Humans Leading

You Don’t Have to Get Used to It: Starting My Journey to Wellness Leadership

• Dr. Jillian Bybee • Season 1 • Episode 16

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After an extended break from the podcast, Dr. Bybee returns with a special episode to share a personal story that shaped her career path in physician well-being. 

This story from her early career reveals how confronting toxic medical culture led her to create the support systems she desperately needed during her own training.

It also highlights how she:
• Developed from personal advocate to Wellness Director supporting 400+ trainees annually
• Created the support system she wished existed during her own training
• Emphasized that trauma exposure should never be normalized in medicine
• Advocated for processing experiences rather than suppressing them

If you're looking to get started on transforming your own work environment, this is your podcast. Small steps are the first steps to transformation.

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If you’re ready to kickstart your journey (or your team's journey) to a less stressed life, I’m ready to help you! You can get in touch about 1:1 coaching or inviting me to facilitate a workshop for your group, get in touch via my website.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to Humans Leading, a podcast aimed at restoring the well-being and joy of high achievers who have burned out on their way to success. I'm Dr Jillian Bybee, a pediatric critical care medicine physician, medical educator, coach and leader in well-being and professional development. I use my personal experience with burnout recovery to help others do the same. This podcast is for anyone looking to move beyond hustle culture in order to find true fulfillment and well-being. In each episode, I share practical solutions on a variety of topics, including limiting beliefs, stress management, leadership, well-being and more. If you're looking to feel less stuck and redefine what a successful life looks like for you, this is your podcast. Come join me. Hi and welcome back to the Humans Leading Podcast, a podcast where we talk about ways to live less stressed, more satisfying lives. If you're just joining me, I'm Dr Jillian Bybee, a pediatric, icu physician, toddler, mom, coach and creative who loves to help ambitious people get out of the cycle of overwhelm and live the lives they truly want. You may have noticed that we've been on extended break from this podcast since last fall, which was unplanned and which I'll address in an upcoming first episode of the second season. But before we get to that episode, I wanted to bring you something a little bit different this week. This week I'm bringing a story that I submitted to a story slam at a medical conference last fall. Ultimately it wasn't accepted because there were so many other amazing submissions, but I still think it's a story worth telling, so I decided to share it here with all of you. It's the beginning of the academic year in medicine, which means that a lot of new physicians in training have just joined us. Many of them are feeling excited and scared about what lies ahead, and rightly so. Being a physician is not easy, and medical training brings a lot of difficult experiences with it. My own experience of depression and burnout when I was in training have shaped who I am as a person and the work that I now do as a leader to help individuals and organizations with well-being and career satisfaction. I'm often asked how I got started in this work, so this week I'm bringing you part of that story I hope you enjoy. This is we Don't Get Used to it by Jillian Bybee.

Speaker 1:

As a first-year pediatric ICU attending, I experienced what is still one of the most difficult codes that I've ever been a part of. The patient decompensated quickly after her admission and a code was called. Shortly after that. As the team leader, I led a prolonged resuscitation that ultimately resulted in ECMO cannulation. I left work that day super late and I felt no hope that the patient would make it through the night, as I suspected. The patient subsequently died after the team withdrew mechanical support overnight.

Speaker 1:

During morning sign out the following day I was still feeling the lingering chaos from the day before. I had returned home late and not slept well. The first year fellow who joined us for sign out hadn't slept at all during his call and, horribly, he had had a similar situation on his last call a few days prior. During our sign out I noticed that the fellow looked a bit stricken and not like himself. Instead he looked like a shadow person just going through the motions until it was time to go home and finally sleep. I remembered this ghost person feeling well, having only been a fellow. A short time before.

Speaker 1:

After sign-out was over and he left the room, I asked the other attendings what they thought about his mental state and if someone should check on him or if he should have a day off or something. And that's when one of them said what is still one of the most ridiculous things that I've ever heard uttered in the PICU. He'll just have to get used to it. I found myself instantly triggered and my first instinct was to fight. But instead I took a breath and I tried to push down my indignation and I asked that person, who had 20-plus years of experience, when the last time it was in his career when he'd had two traumatic events in close proximity to one another. That person happened to be my boss. The other attending in the room stared at me with his mouth slightly agape, waiting to see what happened next. My boss stared at me in stunned silence before shrugging no-transcript. We don't sweep things under the rug anymore and pretend that they're fine when we know that they aren't. He's never experienced anything like this, I said. I went on to remind my boss and the other attending that I wasn't asking them to do the checking, only that someone should do it. Based on the response I got, it didn't seem like anyone else was going to do the checking, so I made it my job and followed up later.

Speaker 1:

I think this moment provoked such rage in me because I can remember so many traumatic moments in my own picky fellowship training where no one checked on me. We all pretended we were fine, ignoring all the signs to the contrary in ourselves and everyone around us. And eventually this unprocessed trauma and stress resulted in pretty significant dysfunction for me. I experienced debilitating somatic symptoms like dizziness, nausea and migraines. There were long periods where I had to lie down on the floor in order to stop the room from spinning. I couldn't make any progress on my research and I felt like I was physically stuck in the mud.

Speaker 1:

Ultimately, when I couldn't pretend I was fine anymore, I diagnosed myself with depression. It took a bit of time, but I finally told my fellowship director that I thought I had depression and she was supportive. She didn't seem to judge me like I was worried about, and she encouraged me to get help. However, I had to find all the resources myself. I'm not really sure if we had an employee assistance program at our hospital or if we did, I had no idea about it.

Speaker 1:

In order to find a therapist, I googled new patients, chicago depression and found someone who was reasonably close to my training hospital. I waited weeks for an appointment and then I waited more so that I could get referred to a psychiatrist for medication. I didn't share my experience with therapy or taking medication with most of the people in my hospital. Some of that because was because I was worried I would be judged, and some of that was because I felt so much shame and like I was a complete failure. I had no idea that up to a third of trainees experienced depressive symptoms, know they aren't alone or a failure or anything other than an amazing, intelligent human being doing wonderful work in medicine and who experiences some of the most difficult and traumatic things as a result of the career they've chosen.

Speaker 1:

I also let them know that it's necessary to reach out for and learn to accept help and to give help to other people who are struggling. It's necessary to check on one another, especially your strong friends. I'm happy to say that my workplace has been nothing but receptive to the not-so-gentle nudging I've done to help create a culture of wellness in our PICU and beyond. I'm so proud that over the last seven years I've grown from a small check-in practice in our fellowship program to become the wellness director of graduate medical education for my organization, where I get to help support 400 plus trainees each year through resources and education for their program leadership.

Speaker 1:

I try to be the person I needed when I was a fellow. Every time one of the trainees comes back to tell me how helpful it was to utilize the resources they needed when they were struggling, it only makes me to push harder with this message. It is never normal to get used to the traumatic deaths of anyone, let alone children, and our brains weren't built to hold it all in. What we can get used to is needing to find ways to process and letting go of the things that we see in order to continue to show up and provide amazing care at work and to be able to be present and well in our own lives.

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Dr. Jillian Bybee

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