Dr. Megan Melo · The Physician Whisperer
I could explain my problem beautifully and change nothing about my Tuesday.
I’m Dr. Megan Melo. Family and Obesity Medicine, certified by The Menopause Society, sixteen years in and still seeing patients. Mom to a teenager and a tween, wife, recovering perfectionist.
I left employed practice because I wanted a life that fit me, and I wasn’t 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.
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 started coaching physicians. Then I found a role as an independent contractor in a small private practice, and built my practice and my brand there from the beginning, on the terms coaching had taught me to ask for. I started my weekly podcast, Ending Physician Overwhelm.
A lot of my patients are physicians. They come to me for their own care, and most of them aren’t prepared for someone to really listen. They apologize for taking my time. They say “I’ll try to keep it brief.”
I tell them to stop apologizing. Taking my time is the whole point of the appointment. Take up the space. Take care of yourself.
What I actually do
Some of the physicians 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 trained as a coach in 2021. Before that, as a facilitator in The Daring Way™ and as a Balint facilitator. Different names, same skill: hearing what a person is actually saying underneath what they’re saying.
I’ve been doing this with physicians since 2014, in what people insist on calling physician wellness. I’ve never liked the term. Resilience either. You’ve been resilient for years. That was never the missing piece.
I help you hold on to what you’re actually looking for. How you want to practice. How you want your days to feel. 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.
That means the inbox you answer at nine at night because nobody’s told you that you can stop. The colleague you keep covering for. The patient whose visit has never once ended on time.
It means saying out loud what actually matters to you, and then working out how to get closer to it. Taking the time off. Rebuilding a day into a shape you can live in. Charging what the work is worth, and setting limits kindly, including with the people you most want to help.
What I watch happen is that people start taking better care of themselves. They speak up. They stay in touch with how they’re actually feeling, instead of overriding it for the fourteenth time that day.
I listen the way only another physician can.
If something here is landing, the way to start is a call.
Twenty minutes, free, nothing to buy.
Certified coach, The Life Coach School, 2021. Trained as a facilitator in The Daring Way™, the work of Brené Brown, PhD, MSW. Trained as a Balint group facilitator.
