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