What do you do when the career path you thought you were building suddenly disappears?

In this episode of FEM, MD, Dr. Lauren Umstattd sits down with board-certified plastic surgeon and practice owner Dr. Alexis Parcells to talk about ambition, failure, leadership, and building a medical practice on your own terms.

Alexis shares a career path that was anything but straightforward. After struggling academically and being told that medical school might not be the right path for her, she attended St. George’s University in the Caribbean and eventually fought her way into plastic surgery. Years later, after joining a practice with the expectation of becoming a partner, she was fired just eight days after her non-compete went into effect.

That experience forced a decision: join someone else’s practice or build her own.

Today, Alexis leads a growing, all-female plastic surgery practice with three locations across New Jersey and Manhattan. She and Lauren discuss what those career “rock bottoms” taught her, why work ethic and emotional intelligence can matter more than test scores, and how she deliberately built a culture different from the one she experienced early in her career.

They also get into the business of growing a surgical practice, hiring for attitude instead of skill alone, helping new associates build full schedules, creating a collaborative operating room, learning to delegate, and why the person answering your practice phone may have one of the hardest jobs in the entire office.

Finally, Alexis and Lauren talk about motherhood, entrepreneurship, healthy ambition, and the ongoing challenge of actually turning off “boss mode.”

Host: Dr. Lauren Umstattd

Connect with Lauren: @lauren_umstattd_md

Guest: Alexis Parcells, MD

Connect with Alexis: @alexisparcellsmd

Produced by: The Hippocratic Collective

See more shows and content at hippocratic-collective.com

What happens when being a surgeon becomes so central to your identity that losing it feels like losing yourself?

In this episode of FEM, MD, Dr. Lauren Umstattd sits down with ENT surgeon, coach, and author Dr. Mel Thacker to discuss her new memoir, Scrubbing In: A Surgeon’s Journey from Self-Doubt to Wholeness.

Mel shares the deeply personal story behind the book, from a childhood shaped by trauma and instability to medical training, private practice, and eventually experiencing panic attacks while operating. She explains how she came to realize that her sense of worth had become inseparable from her identity as a surgeon, and what it took to begin untangling the two.

Lauren and Mel also talk about toxic martyrdom in medicine, why surgeons are taught to override their own needs, moral injury, imposter syndrome, rupture and repair, and the strange way surgical culture can reward the ability to ignore the basic realities of being human.

They also discuss how writing helped Mel process her past, why she originally wrote the book for her children, and how becoming more whole outside the operating room ultimately changed the way she understood herself inside it.

This is a conversation about surgery, identity, ambition, trauma, healing, and what can happen when physicians finally give themselves permission to ask: What do I actually want?

Host: Dr. Lauren Umstattd

Connect with Lauren: @lauren_umstattd_md

Guest: Mel Thacker, MD

Connect with Mel: @the_surgeon_coach

Scrubbing In available now: https://a.co/d/03CPHRRm

Produced by: The Hippocratic Collective

See more shows and content at hippocratic-collective.com

What are residency programs actually looking for during interviews?

In this episode of FEM, MD, Dr. Lauren Umstattd shares residency interview advice from both sides of the table. She has been a medical student interviewing for residency, a chief resident interviewing applicants, a fellowship candidate, part of the fellowship interview process, and now a business owner who regularly hires for her own practice.

Her biggest advice? Once you have made it to the interview, your CV has already gotten you into the room. The interview is about something different: Are you someone they can trust, teach, and work beside at 2 a.m. when things get hard?

Lauren breaks down the three qualities she looked for most in residency applicants: calmness, intelligence and resourcefulness, and curiosity. She also covers the biggest residency interview red flags, how to prepare without sounding rehearsed, what questions you should always be ready to answer, why you should never say you have no questions for the program, and how to take some of the pressure out of interview season.

Whether you're applying to surgery, medicine, or another residency specialty, this episode offers a candid look at what happens on the other side of the interview table and how to show up as yourself.

Host: Dr. Lauren Umstattd

Connect with Lauren: @lauren_umstattd_md

Produced by: The Hippocratic Collective

See more shows and content at hippocratic-collective.com