How to Find Balance as a Doctor Mom with guest, Sarah Slater, DNP

Balance takes effort, plain and simple.

It’s something you build, one choice at a time. And for many women in medicine, the blueprint they were handed never included room for school drop-offs, sick days, or space to breathe.

Today, I’m talking with Dr. Sarah Slater, a pediatric nurse practitioner and founder of Balanced Kids, who has reimagined her career so she can show up fully for her patients and her family.

We discuss the real possibility of building a practice around your values and the small shifts and decisions that will make a big difference.

This is what a true work-life balance for doctor moms can look like, without burning out or giving up what you love.

If you’ve been craving more breathing room in your work and your life, this one’s for you.

Dr. Cindy: Hi everyone. Welcome to Inspired Mom MD’s podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Cindy Van Praag, and I have a very special guest today and I’m going to read a quick bio to introduce her before, before I give her the floor.

Today I am joined by Dr. Sarah Slater. She’s a pediatric nurse practitioner, a mom of two, a founder of Balanced Kids, which is a practice that helps families thrive through integrative and whole person care.

She has experience in both top academic hospitals and small community settings. Sarah brings a rich perspective to how we support not just children, but also whole families and in ways that feel personalized and integrative and rooted in connection.

I’m so excited to talk to her about what inspired her practice shift [00:01:00] into building her own private practice and what the transition was really like and how she’s finding a sense of balance today, both as a healthcare provider and a mom.

Welcome Dr. Slater.

Dr. Slater: Thank you. I’m excited to be talking today.

Dr. Cindy: My first question is just a lighthearted icebreaker question. If your kids—and they’re young, you can tell us the ages too – if they were in charge of dinner every night, what would you be eating on repeat?

Dr. Slater: My son Odin, he’s five, very picky and he loves his salami sandwiches and maybe tater tots. And my daughter Reya is three and she just loves tater tots dipped in ranch. So, I would probably say just tater tots. And then of course anything sugar.

Dr. Cindy: Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Slater: Yeah.

Dr. Cindy: I don’t know that they’ll grow out of that. My[00:02:00] kids still like tater tots and they’re 16 and 18. So you might be in for a lifelong of tater tots!

Dr. Slater: Yeah. I mean, I like them too, but they weren’t a staple in my diet until my kids made it.

Discovering a Pediatric Passion: Sarah Slater, DNP’s Story

Dr. Cindy: Right. Okay. So, let’s turn to more of your career and the balance that you’ve created for yourself. Every meaningful shift in someone’s career or life path has a backstory, and there’s often this moment where that kind of changes things for you.

Let’s talk about the beginning of what maybe your shift was. Can you go back a little bit and first share what inspired you to pursue pediatrics, and how did your passion for pediatrics evolve?

Dr. Slater: I have always worked in pediatrics, and when I was in nursing school, you know, you kind of get to the point where you’re trying to figure out what you want your first job to be like, do you [00:03:00] want labor and delivery or pediatrics or med-surg?

And I struggled with it for a while, but I was reflecting on the type of work I had done up until that point, and I realized every single job I had had to do with children – whether I was teaching them how to swim, babysitting or, I at one point worked as a paraprofessional basically for special needs kids.

When I made that connection, it made me feel very confident that hey, I enjoy working with kids. So that was the avenue I pursued and I’ve been in pediatrics ever since and I’m grateful.

How Healthcare Systems Fail Families, and What We Can Do

Dr. Cindy: Now you’ve worked in many different settings. I mentioned a bit ago in academic hospitals and small settings.

What patterns did you start noticing in those systems that made you feel that something was kind of missing?

Dr. Slater: Yeah, so it’s [00:04:00] funny because it doesn’t matter what type of setting you’re in, whether it’s large, small academic or not. And what I found is that across the board, health visits are rushed.

Providers are overwhelmed and burnt out, and I think both sides, both the provider and the family, is left feeling the disconnect.

It doesn’t matter if you’re getting good healthcare or not, that disconnect of personalized care is missing and I think healthcare is personal.

It’s extremely personal. We’re talking about some of the most intimate details of our lives, just willy-nilly with our provider. Let’s just, let’s make it feel personal too.

And so I think that is what I realized what was missing and what I want to be different about my practice Balanced Kids, is I want to bring that personalized healthcare back [00:05:00] to the patient’s family, and to the provider as well, and just make it feel holistic.

Dr. Cindy: That’s so interesting that you mentioned that patients may be getting the utmost, perfect care, but the perception is that they’re not because that connection is missing.

Dr. Slater: Yeah.

Dr. Cindy: And so, the connection is the missing piece so that people realize they are getting the quality care.

Dr. Slater: Yeah, because I’ve definitely worked in, as we mentioned, I worked in both settings.

I worked in a very small community, a hospital that was like a 10-bed pediatric unit. And I could say sometimes the care there was not the best, but if you can provide that personal connection, that can help make it feel a little better for the family.

Or even in, I hope I’m saying this the right way too, even in larger institutions where they may be world renowned for their healthcare, you might be getting the absolute best [00:06:00] prescriptions, the best interventions, whether it’s preventative or primary treatments.

But that doesn’t mean that feeling of personalized care is there and that impacts satisfaction and whether or not you’re going to stay with that provider in the long term.

Dr. Cindy: Hmm, that’s true. And those long-term connections are so valuable.

Dr. Slater: Yeah, they are. They are.

Creating Work-Life Balance Through Private Practice in Pediatrics

Dr. Cindy: What was the final nudge?  You knew what the problem was. You knew what was missing and what you could add. What was it? What was that pivot point that made you pick your own practice?

Dr. Slater: Ultimately, I think the final nudge was a crossroads of having a strong passion for integrative pediatric care intersecting with frustration. Frustration with the system.

Frustration with feeling overbooked or rushed or not having time or even being met. I worked [00:07:00] in pediatric oncology and I loved providing that integrative side because that allows families to feel empowered. It’s something that they often get to take the lead on and you know that area of care.

I would say most other healthcare professionals are not always warmly welcomed, and it’s not that they don’t want to include it or anything like that. When I say not warmly welcomed, I think that there’s less supportive evidence for it. Or maybe you have to go researching for it a lot more. And our healthcare systems are simply not built to allow for the inclusion of that type of care.

And so I eventually got to the point where I really have become passionate about providing this care. You know, I completed the IHELP program through Andrew Weil and really learned how integrative care can be so [00:08:00] essential and so empowering for families.

It just got to a point where I was like, I can choose. I’m early in my career. I can choose if I want to remain in a healthcare system where I am serving the system, or if I want to build my own practice and create the type of practice that deeply aligns with my values. And that I know will bring true connection with other families and can benefit them holistically too.

So I just finally came to that intersection and decided I’m young in my career, I’m passionate, I’m going to go for it. If it doesn’t work out, I can go back to the healthcare system.

Dr. Cindy: True. There’s always a plan B or C. So, your choice was to follow your values.

Dr. Slater: Yeah, essentially.

It was, yeah. And you know it is hard as a [00:09:00] mom and a healthcare provider, like just life schedules are difficult to manage. Getting time off can be difficult to manage. And with my son entering kindergarten and having this whole shift to our schedule before deciding to do this, I’ve been thinking about this for over a year in advance.

I was just kind of feeling anxious about like, I want to be there to pick up my son from kindergarten and I want to be able to drop him off. And you know, his school hours are about around 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM and that’s not conducive to most people’s work schedules.

So that was also something that really motivated me was so that I can be present for my kids and be there for them. It might mean that I’m working at other, less conventional times. But it means that I get to be there for my family.

Dr. Cindy: And that’s part of what your balance is now, which I’m definitely going to circle back to in a few minutes. Which is what so many women are seeking right now is being able to have the time to take the breath and to spend time with their [00:10:00] children and to have control over their schedule.

Dr. Slater: Absolutely.

Science Meets Integrative Care: Balancing Medicine and Wellness for Kids

Dr. Cindy: I want to talk quickly about your approach with your business with Balanced Kids. So many families feel like they’re stuck in this checklist system of pediatric care, right?

They go for this visit and they get these vaccinations done, and you’ve chosen to do things a little bit different and I’d like to touch on that quickly.

What kinds of integrative tools, that you maybe learned from the Andrew Weil Center or other places, do you integrate or weave into your care?

Dr. Slater: I am excited you asked me this question because some people might think I’m a little woo woo. But in reality, it’s science.

I love to teach people about the endocannabinoid system. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that. I think you likely are. Which I’ll refer to as the ECS and if there are any listeners who don’t know what it is, it’s basically a biological complex system in our body and it helps regulate every other system [00:11:00] in our body, right? If we’re struggling with sleep or mood, oftentimes the ECS is considered to be a root cause of a lot of the issues that impact your sleep and mood.

And while I love medicine, medicine is fantastic. It’s great, but we can help regulate these types of systems, or we can help regulate your endocannabinoid system through integrative measures like focusing on your spirituality, breath work, diet and nutrition healing relationships, things like that.

I think a lot of the techniques that we use in healthcare, we try to teach people to help them implement a healthier life. Whether or not you realize it, it comes back to supporting your endocannabinoid system.

I just take an approach that brings much more awareness to this while also allowing and [00:12:00] believing in medicine and its value as well.

When I talk about the endocannabinoid system, people are always like, “Endo-canno, what?” It just sounds kind of a little out there. But you know, it was discovered in the nineties or the late eighties, there’s factual evidence behind it.

So, I just love highlighting that for people.

Dr. Cindy: And I do want to add about the integrative approach to healthcare because my background, which listeners may or may not be aware, is in integrative medicine also, I did a fellowship at the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. And the nice thing about that training, that I know you also received his training, is that it’s evidence-based.

It’s a very nice balance of Eastern – Western medicine, and I understand when you say I may sound woo woo because it’s a little bit different, but it’s evidence-based and I think you might agree with me that things that are based in science, even though it wasn’t done in the United States of America or in Europe, [00:13:00] doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work.

Dr. Slater: It’s still science.

Dr. Cindy: It’s still science, and so I’m just throwing in some support for the integrative side of things because it’s sounds woo woo, but there are papers and papers that support what you are saying right now

Dr. Slater: Yeah, and I even think [about] personal experience. I used to really struggle with breath work, and I still do, but those are interventions that I often use when I’m just trying, if I’m feeling really stressed and trying to calm myself down, or if I can’t sleep at night, because my brain won’t stop moving.

I started implementing that and also taking many courses that, you know, when we get together in person, like they have you do it. And I think with more practice, I started to realize this really is helping my anxiety or this really is helping me just calm my brain so I can fall back to sleep.

And now it’s been something that I routinely use.

I could say I was someone who was like, it doesn’t [00:14:00] help that much, but now that I’ve been through it, I’ve come out on the other side, and I can say it does, it definitely has its place in healthcare.

Dr. Cindy: And you, as a practitioner, have learned how to take care of yourself by learning these techniques.

Dr. Slater: I do my best. Yes.

Dr. Cindy: Well, it’s a practice. I try to incorporate the same things in my life, the breath work and meditation and things that I used to think were just kind of weird. But no, they actually work. If you just give them a try, you know?

It takes small amounts of time to give it a try too.

Dr. Slater: Yeah, absolutely.

From Overwhelmed to Empowered: Starting Your Own Practice

Dr. Cindy: Now that you’ve started your own practice I’m curious, what has surprised you about it? And, tell me something that’s really exciting that you found rewarding.

Dr. Slater: You know what I found exciting and rewarding was I had no idea how many other people that are out there can support you.

There are so many resources, like when it came to setting up my own electronic medical record system, right? I was completely [00:15:00] overwhelmed by that. How am I going to afford that and everything? But once I started looking, there’s a lot of systems out there and they’re at an affordable price point, and they have a whole team of people behind them to help you upload your intake forms and everything.

Having always worked in healthcare systems prior to this, that was just an avenue that I didn’t know existed, and there’s a lot of people and support out there who want to help you in your new business.

You know, I’ve always heard and been aware of Chambers of Commerce, but it wasn’t until and trying to create my own business that I really was like, you know, someone’s like, you should really reach out to them.

And it’s just opened a very large platform of different ways to network to get support while also giving support to the community as well.

So yeah, I think that’s the biggest thing that I had been excited about learning was there’s a lot of avenues [00:16:00] for support out there. So, if you just look for them, you will find them.

Dr. Cindy: Got it.

And along that line of thinking, what would you say to the mom who is where you were that year, you said you had a year of frustration before you left your previous employment.

Dr. Slater: Yeah.

Dr. Cindy: What would you say to that woman who’s listening, who’s like, I just want to strike out on my own but it seems so overwhelming. And what you’re saying is very encouraging. There’s support out there. What would you say to her to encourage her to make that leap if she’s ready?

Dr. Slater: Yeah. I would say if I can do it, you can do it. There’s nothing extra special about me, and I felt that same way before too.

And ultimately, I think it’s just waking up every day and maybe trying to do one more task. Some days are going to be much more … what’s the word I’m looking for? You’re going to complete many more things in your day, some days than others, you might not do anything because you just feel [00:17:00] stuck.

But at least you’re probably thinking about what your next steps are going to be.

So, I think just put one foot in front of the other and keep moving. And if you do that consistently over time, you will build something, and I think you’ll amaze yourself.

Dr. Cindy: I so agree with that advice.

Balancing Career and Family, it’s Possible!

Dr. Cindy: Now I’m coming back to the balance part of your life now and your practice is named Balanced Kids, so, it is making me wonder…

What is balance to you now as a mom and a practitioner? What’s it like?

Dr. Slater: You know, I think balance is something we’re all always searching for, but ultimately for me, before I even came up with the name of my business, I was trying to think, what am I going to name it? And then I realized the word I kept repeating over and over was balance.

I kept telling friends and family I just want more balance. I want to be able to show up for my kids, but I still want my career. I want to be available for my husband. You know, work is just so overwhelming, and I don’t have enough balance and I want to be able to work out.

And then I just realized balance, that’s a great name because I want to bring not only balance to myself, but in healthcare.

I know how it is to try [00:18:00] to get your kid in for a sick visit. It can be so hard. And if I want to see my primary care provider. It might take a couple days before my son can get in with that person.

And so, I wanted to create my healthcare system through Balanced Kids in a way that supports other families. And so that’s why I developed the concierge style.

We will come to you. That way we fit into your busy day, not expecting you to fit time in your schedule to come to a clinic.

Also for children who have more complex needs. My kids, I don’t have to experience that, right? My kids are normal, per se, kids. And I can only imagine how difficult it could be for families who have more complex needs and how hard it might be to get out of the house or break your child’s usual routine.

So, I wanted [00:19:00] to help serve that need and bring that balance to families as well.

Dr. Cindy: What does that look like? Are these telehealth visits or are you physically going to homes?

Dr. Slater: Physically going. I do routine well child checks, which I believe need to be in person. So those are in person in your home. I do physicals, which need to be in person as well, but I also try to create flexibility with that.

So, let’s say, you know, multiple kids or your kid is on a sports team and nearly everyone needs their updated physicals. I will come to, I don’t know your kid’s sporting event or if I can coordinate something with school and that way we can get a lot of these physicals done at once and for a reduced cost.

Sick visits can be in person or virtual, whatever most families are comfortable with. If you want me to come to you, I will. And if you want to keep it virtual, I will. And just try to be flexible about what the family’s needs are.

Dr. Cindy: Oh, [00:20:00] that is such an incredible model, and I imagine so helpful for families.

Dr. Slater: Yeah.

Dr. Cindy: They may have many kids too, and it is really hard to load up a car of kids and oh my gosh, I only have two kids, and it was a struggle for me to get out of the house. So, like you’re saying, my heart goes out to all those moms that are handling so much more than I ever did.

Dr. Slater: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Cindy: And you are providing that gap. You are providing just such a valuable service to those moms.

Dr. Slater: Thank you.

Dr. Cindy: And at the same time, you’ve created balance in your own life. And so, it just seems like a win-win.

Dr. Slater: Yeah.

A Final Pediatric Care Tip for Busy Families

Dr. Cindy: Before we close, I want to leave listeners with something simple that they can take with them. What’s one small powerful thing you hope that every family remembers when it comes to caring for their kids?

Dr. Slater: I think we’ve heard this before, but that is that you are the expert in your child [00:21:00] and your gut is more often than not correct.

So, lead with that and advocate with that and find a provider who will use that as a reason to really go through everything and find what you are needing to serve your child the best.

Dr. Cindy: Yeah, follow your gut.

Dr. Slater: Yeah, I really believe in the gut.

It’s the gut brain, that’s everything.

Dr. Cindy: Mm-hmm. And keep looking for a practitioner that will listen to you. Very wise advice.

Dr. Slater: Oh, thank you.

Dr. Cindy: How can listeners find you if they want to reach out and learn more about you?

Dr. Slater: Yes. I am on Instagram, and I live in Minnesota, so my handles for both Instagram and Facebook– it’s BalancedKidsMN. And then I have my website, BalancedKidsMN.com or people can [00:22:00] email me, sarah@balancedkidsmn.com

Dr. Cindy: Perfect, and I will list those in the show notes.

Dr. Slater: Thank you so much.

Dr. Cindy: I really appreciate you being here, your wisdom and your perspective and the service you’re providing families and kids, not just kids, but their whole families. Thank you for being here. Thank you.

Dr. Slater: Of course.

It’s Time to Take Control and Thrive!