A Prescription for Overwhelm: Small Shifts, Big Wins with guest Dr. Santina Wheat

There’s a unique resilience you learn when a toddler has a full-scale meltdown in the grocery store, or when a perfect beach day is derailed by a sudden fever.

You learn to pivot. To breathe. To adapt.

The field of medicine, however, teaches you to be regimented, precise, and in control.

So, what if the secret to thriving was found not in a textbook, but in the nursery? What if the skills you learned as a mom are your greatest professional asset?

Today, Dr. Santina Wheat joins us to share her story. She’s a physician, a mom, and a coach who has walked this path. She gets real about her journey of overcoming physician burnout by removing the mask, setting small but mighty boundaries, and rediscovering her purpose.

This conversation is your guide to turning flexibility into a superpower and finding fulfillment in the beautiful, messy blend of medicine and motherhood.

 

Welcome Dr. Santina Wheat

Dr. Cindy: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and thank you for joining us today. I have a very special guest.

Dr. Santina Wheat is an academic family physician who finds great joy in helping others find their inner potential with a focus on belonging and community and improving access and education.

She serves as a program director for the McGaw Northwestern Family Medicine Residency at Delnor, and on the boards of several different organizations.

Additionally, as a dedicated career and life coach. She specializes in helping physicians and other healthcare workers overcome burnout and reignite their passion for their profession.

Through personalized coaching, she empowers them to rediscover their purpose, cultivate balance, and reclaim joy in their careers and personal lives.

She is also a wife and mother of two girls.

Welcome Dr. Wheat.

 

Dr. Wheat’s Ideal Day Off from Medicine

Dr. Wheat: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so [00:01:00] glad to be here today.

Dr. Cindy: Can I ask you first how old your girls are now?

Dr. Wheat: Yes. I have a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old girl, so we are right in the thick of it.

Dr. Cindy: Yes, I remember those years. My initial question was just really just meant to be more lighthearted, kind of as an icebreaker.

If your calendar magically cleared for a full day, and you didn’t have to be productive in any way. How would you spend that day?

Dr. Wheat: My favorite thing to do is to sit at a pool that is next to a beach because I like to see the beach, but I don’t always love the sand and sit, just sit there and read all day long.

And the new joy of that is that my oldest, my 13-year-old, also really likes that. So, I would love for her to be sitting next to me reading similar books so that we can stop and chat in the middle and have conversations about it.

Dr. Cindy: What genre of books would you be reading?

Dr. Wheat: We do a lot of fantasy books and my [00:02:00] daughter always tells me that I read romantic more often.

But I have really enjoyed – we’ve done like the Percy Jackson series and some other books where we’ve read them at the same time, then be able to chat through them, over the years. So anything where we can do that is always fun.

Dr. Cindy: Yeah. Oh, that sounds like having a special bond and in a beautiful place. That sounds like an amazing day.

Dr. Wheat: I always try to do that when we go on vacation no matter what. I’m looking forward to that in the near future.

 

Balancing Roles as a Physician and a Mom

Dr. Cindy: Very nice. Okay, so now on to, I guess, more serious issues. I would first like to talk about this invisible load that women carry when they’re both a physician leader and a mom.

Many women listening today hold both of those roles. What have you learned, in your experience, how those roles intersect and sometimes clash or blend?

Dr. Wheat: I have learned that when I was holding this [00:03:00] invisible load for a long time, I felt like the way that I had to deal with it was to just hold everything inside that I had to have that mask on and show up as always professional.

I am a quiet, serious person by nature, but I think that I probably amped that up more than I needed to. And what that meant was neither my team nor my children were really getting to know who I was or understanding how I thought about things and how I could move forward.

I felt like I got so good at holding everything in that I actually started watching my girls have these responses where they didn’t know how I was going to respond to them. I couldn’t understand because I thought I was just being me.

And I was doing the same thing at work. People didn’t necessarily know how to approach me because they never saw [00:04:00] that additional piece.

They never saw, I’ll say that human piece, if you will.

It really came down to having to constantly be thinking about, okay, what is this next schedule? What do we have to do for this event? How am I gonna put all these puzzle pieces together? How am I going to get this to-do list done?

One of the things that I really learned along the way was that it was better for everyone just to see what I was experiencing.

And so, I started doing a better job at work of sort of saying, you know what? I am really worried about my kids today. Can we have this conversation tomorrow? I just need quiet focus time to get these things done, and I will have more space to have this conversation tomorrow.

At home I started telling my kids about my day at work. I thought that they didn’t need to hear that, but once I started sharing with them, “Oh, mom just had a really difficult day.”

I had a difficult patient encounter, or one of my patients is really sick, or [00:05:00] even as a leader.

I had a difficult conversation with one of my teammates. I had to tell them that I needed them to perform in a way that they weren’t performing. It was always in sort of easy conversation. But then my girls started asking questions about it and they started getting to see sort of how I was thinking about things.

And I found that just by letting some of that go, just by providing more information in both places, that it really changed everything. And it even opened the door for my girls to understand more about what my job looks like and if that would be something that they would want to do in the future.

Dr. Cindy: So, you have learned to basically remove the mask,

Dr. Wheat: Yes.

Dr. Cindy: Reveal yourself to both the people at work and at home.

Dr. Wheat: And it’s so hard to do because I feel like in medicine, we are taught that you just need to show up and be great for everybody. You’re taught not to break down anywhere.

And [00:06:00] I think that teaching has not helped us very much. It might’ve helped us initially, but it has not helped us stay well throughout.

Dr. Cindy: Right. Yes, I agree. I have also learned to put on kind of a false front. And that doesn’t work. It’s not sustainable. So, I hear what you’re saying.

 

Lessons from Parenthood for a Doctor Mom

Dr. Cindy: Now focusing on your mom role . What is something you’ve learned from being a mom that you bring into your professional world? How does that part cross over?

Dr. Wheat: I think that the biggest thing I ever learned from being a mom was being flexible and learning to sort of plan for, I don’t want to say the negative outcomes, but planning for the things to go wrong.

There’s nothing like when you have babies or toddlers and you have all those plans to go someplace, and your kiddo has a blowout, right?

Every parent has experienced that and [00:07:00] you learn to plan for that. Oh, I’m going to have the extra set of clothes and the extra diapers, or I need to make sure I have wipes with me at all times.

You learn to be prepared for those. And you learn that maybe I’m going to schedule this amazing fun day and something’s going to go wrong. My kid’s going to get a fever they’re going to have a temper tantrum and that thing is just not going to work. Or they’re not going to love it as much as I thought they would.

You have to be able to pivot and adjust.

That lesson as a parent has really been helpful for me at work too. Because I’ve been able to take that flexibility and pivot mentality for when something is changing in medicine for when a patient throws my day off because all of a sudden, they need something from me that I wasn’t anticipating.

It allows me to have that improved, I’ll say, resilience, to be able to pivot and push somewhere else. [00:08:00]

This was definitely a skill I did not have before I had kids. I was very regimented and specific, and I do think that’s part of why I ultimately went through burnout because I was trying to still do that even though I was learning to be flexible at home.

And so, I have really taken that lesson of flexibility and never knowing what’s going to happen into work and having that acceptance. It has made being a physician, it has made being a teacher and being a leader, so much more manageable and enjoyable because those little upsets don’t throw you off quite as much.

Dr. Cindy: The training in medicine really is regimented, like you say.

Dr. Wheat: Yes.

Dr. Cindy: But parenthood teaches you to go with the flow.

Dr. Wheat: It does. Yeah. And I was really bad at it for a really long time. And I’m just learning how to really lean into that in every space – how to manage the disappointments and how to be really excited about the things that we don’t [00:09:00] expect.

I’ve taken that with me into my job and it’s really changed my outlook and how I teach and how I encourage my team to be.

 

Setting Boundaries as a Physician Leader

Dr. Cindy: Now on to your role as a physician leader, and you mentioned the idea of you’re kind of being everything to everybody, how can you start setting boundaries without feeling guilt and fear?

If you would like to, you can share a personal boundary you have set at work and how that has helped your energy and wellbeing.

Dr. Wheat: Yeah.

When I first started being a leader, I was really bad at setting boundaries. I thought that to be a good leader, I had to become available at all times and to everyone. And that meant that I was saying yes to everything, and I was answering calls at all hours, and I just really wasn’t allowing myself to take care of myself and really be there for my kids.

I was on trips to Disney, answering phone [00:10:00] calls in the middle of the trips, and that was just sort of normal in our family for a while.

Then one day I set a really small boundary. I used Do Not Disturb on my phone, and so somebody couldn’t call me between the hours of 10:00 and 6:00.

That first little boundary, it sounds so silly and so simple, but it was a game changer for me because what was happening was, I had taught people that they could interrupt anything that I was doing.

When I did that, I told everybody that I was doing it, that I was putting in this boundary and that if it was really an emergency that they had to call twice so that it could break through. . And most often it wasn’t an emergency, it was just that they needed to send a message while they were thinking of it, or I’d get a text while they were thinking of it.

And by having that Do Not Disturb, I was still able to see it when I got up in the morning. I was still able to handle it fairly quickly, [00:11:00] but I was also able to do it with intentionality and thought because I wasn’t waking up in the middle of the night for these conversations.

I’ll say it was usually residents that were calling me in the middle of the night just because they were on the shift or something. It wasn’t like they were trying, to break my boundaries.

So, I felt so much better from that little one that that was what I sort of took through the rest of my day. I ended up using software to help build my schedule so that people could build my schedule, and it blocked out hours from when they could call me.

It meant that they always knew how to get ahold of me. And it meant that I also just had certain times when they were able to get ahold of me and I could block when I had to show up for my kids. Or I could block when I had an important meeting, or I needed to have focus time.

Saying all of this to say that it doesn’t feel bad to provide boundaries when people are reaching out to you, when there’s clear expectations of how they [00:12:00] can also get ahold of you.

For me, what this really meant was it was providing the expectations and providing the limits., And no one has responded so far negatively to this.

If there’s really something that they’re like, I can’t find any time with you, then they’ll reach out and then we have that conversation. But it was that the first, Do Not Disturb and then the schedule.

That meant that I was able to really be present with my kids when I needed to, and I was able to really be present for work when I needed to be.

Those little things meant that I could add in additional boundaries. Then I felt better about only checking charts once a day when I wasn’t clinical that day. And I felt better about putting in different boundaries along the way of, I’m only going to read your proposal if you get it to me by this date, if you want my feedback.

I was able to increasingly add expectations. I think that when I first started hearing about [00:13:00] wellbeing, I thought it meant you had to go from like zero to 180. But what I have really found, and I think you have too, is that sometimes it’s just the small, the small little pieces.

It’s sometimes the things that take 30 to 60 seconds that make a big difference.

None of these changes that I’m seeing are life altering in how they sound, but they really were life altering because it was the small things that really mattered.

Dr. Cindy: Right.

I’ve seen that too. The small things add up to big results.

I think all these boundaries that you’re setting show respect for yourself and your time, but also respect for other people too.

If they want to reach you and you’re not going to be available, and you didn’t tell them ahead of time of the expectations, then that wouldn’t be showing respect. But you have.

You’ve made it very clear to everybody, this is how it’s going to be and this is just the way of life. I think that’s highly respectful of both your time and their time.

I like the way you set that up.

Dr. Wheat: And it doesn’t feel [00:14:00] like saying no in that way because it means that when I am able to chat with them, they know they have my full attention. And so that is the other piece. It’s the, I am telling them that this is how I have the most capacity to give you my full energy.

Dr. Cindy: That’s helped you at home too, because now you have time that you’re fully devoted to your kids.

Dr. Wheat: It absolutely has. My girls know that, there’s times that I’m home and I have meetings, since I am sort of hybrid in my role and they also know that we go and get stuff done together.

Like now have more time where I go to the slime museum with my youngest. My oldest likes to go to the amusement park – we have a Six Flags near us. We will go and do that.

There are these dedicated windows where I have space for that. Whereas before I didn’t feel possible.

 

How Dr. Wheat overcame Burnout

Dr. Cindy: Right. Wonderful. Now you referred to your burnout. Can you just briefly tell us a little about that? How did you recognize that and [00:15:00] how did you get through it?

Dr. Wheat: I will say that it took me way too long to recognize that I was in burnout and some of this had to do with all that was going on in my life.

I had older parents growing up, and so I had parents who were sick at a younger age than most of my friends and colleagues did. I was sort of experiencing that sandwich generation at a younger stage in my career than most of my peers.

I was working really hard. I had toddlers. My husband has always had a very busy and stressful job as well, and so we sort of had a household that was kind of always running.

And then my mom got really sick and I spent a year going in and out of taking phone calls when I was in the hospital room with her and fighting for her care and showing up every day.

At the time, the way that [00:16:00] my vacation and sick time worked was, it was all one pot. So, I always felt like I didn’t have the ability to not show up at work.

I didn’t have the ability to stay with her always and not take care of work because I was always worried about this, “well, I need that time in case things get worse.” That was just sort of the way my brain was working about it. And I didn’t know how to get out of that.

In hindsight, it really wasn’t that I couldn’t have taken time. Some of that was just my own understanding of the world and my own fear. My company did really provide adequate time. I just was not using it very well.

Then after my mom passed, I just sort of felt like I was in this role where I was stuck and I wasn’t growing anymore, and I wasn’t sure that I was loving medicine.

I did all the things that you’re supposed to do. I did the informational interviews. I went in and talked to other people about different jobs, and I [00:17:00] ended up taking a different role within my organization, but I still wasn’t really okay.

And then COVID happened, so that didn’t help. We all experienced all of the transitions that were COVID, and that’s when I was a program director.

I was in a brand new role as a program director, during COVID and I just reached this point where I felt numb, like I was showing up to work. I wasn’t loving it. I was snapping with my kids and actually when you asked ‘what was the thing that really showed it,’ it was how I was interacting with my family.

That was the difference.

That was when I realized, as I was mentioning before, that my kids would say something to me and my oldest would be like, “Well, aren’t you mad mom?” And I was like, well, why would I be mad about that? She had learned that I was sometimes snapping for no reason and that was really it.

There was obviously grief in there too, and I had gotten grief counseling and went through some of that. But there was definitely the burnout also.

[00:18:00] At that time, I tried to look at all the different things that were available, but I felt like most of the people that were talking about burnout, were talking about leaving medicine altogether.

I think that’s a great choice for some people. But for me, I felt like I had done all my schooling and all of this energy to get to this position. And the idea of just leaving this thing that I’d worked so hard for did not feel right in the pit of my stomach.

I was looking for ways to help me figure out how to do better and stay at work and stay at work full-time and also be present for my kids.

I also didn’t really want to go part-time, because we want to make sure we have college money for our kids and enjoy vacations. I want to make sure we have all those things. So, I really was motivated to figure out how can I do this and work full time and be a present mom.

I won’t say that I’m perfect now. There are definitely still bad days, but I was able to start by just reconnecting [00:19:00] with who I am and what my purpose is.

I actually made my own personal mission statement to help me make decisions. I started with those boundaries that I mentioned.

That was when I started the Do Not Disturb. And that one little step helped a whole lot.

I really started thinking about what was it that I needed to grow? What was it that I needed to find joy and every decision that I made to move forward for my career to make decisions for our family really came back down to that. And now that I align those steps with it, it is so much easier to feel happy and fulfilled both at home and at work.

So it’s possible, and these were all little things. I didn’t make huge, massive changes. Ultimately, I did leave my role and go into a different one. I’m a program director at a different location now, and I am so happy. And some of it has to do with the support that I have at work. But really looking for those things was important to me and understanding what I needed.

Dr. Cindy: You created this [00:20:00] new life where you’ve found joy.

Dr. Wheat: Yes.

Dr. Cindy: And I can see it when I look at you. You do look very comfortable and happy.

Dr. Wheat: And it’s funny because I wasn’t that person before.

 

The Power of Gratitude in Medicine and at Home

Dr. Cindy: I hear that. I often talk about my present self, my past self, and my future self as three different people because they kind of are.

If you could go back to your past self in the middle of that burnout, right when you’re recognizing it and you could whisper something in her ear, what would that be?

Dr. Wheat: I think that the biggest thing that I would’ve said to that self before I was really making changes was to use gratitude.

I think that was the one that was the most surprising for me., There were people around me that were great about gratitude that said thank you all the time, and in my brain I thought it was a bit performative., And I didn’t really understand. But then I also realized that they were happier all the time.

[00:21:00] There was a day that someone sent me an email sort of out of the blue, and she was someone that I had previously been the supervisor for and was no longer supervising. And she sent me an email, and she was like, I just want you to know how much some of the things that you taught me really helped me align my values with my job.

It was just lovely. It was a really bad day, and that email just came at the perfect time. And that’s how I responded. I said, “I can’t tell you how much I needed to hear that today.”

Receiving that email and also being able to thank her for that was a little bit of a changing point for me.

So, I realized that when I started having gratitude everywhere: when I had gratitude for being able to spend the time with my kids, when I had gratitude for my teammates doing things that made [00:22:00] my life easier or doing their job, which sometimes not everybody does, thanking them for showing up and doing what was needed.

Some people say, oh, it’s just my job. And that might be true, but not everybody does their job. When I was able to start sharing that, it really allowed my perspective to shift a bit more.

It allowed me to also be able to lean in and enjoy those moments. So, if I could have started doing that just a little bit sooner, I feel like I probably would’ve felt better sooner.

But that’s okay also because I’m thankful that I understand it now and have been able to feel the benefits of it and see the difference of how when I wasn’t using it more versus how I’m using it now.

Dr. Cindy: Right. And you understand it now and now you’re teaching other people about it, so maybe they will learn a little bit sooner.

Dr. Wheat: I hope so.

Dr. Cindy: And that’s the whole point, having these discussions is to share our experience so other people can learn from our experiences.

So, [00:23:00] just a bit of closing advice for the listeners today. If a physician mom out there is struggling, what is one small shift – and you’ve spoken a lot about it just takes small little changes to make a big impact. What would be one small thing she could do this week to feel more aligned with her values and her priorities?

 

Final Advice for Moms in Medicine

Dr. Wheat: I think this is, this is small, but it isn’t. And that is to actually sit down and think about what your values are and what is your purpose.

The reason why I think that this is important is what your purpose and values were 10 years ago or before you had children is probably a little bit different than what it is today.

If you were still pushing for that career or that goal and it’s not actually what you want inside anymore, then you’re pushing for a goal that doesn’t help so much.

And maybe you are pushing for the right goal, [00:24:00] but if you can center yourself on what that purpose and values are and know that what you’re working for is in line with that goal, then every decision that you’re making, every action that you take feels so much better because you know where it’s headed.

It’s just like when you do the difficult things with your kids, like when you take your kids to the doctors and you go through the different things that they need in order to be healthy. It might not be easy in the moment, but it helps them in the long run, and you feel okay doing it because you see what the long piece is.

If you can think about it like that for yourself, then each of those hard days becomes a little bit easier.

Dr. Cindy: Right. So, it’s like keeping your eye on the horizon.

Dr. Wheat: Absolutely.

Dr. Cindy: This week they can decide, what is it that really matters, and where am I headed?

Dr. Wheat: Yeah.

I think so many of us, I have run into medicine, start with a really clear picture of what that is. And somewhere it [00:25:00] gets lost and you just work so hard. You sleep so little, and you lose that. And when you can recenter it, it just helps so much.

Dr. Cindy: Yes. I agree so much. Dr. Wheat, you have had so many great words of wisdom. I know you help women physicians, but also people in healthcare. If they want to reach out to you, how can they best reach you?

Dr. Wheat: It is fairly easy to find me.

I have a website that is www.santinowheat.com and there you can send me an email. You can see some of my blog posts and you can see some of the additional places that I’m speaking or things that I offer.

You’re also welcome to follow me on social media. You can follow me on LinkedIn with my name and on Instagram @Dr.TinaWheat.

Dr. Cindy: Got it. Wonderful.

I checked out your [00:26:00] website. You have a lot of things that you’ve written, and I’m looking forward to reading those. I love everything that you’re saying and the depth that you go in with, each topic.

Thank you. I really appreciate you being here today, being my guest and just so eloquently talking about issues that many people are dealing with.

Dr. Wheat: Thank you so much for having me, and I really appreciate all you are doing for particularly Moms in medicine. We all need a tribe.

Dr. Cindy: Thank you so much.

 

Links for Dr. Wheat:

Freebie: https://subscribepage.io/3bXosN

Pathway From Chaos to Calm Masterclass

Free Purpose and Priorities Workbook

Schedule a Chaos to Calm Strategy Call

www.santinawheat.com

Don’t forget to join me next week for another dose of support and inspiration. Until then, take care of yourselves, and take care of those who matter most.

It’s Time to Take Control and Thrive!