I built the thing I wish someone had handed me.

I'm Dr. Megan Melo. Family and Obesity Medicine, certified by The Menopause Society. Sixteen years in, mom to a teenager and a tween, wife, recovering perfectionist.

I left employed practice because I wanted a life that fit me, and I was not going to get one by waiting for medicine to offer it.

Before I left, I spent years trying to fix myself.

Self-help books. Passive courses. Therapy, which I would recommend to any physician and still would.

All of it helped. None of it had me setting a boundary and keeping it. None of it had me making a career decision that actually fit me. I could understand my problem beautifully and change nothing about my Tuesday.

Coaching was the thing that moved me. It kept asking what I actually wanted until I said it out loud, and then it would not let me unsay it.

So I built the version I had wanted.

I found a role as an independent contractor in a small private practice, and built my practice and my brand there from the beginning. I started coaching physicians. I started a podcast, Ending Physician Overwhelm, which comes out on Tuesdays.

A lot of my patients are physicians. They come to me for their own care, and most of them are not prepared for someone to really listen. They apologize for taking my time. They say "I'll try to keep it brief."

They don't have to be.

What I actually do

Some of the people I work with are building something of their own. Some are staying exactly where they are and changing the terms.

Either way, the hard part is rarely the clinical part. The hard part is letting yourself want it, and then saying it out loud to somebody.

I'm not a business coach, and I'm not a therapist. I'm something in the middle.

I help you hold on to what you're actually looking for. How you want to practice. How you want to spend your time. What it looks like to live into your values. And I help you stay in the discomfort of changing a habit long enough for the habit to change.

I help physicians believe in their own magic, and decide to align their lives with what they actually value.

That means raising a rate you have not raised. Going back to a contract you never renegotiated. Saying the thing you have not said, to the person you have not said it to. Taking a Tuesday back.

What I watch happen is that people start taking better care of themselves. They speak up. They stay in touch with how they are actually feeling, instead of overriding it for the fourteenth time that day.

I listen the way only another physician can.