Join Empowered Surgeons Group here.

Dr. Won Kim is a brain and tumor neurosurgeon at UCLA Health, where he trained, completed a fellowship in stereotactic and functional neurosurgery, and built a practice around treating tumors that were once considered inoperable. He is also the kind of surgeon who will tell you he is hard to work for, that M&M should be about quality improvement not blame, and that the last five percent of a perfect resection isn't worth the cost of your patient's quality of life.

Won's path to neurosurgery started with a childhood friend who had clinical depression. He wanted to understand how a brain could work so well and suffer so much at the same time. That question took him from a fascination with psychology to watching his first awake craniotomy, and it never really let him go. He ultimately chose neurosurgery over psychiatry. But the question of what makes one person able to thrive while another person can't escape the darkness has followed him throughout his career.

In this conversation, we talk about what it actually means to treat the patient and not the scan and why the pursuit of perfection can be its own form of hubris. He talks about what it means to go to sleep without shame or guilt, as long as you prepared to give your best.

We also get into his AI startup, why AI will paradoxically create more demand for radiologists rather than less, and what he has learned about becoming a better teacher and mentor.

Follow Dr. Kim on instagram here.

Are you a surgeon with a story to tell? Yes you are! Email me at mel@melthackercoaching.com

Join Empowered Surgeons Group here.

Dr. Red Hoffman has spent her career sitting with people at the hardest moments of their lives. As a physician who combines trauma care and palliative medicine, she has built a practice around something most of us spend our whole lives avoiding: death. But what makes Red's perspective so singular is that she isn't just a professional witness to loss. She has lived it, repeatedly and violently. Her grandparents died in a car accident when she was 12. Her father was killed in a terrorist attack in Egypt when she was 19. Her partner sustained a traumatic brain injury and later died by suicide when she was 49. This is a woman who knows grief from the inside out, and she has chosen to meet it with love rather than distance.

In this conversation, we talk about what it actually means to have a good death, and what it means for the people left behind. Red explains why violent deaths carry a unique burden — not just the loss itself, but the law enforcement, the media, the legal system, all the unknown layers that pile on top of an already impossible experience. She shares what to say to someone who is grieving when you don't know what to say, and why the most important thing is not to assign meaning to someone else's loss. That work belongs to the bereaved.

We also get into what it looks like to build a life on your own terms inside a system that wasn't designed for you. Red talks about navigating a corporate hospital buyout, watching her community get hit by Hurricane Helene, and finding genuine love for a corporation she once might have resisted. She talks about long COVID, what it is like to go from healthy to chronically ill, and how she has learned to ask for what she needs inside a system that makes that incredibly hard.

And we talk about twriting the book she wishes she had when her father was killed: a guide to surviving violent death for the people left behind.

Red carries a lot of loss and a lot of love, and somehow in her hands those two things are not opposites. I think you are going to feel that.

Learn more about Dr. Red Hoffman here.

Follow her on instagram here.

Join us inside Empowered Surgeons Group here.

What happens when being a doctor is no longer enough to sustain you?

Dr. Shieva Ghofrany, OB/GYN and founder of A Tribe Called V joins me to explore identity, autonomy, and the hidden pressures of practicing medicine.

Dr. Ghofrany didn’t follow a traditional path into medicine, and she doesn’t practice it traditionally either. From switching majors multiple times to building a parallel business, she shares what it looks like to question expectations, tolerate failure, and expand beyond the narrow identity many physicians inherit.

We talk about the emotional and psychological realities of OB/GYN, the weight of responsibility in high-stakes situations, and the courage it takes to step outside the “golden handcuffs” of medicine.

This episode is about more than career decisions.

It’s about how you relate to yourself, especially when things don’t go as planned.

• Why identity in medicine can become limiting and how to expand beyond it
• The concept of “golden handcuffs” and why so many physicians feel stuck
• Learning to tolerate failure (and why it’s essential for fulfillment)
• Building A Tribe Called V and what entrepreneurship revealed about her strengths and blind spots
• The emotional toll of OB/GYN, including moral injury and high-risk deliveries
• The psychological pressure physicians face in moments like shoulder dystocia
• Her personal journey through endometriosis, infertility, and ovarian cancer
• What illness taught her about resilience, perspective, and life beyond medicine
• The importance of playfulness in the OR and how it shifts performance
• A powerful daily mindset practice that shapes how she shows up
• Why resentment is not useful in surgery—and what to do instead
• Communication, emotional intelligence, and how to navigate patient retaliation

You can follow every rule, do everything “right,” and still feel constrained by your career.

This episode challenges the idea that medicine alone should define you—and offers a different way to think about autonomy, fulfillment, and what it means to build a life that actually works.

Dr. Shieva Ghofrany is an OB/GYN in private practice and the founder of A Tribe Called V, a platform dedicated to increasing knowledge and reducing anxiety around women’s health.

Her work sits at the intersection of medicine, education, and empowerment—helping women better understand their bodies while encouraging physicians to think more broadly about identity and impact.

Learn more about Dr. Ghofrani here.

Join us inside Empowered Surgeons Group here.

Dr. Jake Goodman is a psychiatrist who works with healthcare professionals and has built a following of over 2 million people by saying the things most physicians are thinking but not saying out loud.

His practice started in a telling way: his first patient was a surgeon, then a dentist, then a veterinarian, then an OB/GYN. That pattern wasn’t random; it revealed something much bigger. There is a massive, unmet need for mental health support in healthcare, and most of us are silently struggling more than we admit.

Jake shares his own story of depression during intern year, when he thought he was “burned out,” but was actually depressed. Low energy. Numb. Going through the motions. And here’s the part that hits: he was a psychiatry resident and still couldn’t see it in himself. That’s how deep the stigma runs in our profession.

We talk about what it actually takes to come out of that place and why “working harder” is not the answer. At some point, the armor has to come off. And for physicians, that’s often the hardest move.

If you’ve ever felt like your life used to work—and now it doesn—you’ll recognize what he describes. The career, the family, the workouts, the expectations… at some point, something gives. His question is simple: Is what you’re doing sustainable for the next 20 years?

We also get into the stuff no one taught us:

– what to do with the stress your body is carrying after a case

– why you can’t just compartmentalize forever

– how to recognize your own “check engine lights” before things spiral

And one of the most practical tools he shares is how to separate “hot thoughts” from reality. The ones that sound like: I’m a bad doctor. I’m an imposter. I’m going to be found out. Instead of fighting them, he teaches you how to create space from them so they stop running the show.

We also talk about emotions: what they are, what they’re not, and why making permanent decisions in temporary emotional states is one of the biggest mistakes physicians make.

This conversation is real, practical, and long overdue.

If you’ve been telling yourself you’re just “burned out”… you may want to listen to this one.

Learn more about Jake's practice here.

Follow him on instagram here.

Join us inside Empowered Surgeons Group here.

What if your relationship with food had nothing to do with discipline and everything to do with your nervous system?

In this conversation with Luis Mojica, we explore the connection between developmental trauma, chronic stress, and the way we relate to food. Luis shares his own story of using an eating disorder to cope with undiagnosed PTSD, and how that led him to question the traditional psychology model that focuses on behavior without getting curious about environment, physiology, or nutrition.

His work in nutrition counseling revealed a pattern: people with unresolved trauma and chronic stress often struggle to stabilize their health in ways that have nothing to do with discipline and everything to do with their nervous system.

We talk about food as a relationship. Not just something we consume, but something that becomes us. Our tissues, our skin, our blood. Food can stimulate, suppress, or balance the body, much like our relationships with people. Caffeine, sugar, and refined carbohydrates can activate the system. Rich, comforting foods can initially settle us but create downstream effects that dysregulate. Whole foods tend to support balance. This shifts the conversation away from good and bad foods and toward how different foods impact our internal state.

We also unpack trauma as a physiological response rather than an event. The body mobilizes for fight or flight, and when that is not possible, it moves into freeze, collapse, or fawn. Many high achievers learn early how to override their own needs in order to belong. That override becomes a strength professionally, but it comes at a cost. Hunger signals, boundaries, and emotional cues all get muted, and over time there is a growing disconnection from the body. The same stress pathways that are activated in trauma can also be activated by the foods we eat.

A big part of this conversation is reframing cravings. Instead of something to control, they can be understood as a signal. A compass pointing toward an unmet need. Luis shares examples from his work with patients, including how removing a coping mechanism too quickly can create more distress if we do not first understand what role it is playing. We talk about what it looks like to pause, get curious, and actually listen to what the body is communicating.

We also go into practical tools. Tracking where tension or pressure lives in the body. Creating a sense of safety with simple physical cues. Working with numbness and understanding what is underneath it. For those of us in high intensity environments like surgery, this matters. The constant activation, sleep deprivation, and vicarious trauma create a baseline level of stress that most people never experience. In that context, food becomes more than fuel. It becomes a way to regulate. Meals and snacks can either amplify that stress or help bring it down.

We close by talking about capacity versus desire. Many physicians love what they do, but their capacity to metabolize the constant input is maxed out. Without space to process, the system stays activated. Practices like pendulation, moving between states of activation and regulation, help rebuild that capacity. This is ultimately about returning to a more sovereign relationship with the body, supporting the microbiome, and understanding that even something as simple as fiber can play a meaningful role in restoring balance.

Get Luis's book Food Therapy here.

Follow Luis on instagram here.

Learn more about Love and Science Fertility here.

Join Empowerd Surgeons here.

Infertility is shaping the lives of female physicians, and we need to talk about it.

Dr. Erica Bove, creator of Love and Science, shares the startling fact that 1 in 4 female physicians and 1 in 3 female surgeons experience infertility. Interestingly, the very mindset that makes us successful in surgery can work against us when it comes to building a family.

We explore the hidden role of stress, trauma, and nervous system dysregulation, and the trap so many physicians fall into: trying to solve infertility by working harder, researching more, and disconnecting from their own bodies.

Dr. Bove offers a radically different approach, one that begins with humanity.

We talk about:

• Why going on a certainty frenzy doesn't solve the problem
• How trauma states impact fertility physiology
• The courage it takes to receive care, not just give and give
• Reconnecting with your deepest “why”
• Boundaries, community, and learning to say: I deserve to be a patient

This is not just a conversation about fertility, it’s about reclaiming your humanity in a system that taught you to override it.

Erica Bove, MD, is a double board certified OB-GYN and Reproductive Endocrinologist (REI) physician at the University of Vermont, She is also the CEO and founder of Love and Science: Thriving Through Infertility. She has a keen interest in marrying an evidence-based approach with intuitive knowing in the context of a trusting relationship. She empowers women physicians to build their families with confidence, self compassion and community. Her mission is to heal and support the healers and to create a legacy she is proud of.

In her free time, she enjoys running, yoga, kayaking, skiing, reading, writing, and spending time with her inner circle.

Follow her on Linkedin here, IG here, FB here, and check out her podcast, Love and Science Fertility here.