Jessie Mahoney is a board-certified pediatrician, certified coach, mindfulness and yoga teacher, and the founder of Pause & Presence Coaching & Retreats. After nearly two decades as a physician leader at the Permanente Medical Group/Kaiser, she stepped outside the traditional medical model to reimagine what sustainable well-being in health care could look like. She can also be reached on Facebook and Instagram.
Dr. Mahoney’s work challenges the culture of overwork and self-sacrifice in medicine. She helps physicians and leaders cultivate clarity, intention, and balance—leveraging mindfulness, coaching, yoga, and lifestyle medicine to create deep and lasting change. Her CME retreats offer a transformative space for healing, self-discovery, and renewal.
As co-host of the podcast, Healing Medicine, she brings self-compassion and presence into the conversation around modern medical practice. A sought-after speaker and consultant, she partners with organizations to build more human-centered, sustainable, and inspired medical cultures.
Dr. Mahoney is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine.
Physicians are renowned for their dedication to helping others. The problem is that their dedication has become synonymous with self-sacrifice and working for free.
Giving away time, energy, and expertise is simply “what good doctors are supposed to do.”
We work through lunch. We attend meetings during lunch. We respond to patient messages on our days off. We prepare lectures and teach without compensation. Leaders hold space for complaints and conflict and …
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The hidden cost of uncompensated work on physician burnout
More physicians than ever are reaching out for support after being labeled disruptive, inefficient, delinquent, reactive, or poor communicators.
These are highly skilled, deeply committed professionals being written up for professionalism concerns, communication issues, behavior, and “reactivity.” These cases span every specialty, gender, and stage of career.
This is not a reflection of declining professionalism. It is a predictable outcome of practicing in an untenable and broken system. It is an expected …
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Disruptive physician labeling: a symptom of systemic burnout
In medicine, we are trained to lead with logic. To analyze, evaluate, and act. We are praised for decisive thinking, efficiency, and evidence-based decisions. In the hardest moments of my life, career, and leadership, none of those tools brought me clarity.
Ten years ago, as a practicing pediatrician and physician leader, my personal life began to fall apart. My husband, who had always been steady and supportive, began to slide into …
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Leading with love: a physician’s guide to clarity and compassion
In medicine, waiting is normalized. We’re trained in it. Praised for it. We learn to delay sleep, meals, vacations, and emotions. We delay joy. Rest. Fulfillment. Relationships. Children.
From the very beginning, we’re taught that waiting is a virtue. That endurance is professionalism. That sacrificing our own needs is a sign of how much we care.
During training, we wait (for sleep, for food, for recognition). We wait for the pager to …
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Why doctors must stop waiting and reclaim their lives
Wellness programming must evolve beyond institutions if we are serious about supporting physicians, especially women physicians.
For wellness to be taken seriously, it had to begin within institutions. Those efforts offered visibility and legitimacy. But institutional wellness is not the whole answer.
For 17 years, I led wellness initiatives inside a large medical organization. I saw the value of bringing attention to physician well-being. I also saw the limitations. Six years ago, …
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Why physician wellness programs must evolve beyond institutions
I am a pediatrician. I am a mother. And now, a grandmother. These identities don’t always move in harmony.
When I learned my twin granddaughters had been born at home, the physician in me reacted immediately. My mind began cataloging risks, reviewing worst-case scenarios, mentally scanning for everything that could have gone wrong.
The grandmother in me, however, was called to show up differently: with love, not fear. With presence, not panic. …
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Pediatrician vs. grandmother: Choosing love over medical advice
In medicine, we are taught to care deeply.
When criticism arrives, whether from a patient, a colleague, an administrator, or an anonymous review, it stings. A lot. The sting usually lasts long after we read the words. It usually leads to rumination, self-doubt, and often even poor sleep, a questioning of our career choice, and our abilities.
Even with years of mindfulness, self-compassion, and coaching, I still feel upset when it happens …
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Dealing with physician negative feedback
“Why don’t they see?” “Why can’t they understand?” “Why are they doing this to us?”
These questions echo in exam rooms, in meetings, in the hallways of hospitals and clinics across the country. They are often sparked by policy changes, institutional decisions, or administrative mandates that feel disconnected from the physicians providing the care. Underneath the questions is the hope that the reality in front of us isn’t actually true. That …
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Physician burnout and the cost of resistance
Were you the one who always held it together? The responsible one? The one who made sure everyone else was OK, sometimes at the cost of your own well-being?
For most eldest daughters, this role is inevitable. We don’t choose it. We are handed it, early and often, because we are so “capable.” We accept this role and excel at it. That’s what most eldest daughters do with whatever is handed …
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The burden of the eldest daughter
In medicine, we’re trained to stay. To endure. To prove our worth by how much we can carry and how long we can carry it. Our roles become our identities. Our achievements and labels become scaffolds of self-worth. In medicine, stepping down is often labeled as a sign of weakness. So we hold on to roles even when they no longer fuel us. We are usually still doing the job …
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Stepping down in medicine is an evolution
As women in medicine, we have been taught to achieve, not advocate, especially not for each other. We keep our heads down. We hustle for credibility. And when we finally earn it, we are hesitant to speak it aloud, about ourselves or anyone else. As if naming our gifts makes them less legitimate.
When was the last time you publicly celebrated another woman in medicine for her brilliance? When was the …
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Why don’t women in medicine support each other?
Imposter syndrome is not a personal failing. It is a conditioned mindset. A learned pattern. We are raised in a culture of hyper vigilance. We are taught to equate uncertainty with inadequacy. We are taught it is not OK not to know an answer. That being unsure is a failing.
We prepare relentlessly. We never let our guard down. Hypervigilance is our standard mode of operating. Self-judgment is an internal soundtrack. …
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Imposter syndrome is not a personal failing
The culture of medicine is shaped in quiet ways, by the way meetings begin, the pregnant pauses before a response, and the energy transmitted in emails sent and received. These seemingly insignificant experiences ripple outward, setting the tone for entire teams, shaping what is spoken and what is not, shaping what feels possible and what feels unsafe.
The culture of medicine is not an abstract force. It is built moment by …
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How mindful leadership transforms physician wellness
The truth is not hiding. We have known for decades what allows physicians to thrive and what erodes their well-being. The science has been published, the interventions described, and the solutions tested. What we face is not a crisis of knowledge; it is a crisis of action.
I was reminded of this recently when an emergency physician preparing a talk on wellness asked me for help. She wanted to share with …
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Ending burnout through structure, not gimmicks
As physicians, we are trained to care—for patients, colleagues, and our communities.
When it comes to caring for our own aging parents and ill family members, most of us find ourselves overwhelmed, overfunctioning, under-resourced, depleted, and isolated. More often than not, we find ourselves assigned the caregiving role—explicitly or implicitly—because we’re “the doctor in the family.”
We think our medical training should make caregiving easier. But the opposite is true. We know …
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Why physicians struggle with caregiving and how to cope with grace
When I stepped away from my clinical practice, it wasn’t because I didn’t care. It was because I cared deeply—about my patients, my colleagues, and the future of medicine. I didn’t leave to escape. I left to help heal the culture that was quietly breaking so many of us.
You can love medicine and stop seeing patients. You can love medicine and change the way you see patients. Choosing to follow …
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The physician who turned burnout into a mission for change
Judgment pervades medicine—of patients, colleagues, and ourselves.
We’re trained to judge, disguised as caring, standards, and competence. It’s seen as essential to being a “good physician.” We do it so instinctively, we rarely question it.
But we should.
The culture of judgment in medicine
Judgment is baked into our training: The scrutiny of rounds, the competition of grades, the pressure of evaluations. It’s in our language: “noncompliant,” “failure to thrive,” “incompetent cervix.” Even our …
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Why judgment is hurting doctors—and how mindfulness can heal
When a neurosurgeon tells you she thinks she might want to leave surgery for interior design, you listen closely.
Not because it’s outrageous, but because it’s honest. Many physicians carry similar longings. They wonder whether it’s OK to want a different life.
In medicine, conformity is expected and often a means of survival. Especially for women in male-dominated fields. The unspoken expectation is to blend in, push through, and never question the …
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From burnout to balance: a neurosurgeon’s bold career redesign
There’s a sacred irony in medicine: Those who care for hearts often forget their own.
This truth came into sharp focus for me this past weekend, where I found myself in a room of women cardiologists at The American College of Cardiology in D.C.
The women in attendance were brilliant and compassionate. They spend their days pacing hearts, restarting them, and stenting them open. They are experts in life’s most vital rhythm. …
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Why the future of medicine depends on leading from the heart
The solution to the physician burnout crisis isn’t more diagnoses or interventions. The antidote isn’t more modules, surveys, screenings, or questionnaires. What’s needed is cultural healing: One that we have so far been unwilling and/or too depleted to attempt.
Over the past decade, physician wellness has been medicalized. We’ve absorbed it into the very system that made us unwell. We’ve labeled it as pathology—when in fact, it’s a predictable outcome of …
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Medicalizing burnout misses the real problem
