Stimulus - Learn Tools to Crush It in Your Medical Career
Episodes
What's Wrong With Me? | How to switch from self flagellation to context assessment
23 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
If you have ever lost it mid-shift, frozen when you should have acted, or spent the next two weeks asking yourself what's wrong with me, you already k...
How to Handle Interruptions Without Alienating Your Team
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Emergency medicine has an interruption-based workflow. There's no getting around some of that, but recurrent interruptions erode quality of care, accu...
Why You Might Be Chasing the Wrong Dream
20 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
So many of our choices are shaped less by desire and more by expectation. We chase prestige, status, or recognition, only to arrive and realize we wer...
Dan Millman on How to Practice Life
29 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What if the true test of strength is focusing less on what we feel and more on what we do? In this episode, we explore a practical philosophy of actio...
Supranormal
15 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Your work world is built on endurance, intensity, and mastery. The culture is 'always on,' and you were trained to perform in conditions no one would ...
How To Not Overthink Simple Decisions
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What if the best decision is to not decide at all? We waste valuable mental energy overthinking simple choices, especially when the outcomes are nearl...
What Every Premed Parent Needs to Know
27 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As students navigate an increasingly complex, competitive, and costly path to medical school, parents often find themselves uncertain about how to hel...
Why You Have More Power Than You Think to Change Healthcare
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A broken system won’t fix itself, and no one is coming to the rescue. Medicine is fraying under the weight of burnout, misaligned incentives, and sy...
Do You Know the Difference Between Competence and Capacity?
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How can a person who’s clearly lucid still be deemed incapable of making their own medical decisions? The answer lies in the misunderstood yet criti...
Boundary Rituals: How to Keep Work from Following You Home
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ever walk out of a shift and feel like the hospital came home with you? In medicine, the mental residue can cling long after the work day is done. One...
Crystal-Clear and Error-Free | Three Essential Tools for High-Stakes Communication
28 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The best communication in high-stakes environments isn’t complicated. Quite the opposite - it’s structured, clear, and consistent. Small, delibera...
How to Stop Spiralling When Massively Stressed with Scott Weingart
07 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Stressful events can hijack cognition, cloud judgment, and leave emotional residue that can fuel long-term burnout. For acute care clinicians, those m...
How I Coach Doctors With A Performance Improvement Plan
09 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
No one enters medicine expecting to land on a performance improvement plan, yet for many physicians, it becomes a disorienting reality. A PIP can feel...
An Insider’s Look at Addiction Medicine
26 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What if addiction isn’t about drugs, but about pain? Beneath compulsive behaviors often lie histories of trauma, anxiety, and unmet emotional needs,...
Are You Still Lit Up by the Core of Your Work?
12 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What is it about your work that still lights you up inside? At the center of every profession is a core - the reason we chose it in the first place, t...
The White Coat Investor | Avoiding the Money Mistakes That Sink Physicians
28 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Burnout isn’t just emotional, it’s financial. Many doctors put off financial planning until they’re deep in debt, stuck in lifestyle inflation, ...
From Fried to Fired Up | How One Doctor Rebuilt His Career
14 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Making a major career shift is never easy, especially when you've dedicated decades to a profession that has become part of your identity. The decisio...
A Guide to Skillful Death Communication with Alex Jabr, PhD
24 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Delivering the news of death is one of the hardest yet most overlooked skills in emergency medicine. Many learn by watching others or through trial an...
Your First Leadership Role? Start With These 8 Principles
10 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Leadership impacts everyone—whether you're steering an entire organization or simply navigating team dynamics. It’s an essential skill, yet it oft...
Active Shooter: Run, Hide, or Fight?
24 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Violence has a cadence, a rhythm that disrupts the normal flow of life. When an act of violence erupts, the first sign is often a sudden, unexplainabl...
The Upset Patient Protocol
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dealing with an angry, upset patient can feel like walking into an emotional storm. The frustration in the room is palpable, and even the most experie...
The Emergency Mindset: What Med School Got Wrong
27 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What defines the unique mindset of an emergency clinician? It’s not just the fast pace or the chaotic environment—it’s the deliberate, top-down ...
Nonverbal Communication | From facial expressions to tonal authority
13 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mastering nonverbal communication can be an elusive task, but the fact remains: what’s unsaid leaves a significant footprint in any interaction. Now...
Why You Can't Be Bad at Meditation
30 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What’s the biggest mistake people make about meditation? Thinking they’re bad at it. Why do they think this? Because they’ve tried meditating, a...
What's It Like To Be A Transgender Physician?
16 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It started in medical school, when I witnessed the stark reality of the hidden curriculum: a transgender patient referred to as "it" by an attending p...
Regression to the Mean Isn’t as Boring as it Sounds
02 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why do our minds seek explanations for everyday patterns, even attributing a cause where none may exist? "Regression to the mean" offers a statistical...
Five Ways to Connect With Patients
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Being a patient can feel like a lonely experience, especially when you sense your doctor is disconnected. A rushed or disengaged interaction can leave...
Mel Herbert on Mediocrity, Forgiveness, and the Cost of Holding Grudges
04 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Holding onto a grudge can feel strangely delicious, but that sense of righteousness often comes at a steep cost. In this episode, EMRAP founder Mel He...
The Fine Print of Crushing It | Small actions for big impact
21 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's often not the big power moves that change our lives; it's the small, intentional actions. By focusing on micro-skills, even the most ambitious go...
Registration for Awake + Aware 2025 is Now Open!
18 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ready to reset, recharge, and level up?Join us at our live event - Awake + Aware, a game-changing 3-day workshop from May 5-7 in Bend, Oregon. Learn h...
The Lowest Common Denominator of Communication
14 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How do you handle your authority being challenged under stress? Even minor communication missteps in high-pressure environments like medicine can crea...
How to be a Good Boss and Navigate a Bad One
07 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s hard to be a good boss and even harder to work under a bad one. This episode breaks down how to begin as a new leader with little to no experie...
Tax Secrets Every Doctor Should Know
23 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Navigating the complexities of taxes can be daunting, especially for medical professionals with unique financial situations. From maximizing retiremen...
The Mistake Most of Us Make When Work Feels Crappy
17 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A cautionary tale about how I mismanaged my own physician burnout for many years, doing the easy thing instead of the right thing. More coaching ...
Is Your Hospital Toxic? | The Critical Role of Psychological Safety
09 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Psychological safety is a crucial factor in creating a healthy and effective workplace. It involves a shared belief that the team is safe for interper...
What If Your Job Ended Tomorrow?
26 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What would you do if your job ended tomorrow? Even though you might want to say, “Take this job and shove it,” that won’t help build stepping st...
So You Want To Start A Business | Going all in on the side hustle
12 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many of us have ideas that could make a great business. Most of the ideas, however, never see the light of day. It can feel like a big leap from physi...
Are You Betting On Yourself? | How locus of control makes all the difference
29 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Success and happiness are often determined by where we place our focus: within ourselves or on external factors. Mastery lies in asking the right ques...
The Strange History of Medical Debt
15 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Medical debt has a strange and storied history in America. Stretching back to colonial times, physicians and patients alike have grappled with its har...
Impatience, Anger, and the Guilt of Abundance | Insights from the Dalai Lama’s Doctor
01 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's natural to feel guilt or shame when living in abundance while much of the world faces hardship. In this episode, Dr. Barry Kerzin, the Dalai Lama...
Are Non-Compete Clauses About To Be History? | And what to consider before accepting a signing bonus
17 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Non-compete clauses have plagued contracts for decades. It’s been analogous to asymmetric warfare, with employers holding the upper hand. All o...
Why Cultural Context Matters in Patient Care and Clinician Burnout
03 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Understanding cultural context in healthcare can seem overwhelming, especially when time and resources are limited. Why should clinicians invest energ...
Kicking The Can Down The Road | How to break up with deciding not to decide
20 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"Kicking the can down the road" is a common behavior that manifests in various ways, from delaying difficult patient decisions to avoiding complex tas...
How to Create a Team in 10 Seconds | Why time is not linear and every second not worth the same
01 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How do you build a team in the critical first moments of a crisis? The balance between rapid response and thoughtful planning is delicate, especially ...
Thinking Outside Your Retirement Account | working harder vs creating value
25 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Will you have enough money to retire? What does that even mean? In this pod, our guest physician financial coach, Elisa Chiang, M.D. Ph.D. breaks down...
Phantasia Kataleptike | The secret skill of Stoicism
11 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Phantasia Kataleptike, a lesser-known gem from Stoic philosophy, offers a transformative approach to life's challenges. This practice of 'objective re...
Making the trade | How to know when it's time to change careers
26 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever found yourself deep in “The Pit” where the mere thought of going back to work triggers an existential crisis? You wonder if your cur...
Default Mode Network vs. Task Positive Network | How our brains balance mind wandering and focused attention
06 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The interplay between the Default Mode Network (DMN) and the Task Positive Network (TPN) is crucial for our cognitive and emotional health. The DMN, a...
Moral Injury | The crossroads of conscience
22 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Moral injury, a term initially used in the military context during the Vietnam War to describe the psychological trauma soldiers experienced, has beco...
117. From Chaos to Control | Taming the tempest of task saturation
08 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There’s no getting around the surges and potential chaos of an emergency department. The good news is that these events are predictable, you know th...
116. Resistance | How to crack inertia
25 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We all have an internal drive that propels us forward, inspiring us to achieve and create. Yet, there's also an innate anti-drive, a subtle yet powerf...
115. Zero Warning | Scott Weingart on frameworks for no-notice critical patients
11 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When a critical patient lands on your department's doorstep without prior notice, even the most seasoned professionals can find themselves momentarily...
114. An Insider’s Guide to Medical Malpractice | Why the US system is so peculiar and how to navigate the morass
27 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The specter of medical malpractice lawsuits looms large for many clinicians, but according to Mark Brown, MD, JD, this anxiety may be disproportionate...
113. Understanding Healthy (and Unhealthy) Relationship Dynamics
13 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
None of us are born with the skills to build and sustain healthy relationships. These things are learned. In this episode, our guest is Ryan Cheney, a...
112. Pizza doesn’t work | An evidence-based intervention that reduced physician burnout and increased job satisfaction
30 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Burnout is not a foregone conclusion. While individual efforts play a pivotal role, continually battling systemic challenges can be exhausting. In thi...
111. Does Private Equity Belong in Medicine?
16 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What’s the impact of private equity’s increasingly large footprint in medicine? The results so far have not been promising. We dissect: what ...
110. A Strategy Mid-Shift Overwhelm | Conquer the deluge and get home on time
02 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this real-life coaching session, we walk Dr. Brit Long through building a framework to help navigate being overwhelmed during the middle part of an...
109. Is Your Identity Holding You Back?
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We wear many hats in life, and one of them can become disproportionately large: our professional identity. Don’t get me wrong, being a physician is ...
108. How To Not Argue With Reality | The paradox of accepting the present moment, even when seems really sh*tty
04 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It’s tempting to think of accepting the reality of the moment as acquiescence or giving up, but the opposite is true. Awareness and acceptance of wh...
107. The Power of Lightly Held Beliefs | Bitcoin enemas, cold exposure, and the law of speedy gains
14 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Investigative journalist Scott Carney is our guest as we dive into: Why you might want to consider getting in cold water, the technique for staying in...
106. The Drama Triangle | Rewriting the script for conflict and broken communication
24 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Drama Triangle identifies our roles in dysfunctional interpersonal dynamics. It can be a potent tool for understanding conflict and miscommunicati...
105. How Do You Decide When to Say Yes or No | Steps to develop a heuristic for decision making
10 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How do you make important decisions? Do you go by your gut, some sort of defined process, or perhaps a combination of the two? When we're offered an o...
104. Trapped in a World of Bad Advice | The tightrope between asking and telling with Edgar Schein, PhD
26 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Are you often quick to give advice? You're not alone, but sometimes our advice may not be as helpful as we think. In this podcast episode, we explore ...
103. How to Have a Nearly Perfect Shift | Reversing frustration and identifying the opposite outcome
05 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How often do you walk into work hoping it will be a good day or at least not a bad one? What if it didn’t matter what happened and the good/bad was ...
102. Ten Percent of a Bad Idea | Why your gut reaction may lead you astray
15 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we explore the 10% rule - the idea that in disagreement, the other person is at least 10% right. This is a tool for conflict abatemen...
101. Being In-Between | How to navigate big and small transitions
01 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Transitions, by their nature, involve ambiguity and disorientation. It's important to recognize that this zone is a natural part of the process of gro...
100. Listening to Understand versus Listening to Win | Strategies for quality listening and how to know when you've got it right
09 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hidden in plain sight is the most important procedure we do. Listening. And not just listening, but listening to understand. Measurable, improvable, a...
99. Unlocking the Secrets of Learning | Mental models of expertise, threaded cognition, and tactics for information retention
27 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever wondered what it takes to reach the highest level of mastery?Are you a medical student looking for ways to achieve excellence in medical...
98. How to recover from a horrible, rotten, no-good shift
13 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever had a day at work that was so difficult and draining, it felt like it took a toll on your entire being? You're not alone. Meet Dr. Sara ...
97. The Spock Retreat | Using logic to solve emotional situations (and how to stop it)
22 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Part of practicing medicine is telling patients 'no'. It’s never fun to do so and it can be a draining daily task. It doesn’t have to be that way!...
96.5 The curious case of Zithromax and viral respiratory infections
06 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When you have a patient who requests a Z-pack for what is almost certainly an acute viral respiratory infection, you probably respond internally or ex...
96. Compassion Fatigue
30 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Most of us are motivated to have compassion for those in need, but sometimes it can feel like the tank is running on empty. In this episode, wellness ...
95. A Disability Insurance Deep Dive | What to look for in a policy, why it's so often a fight with insurance companies, and how to collect
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Our guest today is Dr. Stephanie Pearson, founder and CEO of Pearson Ravitz, an insurance advisory firm that specializes in disability and life insura...
94. Why We Argue About Money | Finance advice and the value of a scarcity mindset
02 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Financial expert, raconteur, and finance CEO Vitaliy Katsenelson gives his approach to the scarcity mindset, personal finance advice that changed his...
93. Five Sleep Tools We've Tested and Like
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In a follow up to our episode on sleep, we break down five sleep tools we’ve tested, like, and are still using. For many of you, sleep c...
93. Feedback can be hard to give and harder to receive. Here are techniques to do both better.
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Feedback comes in many forms and oftentimes we aren’t even aware that it’s happening. In this episode, communication expert Lon Setnik, MD break...
92. Strategies for Shift Endurance
21 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s a tough time to practice medicine, which makes paying attention to self-care even more important. In this episode, we break down three specific...
91. Is this the end of note bloat? | Breaking down the 2023 documentation guidelines
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
28 years ago, the die was cast for how emergency department encounters were documented. Since then, we've had note bloat, click fatigue, and too...
90. The Dalai Lama’s Doctor Has a Prescription for You | The critical distinction between empathy and compassion
23 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Barry Kerzin, MD, the Dalai Lama’s personal physician, is back to dive deeper into: the difference between empathy and compassion, why compassion (v...
89. The Drunk Whisperer | Verbal de-escalation for the agitated, upset, and unruly
10 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Verbal de-escalation is a tool that can be learned by almost anyone. In this episode, we learn from two masters in the art of de-escalating those who ...
88. Peak Ending | How closings color our recollections and using that to our advantage at work
26 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What happens at the end of an event can disproportionately impact our perception and memory of it. In this episode, we investigate the research behind...
87. Availability Bias | Skewed risk assessments from a pervasive cognitive distortion
12 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We’re all guilty of it, basing decisions on the most recent event. It’s surely part of our wiring. The question is - what do we do about it? In th...
86. Mastering Workflow and Overwhelm | Task hierarchy, rate limiting steps, parallel processing, swarming, and the forgotten art of running the board
21 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Specific strategies to improve workflow and manage overwhelm during an emergency department shift.Guest Bio: Landon Mueller, MD is an emergency physic...
85. The Professional's Mindset | Embracing the pact and extreme ownership
15 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to act like a true professional? I’m not sure it’s been fully fleshed out in medicine but I’ve met those who are exemplars of ...
84. A Look Inside Ketamine Clinics (and how to start your own)
08 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
An inside look at what it takes to launch a ketamine clinic including first steps, navigating hurdles, potential pitfalls, which patients benefit from...
83. Recalibrating when it all falls apart | In real time strategies to reset during a calamity
25 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When you are at the lowest of lows after a devastating case, how do you recover in real-time? It’s certainly not easy and it takes a clear plan of a...
82. Letter to My Future Self | Proactively managing self-doubt
11 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever had a situation where afterward you repeatedly questioned the choice you made at the time? You chewed on it, perseverated on it, kept co...
81. Medical Ethics in the Heat of the Moment | Withdrawing and withholding care, delaying death, over-treatment, and the daughter from California,
27 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Medical Ethicist Abbott, MD walks us through her perspectives on myriad ethical quandaries including: How to approach discordance between a pati...
80. The False Assumption of Apologizing for Medical Mistakes
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There’s no denying that mistakes happen in medicine. When they do, what’s the next step? Business as usual is to deny and defend. Not only is this...
79. The Sleep Expert | Get to sleep and stay asleep
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sleep expert Mike Stone, MD joins us for a conversation about how to sleep well (and strategies to do it poorly!) We cover: how sleep cleans you...
78. I Was Unlucky, But You Frankly Suck | The fundamental attribution error
16 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
None of us are immune from the Fundamental Attribution Error - chalking up the behavior of others to their character rather than the situation in whic...
77. Tiny Habits | Anchors, micro moves, and upward scaling
02 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Habit change doesn’t have to be grand, spectacular, or a massive shift all at once. In fact, it may be better to start small, tiny, you might say. I...
76. Inner Criticism | How to keep a negative inner voice from taking over
18 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Chances are that you have a robust inner critic. You might even believe that self-criticism and castigation are the only ways to excel. As a high-leve...
75. Hot Debriefing | Processing events while you're still in the arena
03 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Finding time to debrief challenging cases can feel nearly impossible amidst the tumult and task saturation of medical practice. The reality, however, ...
74. Flipping the Narrative on Performance Metrics | Why we're bad at self assessment, crafting meaningful metrics, balancing data
21 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It doesn’t look like performance metrics are going away any time soon. So why not make them a feature instead of a bug? We discuss: reframing a...
73. The Value and Pitfalls of Signout Culture with Mike Weinstock, MD
06 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There is no doubt that handing over care of a patient to another clinician is potentially fraught with peril. After all, it’s in the transitional mo...
72. Navigating Uncertainty and Powering Down at the End of the Day with Dan Dworkis MD, PhD
21 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It can be hard enough managing critical tasks in the best of times, but when things start to go awry, you need to focus even more to keep moving in a ...
71. Designing Your Life | How an engineer recommends evaluating your work, health, love, and play
07 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A book I recommend to many coaching clients is “Designing Your Life” by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. I’ve even had a client use a several month ...
70. Real World Applications of Nonviolent Communication
27 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Case studies using Nonviolent Communication in real world situations including: how to give a proper compliment, perils of bringing up past issu...
69. A Primer on Nonviolent Communication
21 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Nonviolent Communication is one of the most powerful ways of speaking with people that I have ever come across. It eliminates useless strategies like ...