-being is the solution. Trusting ourselves, trusting our instincts, trusting our feelings and allowing ourselves to feel them. Normally we don't talk about our feelings, so this is the beginning of the process.

There are very simple set of seven steps which I use with my patients and the people that I'm working with that I’d like to share with you.

E is for ENGAGE Engaging in the conversations and to look with honesty at our work and the circumstances that we have been facing as physicians.

N is for NAME We need to find a way to give language to our experiences and for NORMALIZING what is a collective experience, not just ours. We cannot talk about how we feel unless we name it and understand it. So how do we actually feel?

Do we really want to continue to suffer alone? What is the impact of our work on our bodies physically, on our mental health? How is this stress affecting the energy that you carry, your moods, your health, your relationships?

H is for HALT We need to take the time to see what the price is that we're paying for conformity to what is happening. We want to be curious and have some compassion with ourselves, and actually figure out whether we each have unspoken grievances with each other and with the people that we work with.

19

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

What are those unspoken agreements? What are we thinking about? How does that create the experience that we're having? Is it possible that the unspoken agreements are not really helping us or limiting us?

A is for ANALYZE Analyze with compassion the stories that we are telling ourselves to continue to tolerate what is happening to us, the loss of agency, our own loss of physical, mental, emotional wellness? Could it be that we could begin to change the assumptions that we're making?

Are we experiencing moral injury because we cannot give our patients what they truly need? Or are we experiencing also moral injury because we have not given ourselves what we need? And both of these can be true.

N is for NUMBERS Look at your numbers and data. How many of us are looking at our own blood pressure or pulse, our sugars, and how many of us are doctoring ourselves? Did you know that 20 to 25% of doctors self-medicate? It would be interesting to know how we are self-treating our conditions.

Do we habitually address what is happening with us, that we may not like but is there for us? How's our intimacy with our partner? How many times are we having sex per week? How many times are we having a date with our spouse? All of these things matter because intimacy and connection matters.

C is for CREATE This is the time where we go through the process to begin to see how we reframe the ways that we have been doing things. We need to change to make decisions that are life-giving, and which are supported by the fact that we are humans just like everybody else, even though we don't think of ourselves as being humans!

I know that I didn't think of myself as being human. I thought I was above that, but discovered in fact, that I am only human. This is where we can begin to make changes and create new visions for a more empowered life.

20

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

E is for EVOLVE Evolving is where we begin to take actions towards improving our well-being. This could include exercising more, creating supportive structures, talking to family and friends or planning to do things together.

This reinforces our connection to why we do things, and to things which give us purpose and joy. This is an interactive process because every time you move forward, you investigate a new area of your life where you want to improve.

When we complete this process and follow these steps, we get new outcomes aligned to our values and our efforts. This is the space where the outcome is selfmastery. When there is self-mastery, there are three things that are visible expressions to our new agency and self-identity.

The first is that we have an empowered mind. We have been curious, then question and address things that are happening to us.

The second thing is that we show up differently. We have a different body presence or confidence. We're not burned out showing up to see patients. We're actually enlivened because we're taking care of ourselves, and we can be with others with more abundance.

21

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

We don't come from a workplace or mindset of scarcity. There is no feeling of ‘you're taking something away from me’, but rather ‘I want to give you something because I have it in my heart to do it.’

Our end goal is to all experience enhanced well-being. I think that finding that place where we can work towards our own well-being is the solution to counteract the loss of humanity that we have received from the medical systems that we grow in, live in and work with.

So have a conversation with your loved ones, and extend your open arms to others.

Enhance your own well-being to grow your practice of self-care and selfcompassion, and step into the world where you are in a better place to help others.

22

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

Chapter 8 More Ideas to Getting Unstuck

What can we do then, regarding the system requirements?

More collaboration and togetherness among physicians are needed to begin to create change. Central to a solution is to work together with other medical colleagues.

We tend to work alone as isolated entities. We function as isolated entities.

Somehow, we have been entrained or chosen to function alone, or been prevented from talking to each other to be able to negotiate our needs. We need to have more big discussions.

Can you talk to other specialists like you or practitioners in your area? How are they feeling? How are they going? And can they begin to change, or are they feeling like they are stuck? I want you to know that we're never stuck in a place.

We have the capacity over time to change. Did you know that some physicians are creating unions to create boundaries in their work and lessen the impact of system demands on physicians.

What are other methods being explored to lessen physician suffering?

There are many methods that have been used and activated to try to counteract physician suffering within the medical system. We possess tremendous energy within us, a gift from the universe, and by nurturing ourselves, we replenish that energy.

I want to share with you some approaches that will help alleviate the stress physicians feel every day at work.

23

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

1) Mindfulness Mindfulness is present moment awareness and being without judgement with what is happening. This lessens anxiety and depression. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction is a life-saving practice I can vouch on.

2) Self-compassion Self-compassion practices are very helpful to physicians that continue to work in this medical system. These practices lessen the felt experience of difficulties and toxicity we face in our work. Self-compassion is the practice of recognizing when we are not well, critical of ourselves, or something has happened that makes us feel bad, hurt, not-enough or “less than.

Many of us have perfectionistic qualities, we feel a blow to our self-esteem whenever we face criticism. Just imagine how much energy is drained from your body and self-esteem levels when this happens.

Recognize that being a physician is difficult. Realize and be present for what we feel. Give ourselves the compassion and nurturing words we would give as if your child, a physician, who had this same experience.

At those times we normalize what is happening as a common shared experience, and we focus our energies and compassion toward ourselves, just as we would do to another person who is suffering and who we love and want to support and alleviate their suffering.

3) Resilience training Resilience training using heart math, so that you can be in the moment with whatever goes on around you and be less harmed by it. This method connects us to our strengths, how we have managed difficult things in the past.

24

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

We allow and normalize the experience we are having as is and we recognize that we are in charge of response to these events and our capacity to establish homeostasis though breath and other vagal activating methods.

4) Connect to your values and your why What do you value and what is your ‘why’ for being a physician or health care provider. Connecting to our higher purpose, makes work more efficient and directs us to focus on the important, create better boundaries and life-work balance.

5) Honor the doctor-patient relationship If this is important to you as it is to me, have the intension to honor to the doctor-patient relationship by being present in the moment with the patient, even if brief. It matters if we are “seen” and heard as humans, and not just the congestive heart failure case in room three.

Creating this choice or intension enables well-being within ourselves. Even if brief, this also creates stronger relationships with our patients and drives our sense of satisfaction that comes from the healing human connection.

6) Allow yourself to be human Get the support of others. When we think outside of the box and we have the support of each other, and we're no longer see ourselves as being alone.

7) Nurture your being At the end of a demanding day take time to nurture your being by doing something you love. True nourishment comes from activities that feed our souls.

Go for walk in nature, play an instrument do art, listen to music, soak in the jacuzzi, immerse yourself in the pleasure of the stories your children are telling.

25

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

Whether it's soaking in a jacuzzi, meditating for 20 minutes, taking a walk outdoors, simply indulging in something that brings joy, self-nurturing is essential. It's about giving back goodness to ourselves to recharge for the challenges of the next day. A glass of wine may suffice.

8) Practice gratitude The Practice of Gratitude can be beneficial. Before you go to sleep, consciously make an effort to identify three things from that day that you're truly grateful for.

Cultivating gratitude on a daily basis helps nurture a sense of appreciation and well-being.

While these methods help us manage the impact of the demands and inadequacies of the medical systems problem on us, they do not holistically address directly the fact that the medical systems are not making any effort to recognize that humans are involved and that their needs for wellbeing and boundaries matter.

I believe that band aids soothe the symptoms and relieve suffering, but do not change the source of the sickness caused by the medical system dysfunction.

Resources for Physicians www.emotionalppe.org The Emotional PPE Project: Connects healthcare workers in need with licensed mental health professionals in your state who can help. No cost or ins. required. www.physiciansupportline.com 1-888-409-0141 Therapyaid.org PinkCoatMD.com MedicineForward.org

26

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

Ripple Effect with Todd Otten MD podcast Other Free support resources for physicians collected by my friend and podcaster Kim Downey: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kim-downey 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline offers free, confidential crisis counseling 24/7/365 — and you don’t have to be in crisis to call or text.

The Crisis Text Line also offers free 24/7 mental health support. Text “SCRUBS” to 741741 for help. physiciancoachsupport.com : free, confidential 1:1 peer support by Physician Certified Life Coach Volunteers. Specific contact person: Dr. Diana Londono: dianalondonomd.com physiciansanonymous.org : free, anonymous and confidential peer support for physicians offers drop-in support groups for physicians who are struggling with burnout, mental health issues, addiction, or anything else. Specific contact person: Dr. Joe Sherman – see link on website or joeshermanmd.com e-mail: joe@joeshermanmd.com peerrxmed.com Free, peer-supported program to help physicians and others on the care team combat burnout and move towards better well-being.

NAMI: Free and confidential peer support, professional support, and family support options for healthcare professionals. From the top of the home page click on “Your Journey” then “Frontline Professionals” then “Healthcare Professionals.” Excellent information and resources on this site.

27

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

In Conclusion Being a physician can be incredibly rewarding, but without a higher level of consciousness about our past experiences, the need for our humanity to be expressed and tended through self-care, we can find ourselves struggling or suffering from burnout.

By achieving self-mastery, you will gain: • A transformed perspective on your life • A sense of confidence, abundance and service that inspires others • New level of consciousness and possibilities

Connect with your colleagues. Nurture yourself to move from a sense of lack to a sense of abundance. From this place you can inspire and help others. Learn how to be kinder to yourself so that you can continue your practice as a physician in medicine or outside of medicine with joy and satisfaction for many years to come.

Now is the time for change. Discover how to better practice self-care and start now on your path towards self-mastery.

28

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

29

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Beatriz Olson is a visionary and transformational leader in healthcare.

She is the #1 Bestselling author of Mind Body Secrets: A Medical Doctor’s Spiritual and Scientific Guide to Wellness. A book she curated, researched and created after 3decades of experience as a clinician scientist caring for thousands of patients.

Her non-conventional approach to healthcare, as a board-certified integrative endocrinologist, combines evidence-based science, mind-body & functional & lifestyle medicine to provide a comprehensive, multidisciplinary and precision medicine healing experience.

Her life’s calling is to bring healing and wisdom to the health care system at an individual, systemic and global scale. Dr. Olson's personal experiences as a woman physician and Cuban immigrant have taught her valuable lessons about overcoming life challenges personally and professionally.

This sets herself apart as a physician-leader and who helps humans achieve high levels of wellbeing in multiple domains. She is a key note speaker and offers online and in person courses and experiences that helps individuals and organizations overcome biologic limitations and mental set-points that lead to lack of wellness and disease.

30

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

Dr. Olson holds board certifications in Endocrinology, Metabolism & Diabetes and Internal Medicine from ABIM. She also holds certifications in Age Management Medicine and Feminine Power Transformational Leadership.

She founded and led an integrative medicine medical-professional community for 17 years. She has owned her successful medical practice, Integrative Endocrinology, for 3 decades in Connecticut, USA. Dr. Olson graduated from Barnard College, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and her residency in internal medicine and researchclinical fellowship in Endocrinology at the University of Pittsburgh. She served as an educator, clinician-scientist and speaker at the National Institutes of Health and later as teaching-faculty at Yale University School of Medicine.

Dr. Olson has numerous first-authored publications in basic science and clinical peer-reviewed journals and contributed chapters to several textbooks. She is also involved in the nutrition committee and co-chairs the obesity working groups at the American Medical Women’s Association.

31

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

WORK WITH DR OLSON

To contact Dr. Olson to receive private consultations, individual or group Health Coaching and facilitation or to take her online and live courses see below: Website: www.Beatrizolson.com E-mail: info@beatrizolson.com Phone: +1 203-758-2594 LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/beatrizolsonmd LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-beatriz-olson-md-facp-83bb7429/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dr.beatriz.olson/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@integrativeendocrinologywi3846/videos Buy Mind Body Secrets book: https://getbook.at/BeatrizOlson Take her live online Mind Body Medicine courses for physicians in the fall and separately get access courses on solutions for weight loss and Women’s Health Concerns go to www.integrativebeing.org Dr. Olson is also available for Keynote and speaking engagements.

32

Enhance Your Wellbeing

Beatriz Olson MD, FACP

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. Eric Olson, and my teachers and colleagues who have taught me so much.

I also thank my patients and my children for the meaning and purpose they have given to my life.

I would also like to thank Dr. Claire Zammit for her Leadership and Coaching training and certifications, and Sharlene Lynch for her support in helping me create my clear message, and for helping me with the creation of this e-book.

1st Edition © Dr Beatriz Olson, 2024. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author at info@beatrizolson.com.

33