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Join Angela Walker and Sylvia Morris, co-authors of the book, The Game Plan: A Woman’s Guide to Becoming a Doctor and Living a Life in Medicine. We delve into the complexities of relationships in the world of female physicians, discussing mentorship, patient interactions, and effective communication. Discover how these remarkable women balance their careers and personal lives while sharing valuable insights from their extensive medical journeys.

Angela Walker is an obstetrician-gynecologist. Sylvia Morris is an internal medicine physician.

They discuss their book, The Game Plan: A Woman’s Guide to Becoming a Doctor and Living a Life in Medicine.

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast, and get CME for this episode by clicking on the CME link in the show notes. Today we welcome Angela Walker and Sylvia Morris. Angela is an obstetrician-gynecologist, Sylvia is an internal medicine physician, and they are co-authors of the book The Game Plan: A Woman’s Guide to Becoming a Doctor and Living a Life in Medicine. Angela and Sylvia, welcome to the show.

Angela Walker: Thank you so much for having us.

Kevin Pho: So I’m going to ask each of you to briefly share your story and journey, and then we’ll talk about your book. Angela, why don’t you go first?

Angela Walker: OK. My name is Dr. Angela Walker. I’m an OB/GYN by training. I went to Georgetown for medical school, and that’s where I met all the co-authors of the book except for one, whom I went to undergrad with at Texas A&M. I trained in OB/GYN residency at UT Houston and then practiced in private practice in Houston, then Dallas, and ultimately in the Atlanta area. I’m a wife, I got married right before medical school, and I have two adult daughters.

Kevin Pho: All right. Sylvia, just briefly share your story and journey.

Sylvia Morris: Yes, good morning. I’m originally from Los Angeles, and I went to Berkeley for undergrad. I met Angela and my co-authors at Georgetown, and I trained at the University of Washington in Seattle. I’ve spent a lot of time going in and out of clinical practice, so I’ve been a hospitalist in several iterations, including currently, but I’ve also done some consulting, and I’m very interested in using media to improve public health. So thank you very much for having us today.

Kevin Pho: All right, and both of you are among the five co-authors of the book. The book is called The Game Plan: A Woman’s Guide to Becoming a Doctor and Living a Life in Medicine. So Angela, tell us, how did this book come together?

Angela Walker: Yeah, so the five of us, as we mentioned, met in medical school, and once we got out of residency and were practicing, we started traveling together. We’re actually going on our 20th, or 20-plus, annual girls’ trip next week, to Miami, to celebrate our friendship and the book. We met in medical school and formed a sisterhood and friendship, and about 10 years ago, on one of our trips, sitting around with good food and a glass of wine, we started talking about all the things we wished we had known before our journey, things we wished someone had told us, or that we had sought out, that would have made our journey a little bit easier. And we wanted to put together a book, or a plan, to offer other women, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be women, but because we are women, a guide to living a life in medicine, sharing things that people don’t necessarily talk about or think to ask.

Kevin Pho: And Angela, give us a little sample. What are some of the key things that you wish you had known earlier in your journey that you know now?

Angela Walker: I think one of the biggest things that comes up in the book is the importance of seeking out mentors and asking. In the book we offer questions that you would want to ask. We get a lot from our amazing instructors in medical school and residency, but it’s a lot about the practice of medicine, not necessarily about living a life in medicine and what happens outside of medicine, and some of the things that you learn may actually help you navigate your path toward choosing a specialty. I also think it’s important to know that there are alternatives. A couple of us have done things outside of our traditional roles in clinical medicine, and it’s good to know that those things are out there, so you may have a plan B and a plan C. Those are the things that come to mind.

Kevin Pho: All right. And Sylvia, tell us some of your contributions and the input that you want readers to come away with from reading the book.

Sylvia Morris: Yeah, I want people to really be kind to themselves. There’s a lot of pressure to be, not perfect, but really to have it all together. In our five stories you really see a variety of different ways that people came to medicine. One of our co-authors didn’t think about applying to medical school until she was in college, or actually after college. I happened to be the kid who always said, “Oh, I want to be a doctor,” from kindergarten. So there are a variety of stories and paths to success, and it’s really important for you to hone in on what you’re good at and what your particular path is, and to hopefully not get too caught up in what Bill and John and Susie are doing.

Kevin Pho: So Sylvia, Angela mentioned that there are some stories where physicians have activities and interests outside of clinical medicine, and as you were telling your story, you mentioned you did some consulting work and things outside of clinical medicine as well. So tell us more about that.

Sylvia Morris: Yes. At my second job I had a patient who, let’s just say, really challenged my ability to be compassionate. He would go home and smoke on his front steps, and turn off his oxygen, thank God, because that of course would be a whole other specialty. But nonetheless, he would get readmitted to me, and I had to really dig deep to figure out: Was it the patient who was bothering me, because he was doing what he thought was best for him, or was I unhappy or disappointed or dismayed with medicine as a career? I think the term we would use now is burnout. So I was burned out, and I started reading the New England Journal of Medicine. That was back when it was on paper, so in the back they had all these job listings, and I applied to anything and everything that looked interesting and that I thought I would be good at.

Kevin Pho: And Sylvia, now that you have a bit of a career outside of clinical medicine, or a dual career, has that helped with the burnout that you had been feeling?

Sylvia Morris: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I’m not going to use the word balance; I’m not sure we can actually get balance, and our chapter on being a superwoman kind of touches on that. But I’ve found harmony in my life currently. In my job I do a little bit of marketing, I do a little bit of direct clinical practice, and then I have an administrative role, and I need the variety. That has been helpful for me, it’s helpful for my family and friends, but it’s also helpful for my patients, because when I’m in the room with them, I’m really honed in on what’s important and how to be the best physician.

Kevin Pho: Angela, Sylvia mentioned the term superwoman, and I’ve heard this term mentioned multiple times as it relates to women in medicine. Tell us some of the challenges today of practicing medicine as a woman.

Angela Walker: Oh, I think the challenges are not necessarily new. It’s some of the societal norms we have. We talk about the ideas we had growing up as little girls: being mothers and taking care of the home, taking care of things outside the home, and, if you have children, trying to participate in all of their activities. There are the expectations that society still has of you, but also that you may have of yourself. So we try to tackle some of those things, and I think the bottom line of what we wrote is that we may be able to have it all, just not all at the same time. Trying to attain that notion of superwoman is not really good for your overall well-being. Try to be the best at what you do at work and at home, but realize that sometimes you may be doing your best at work and not necessarily your best at home, and vice versa, and that is OK. So as Sylvia said, it’s giving yourself grace in this moment in time. I think we’re doing a better job at it; I just don’t think we’re there yet.

Sylvia Morris: I think the other part is this. I’m currently not married, and I don’t have children, but I’m an only child, so when my father was sick during the beginning of COVID, I was flying back and forth to Los Angeles, since I currently live in Atlanta, seeing about my father. So there are other caregiving roles that women traditionally have, rightly or not, and we continue to do those roles as well as be physicians and what I like to call the CEOs of our households.

Kevin Pho: Angela, you mentioned that you have two grown children, and you’re an obstetrician-gynecologist, of course, which is perceived as a very demanding specialty, being on call at all hours of the night. Tell us some specific things that you did to manage that proverbial work-life balance as you were going through your medicine journey.

Angela Walker: Yeah, oh, wow. So probably about halfway through my career, I realized that as a female OB/GYN, the norms had changed by the time I finished residency. Women, as we know now, are often seeking a female OB/GYN, so when you’re in a group practice and you may be one of only a few women, you’re often the one who gets more of the patients, because they’re seeking a woman to deliver with. So needless to say, in the practice I was in, I was overwhelmed, and I realized that when I got home at night, I was taking it out on my family. I just had to have a heart-to-heart with myself, and I realized that I could not keep up this pace and do right by myself and my family. So I cut back. I said, this is the limit of what I can do as far as deliveries per month. That meant I took a hit in my salary, because it was kind of an eat-what-you-kill type of system, where you make what you generate. And I learned that it was so worth the cut in salary, because my quality of life improved, and what I could give to my family improved.

Then, more recently, I got to the point where I realized that with everything I was doing, again taking on administrative roles, as Sylvia mentioned, and keeping up with the pace and the call and all of those things, I wasn’t serving myself well. That was the second time in my life when I had to take inventory and see how I was really helping myself, with my mental wellness, my physical wellness, all of those things. I actually took a step back from clinical medicine, and I’m currently working as a reviewing medical director, and then, to get my fulfillment in women’s health care, I do speaking and coaching. Those things are part of the growth we share in the book. I would never have thought of those things in medical school or residency.

Kevin Pho: Sylvia, there’s been an evolution in terms of the intersection between work-life balance and women in medicine, and we’ve come some way, but we’re certainly not where we want to be yet. Talk to us about some of the remaining challenges that you see, which we need to work on.

Sylvia Morris: Yeah, that’s a great question. We’ve already touched on the roles within the household that are really required of women, and how you figure out how to manage your household. I happen to have enough means to have a housekeeper, as an example. There are little tips and tricks that we have to figure out to make our lives easier. And then certainly, if we look at academics, we know that there are not as many women in leadership roles in academics, and we certainly have some work to do in medicine to try to improve that, because we want to make sure that all voices are heard, so that we can have the richness of everyone’s experience brought fully to the table.

Angela Walker: I’m going to go back to the initial theme that I had, and that we’ve all talked about and all adamantly agreed upon, which is the importance of mentors. In my residency program I had Dr. Michelle Curtis, who was an author of one of the office gynecology books that we used, and Dr. Oyer, who was actually president of ACOG. Those women, just by being examples in their leadership roles, really made a difference for me, and I know for the other female residents I trained with. They were living the life of being leaders in medicine, but were also human, and kind enough and accessible enough to share their lives as caregivers; they both happened to be mothers. Those sorts of positions are really important. So opening up leadership positions to women, and women actually seeking them, and changing our mindset about how we’re supposed to live our lives in medicine, will make a big difference in promoting more women into leadership roles.

Kevin Pho: Now, both of you have strongly articulated how important mentors are. So Sylvia, how does one go about finding a mentor?

Sylvia Morris: You know, they actually are all around you. It’s really the person that you get along with, whether it’s on your rotation or in your chemistry class, your Chem 1A class. You happen to really like your professor, or your TA. It might be in a pre-professional organization. There’s something called the Student National Medical Association, where I participated as a med student and really found other like-minded individuals. When I was in public health school, I had a fabulous environmental health instructor, and he made me think differently about the world.

So at various points in my career I have really leaned into people who may not have been as traditional. They were not all physicians, and I think being open to someone who has other skill sets is important, because those skills are definitely present in medicine, like knowing how to navigate the politics of medicine. I worked on the Hill and met a fantastic woman named Constance Miller. She was a strategist and lobbyist, and I learned so much from her about how to manage people and also how to manage myself. So really it’s not about, oh, I need to sign up on this website or on LinkedIn and find this person. It’s about really mining your current network, and gravitating to where it’s easy, and to the people who are also interested in your being successful.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Angela Walker and Sylvia Morris. Angela is an obstetrician-gynecologist, and Sylvia is an internal medicine physician. They are among the five co-authors of the book The Game Plan: A Woman’s Guide to Becoming a Doctor and Living a Life in Medicine. Now, I’m going to end by asking you both the same question: What are the take-home messages that you want readers to come away with after reading your book? Angela, why don’t you go first?

Angela Walker: OK. Well, I’m probably beating a dead horse here, but I think it’s really important to find a mentor for whatever you think your journey is going to be. And I’ll add to what Dr. Morris was mentioning about seeking people who are readily accessible: If you don’t find somebody readily accessible, whether you’re in school or working, you can ask. In particular, you can ask an advisor, “Hey, I’m interested in OB,” or “I’m interested in pediatrics. Can you please find someone to mentor me?” So it’s really about being proactive at that stage.

Number two is leaving space for your friends. That’s one of the things that comes out in our book. It’s been so important during our journey of living a life of wellness and joy to treasure and protect our friendship, but also to take care of your family and spend time with them, which I think we sometimes lose sight of in medical school and residency, because we’re so focused on our mission that we sometimes leave people by the wayside. It’s important to nurture those relationships.

And lastly, as women, I’ll echo what Dr. Morris said at the beginning: Give ourselves grace in this journey. It’s not easy, but it can be filled with love, fulfillment and joy. You have to give yourself grace, learn from your mistakes, identify the areas that are no longer serving you, and make those changes.

Kevin Pho: And Sylvia, tell us some of the take-home messages you want readers to come away with after reading your book.

Sylvia Morris: Yeah, two things. One, listen to your gut. Dr. Walker was just talking about tapping into what works for you and what doesn’t work for you. I think oftentimes we ignore our gut because this is the way it’s supposed to be, this is the plan, and we get married to a particular plan. Not everything works for everyone, so I never want people to ignore that small voice that is nagging at them.

And the second thing is self-care. I know we talk about it a lot now, but it still remains true. During medical school we went to the gym at 11 o’clock at night and got on the elliptical, and if we had time we would do an aerobics class. Now, of course, it would be Pilates or yoga. Some people walk. I know that Dr. Walker is a runner; not my favorite thing to do. Maybe you get to the pool, or it’s just a few moments in the morning with the Calm app. There are a lot of different ways that you can reconnect with yourself and really settle your nervous system.

Kevin Pho: The book is called The Game Plan: A Woman’s Guide to Becoming a Doctor and Living a Life in Medicine. Angela and Sylvia, thank you so much for sharing your stories, time, and insight.

Angela Walker: Thank you for all that you do. We appreciate the platform.

Sylvia Morris: Thank you very much.