You’re Not Broken: A Conversation for Physician Moms with Dr. Ana Tanase

Episode 89: You’re Not Broken: A Conversation for Physician Moms with Dr. Ana Tanase

• What “Good Enough” Really Means for Women Physicians
• Comparison, Social Media, and the Moving Goalposts in Medicine
• Why Medical Systems Were Built for Men – and Why That Matters
• Healthy Ambition vs Burnout: Finding the Line Without Losing Yourself
• The Invisible Load: Motherhood, Medicine, and Unspoken Expectations
• Why Women and Men Work Differently – and How Medicine Ignores That
• Imagining a New Model of Care – and Remembering You Are Enough

You are smart, accomplished, deeply trusted… and yet may feel like you fall short.

You may not feel good enough as a doctor mom, even after years of training, sacrifice, and success. Especially if the bar keeps moving, Especially if you’re tired of meeting others expectations.

I’m joined by Dr. Ana Tanase, board-certified in pediatrics and integrative medicine, and a mom of three, who brings clarity and compassion to the idea of enough.

At one point she says, “Women often spread themselves thin to please everyone. And usually, the first thing to disappear is themselves.”

We talk about invisible labor and why so many women are quietly reimagining how they practice medicine, and how they live.

This is a conversation about self-trust, stepping out of the boxes, and remembering something simple and radical:

you are already enough.

Find the full transcript at inspiredmommds.com/89

[You’re listening to the Inspired Mom MDs podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Cindy Van Praag. I help physician moms take back control of their time and energy so they can prioritize what matters most and thrive at work and at home. In each episode, I bring you honest conversations, inspiring stories, and practical strategies — including interviews with incredible women who are redefining success on their own terms. Let’s dive in.]

What “Good Enough” Really Means for Women Physicians

Dr. Cindy: I am here with a special guest today. You're gonna love her. Her name is Dr. Ana Tanase. She is both a mother of three boys and a physician who has dedicated her career to caring for kids and supporting families in a more holistic way.

She's a board certified pediatrician and integrative medicine doctor with extra training in mind-body medicine, functional medicine, and integrative psychiatry. Alongside her clinical work at Tucson Medical Center, she also teaches and mentors future doctors, sharing her passion for whole-person care.

What really drives her is the belief that health is about creating joy through nourishing food and rest and sunlight, and meaningful relationships, not just managing disease.

She trusts the body's natural wisdom and encourages families to make informed choices and sees herself as a guide while parents remain the captain of their own ships.

She likes to build community by coordinating local meetings for like-minded providers because she knows that together we learn and grow and model the kind of relationships that help shape a brighter future for our children and our planet. She is here to explore what it means to be good enough as a female professional, as a parent, a spouse, and a community member.

Welcome Dr. Tanase.

Dr. Tanase: Thank you Cindy, appreciate all you do and thank you for this invitation to do this together.

Dr. Cindy: Oh, you're so welcome. And I'm excited to talk to you about this topic, which is a little deep – about being good enough. But before we dive into the heavier item I wanted to ask you something a little lighter, and that would be about your family.

You're a mom of three boys, and I'm curious what their ages are, but also what is something that they have taught you recently that's kind of surprised you?

Dr. Tanase: So my boys are 11, 13, and 21. And this generation of children is very good at challenging authority. They don't want to conform to the norms.

They even make their own language, their own expression, like, “I have aura. You're cooking.” Probably parents will understand. Maybe they heard this before. That does not make my parenting job any easier, but I do love the courage to say no and the initiative to create a new world of their own.

Dr. Cindy: I hear that my. My youngest is 17, you have a 21-year-old too, but I agree. They are so self-sufficient. I love that they're very outspoken about mental health too. And that they're willing to talk about these things that we never talked about as a kid.

So I love that. I love that difference.

Comparison, Social Media, and the Moving Goalposts in Medicine

Dr. Cindy: I want to shift into a theme that comes up for so many women physicians. And that is the question of being enough.

This idea of not enough shows up everywhere. Right? Recently a friend commented that when she looks at social media – this happened a couple years ago – she would scroll and see other physicians just doing it all and assume that she was somehow lacking.

She was looking at these pictures on social media and she did not feel enough. That's what I> see. What patterns do you see in women physicians when it comes to comparison, especially against others or maybe just an ideal?

Dr. Tanase: Yeah, I will just start with myself because, you know, probably that's the most experience you have.

So many people probably even go into this profession because they think they're not good enough. And this is one of the professions that gets your respect, makes you look like a hard worker, like a hero sometimes.

So after you go through all that hard work, you get the MD degree and say, "Oh, I'm just at the beginning of this mountain." You still have to climb to the top. You still have to climb the ladder of academic career seniority, administration.

So, you're still not good enough. You started, but there's still more to go.

Why Medical Systems Were Built for Men – and Why That Matters

Dr. Tanase: The thing that I see harder for women than in men are these structures and where we work. Because most of the structures are set up by men because they were the ones filling these positions for a long time. And it's not to, you know, dismiss their profession or what men can do and achieve.

But just because they were the first ones, the chief of the clinic, the professor, the director of the hospital, the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, they have set up those roles to suit them well.

And then the women have to follow in this pattern that is already created. So, in a way, this is unfair.

Dr. Cindy: Hmm. Yes. So first compare yourself to yourself. Like, I need to show a bar that I've met to prove that I'm good enough. Which, and that bar keeps moving the higher up you go in your education.

Dr. Tanase: Exactly.

<>Dr. Cindy: Also it's interesting that I was thinking of comparing women to other women, which is what my friend was saying. But you're talking about how women physicians are comparing themselves against structures that are already set up which are not fair. Therefore, if I'm getting what you're saying, right, you're comparing yourself to something that's just not equal.

Dr. Tanase: Yeah. The target it's set up on, you know, different mindset or different relationships.

So yeah, women do a good job of caring, using their intuition in this profession, and collaborating. But this striving and competition is not a family characteristic, and I guess you can't progress without it in this career.

Women do adapt into a competitive environment in academia, in hospital, just because this is the role of the game. But this comes with a price.

You have to prove yourself. And this is sometimes pretty damaging to a career. So actually in Buddhist philosophy, non-striving is a virtue, but this is not what we are doing.

Dr. Cindy: It's the opposite.

Dr. Tanase: Yes, it's the opposite. So, non-striving means non-attachment to the outcomes.

But we do attach with all the outcomes. If the outcomes are bad, you're to blame for it. So this is the environment that we have to survive.

Healthy Ambition vs Burnout: Finding the Line Without Losing Yourself

Dr. Cindy: So where might be that healthy line of ambition, because ambition is a good thing, I would think. But also non-striving is good too.

Where do you find that line?

Dr. Tanase: Perseverance in your plan is helpful to the degree that you want to accomplish that vision of the future you, of who you want to be. Like that ideal of who you want to be, not who others want you to be.

So if you're attached to that ideal, then yes, there is a path to go to it. And nothing is impossible.

Women have proved it, they can be in every profession. But, what I see mostly is, then there is a balance between what you do to please yourself, and then the pressure from the outside.

A lot of time the balance is tilted with the more pressure from the outside, more pressure to see more patients, more pressure to make more money – to move towards the ladder of achievement.

And yeah, this pressure does come with the price of stress, burnout, sacrifices, personal life versus family, profession. So yeah, it is a fine line.

Dr. Cindy: Hmm. Got it. Okay.

Healthy ambition will get you started but don't succumb to the external pressures.

The Invisible Load: Motherhood, Medicine, and Unspoken Expectations

Dr. Cindy: Speaking of men and women, I'd like to talk about the different expectations – which might be a little bit of what you're alluding to – that women bear in medicine versus men.

For example, if you look at a job description for, let's say an anesthesiologist, because I am one, and it's just that – it's a job description. This is what's expected of you.

But when a man or a woman fills the role and starts, there will be a different set of expectations that aren't listed in the description for the woman, in my opinion.

From your perspective, how do these unspoken expectations that differ between men and women really show up for women, especially when they're carrying such a heavy load, with their family and their home life?

Dr. Tanase: So usually the women's role in a, let's say in a traditional society, we're more centered about being the nurturer, being the caretaker, being the homemakers, being the support system for the men.

In a secular society as it is now, when we say there's equal opportunity for education, for participation in public life, for employment, women most often have continued those traditional roles and added the new ones.

As a result, the plate is fuller and women tend to spread themself thin to please everyone.

This shift in gender roles has also given men an opportunity to step up and help the female in their life. And I see that a lot of men are doing a really good job of it. But this is not the norm.

Still, the female is expected to do the traditional plus the new upgrade.

We do have metrics in medicine and those metrics are things you can quantify. We have talked before, there's not enough hours in a day to do it all, to do your paid work and your unpaid work at home as a woman.

And usually the thing that goes off the list first is self-care. Women usually work to bring joy and help other people around, but themself are the lowest priority.

I see moms with newborn babies with a new family, and their needs are the lowest priority. So that leads sometimes to a spiral of anxiety, depression.

I will give you my example. When my kids were born, the first was in Romania. I was a resident doctor and I could take two years of maternity leave with 80% of the pay that I had in the last year.

So, of course I chose to stay home with my children. When I had my second and third child, I was in the U.S. I finished residency and I had a job in a private practice. So for many women you can take the most would be two months after the baby's born with an FMLA and no pay.

And then after two months you go back to work, you pump at work, you wake up in the night.

A lot of people have done it all, and expect to strive and progress in their career and do it all.

But you know, there's a price to pay.

So, that shows that different countries or different systems – how they value women and mothers in general and how they try to help families and women.

Dr. Cindy: Oh, absolutely. You lived through two different experiences of having two years off and time for your newborn versus the United States where you had to cram in all that quality time in two months.

You mentioned pumping and going back to work which reminds me of, way back when. My kids are 17 and 18 now, but I had to, and I shouldn't say fight, I had to just request, and my group was fantastic. I was in a private practice MD group. They were really accommodating, but it was still difficult to accommodate me to get separate time to go pump.

I would have to get out of the OR as an anesthesiologist, and find a private room. Inevitably the door wouldn't lock so people would bust in. I mean, it wasn't perfect.

But now I hear that women going back to work are wearing pumps and I don't know if this is a preference to pump and continue working and not have a private time and space, or is this an expectation, that you just keep going and you're expected to just push everything aside and get the work done and see the patients.

What do you think about that and women today, going back to work so soon and just even on this issue of pumping.

Dr. Tanase: I mean. I have mothers that work as nurses and me as a physician. I was lucky because I had a private room where I could pump. I was sharing the room with the male, but he said, "Okay, I'll leave you alone."

But, this patient I have, you know, the moms are nurses. And they said, "Oh, I just. I don't get the break. I wear my pump, eight hours, 10 hours. I go home, I feed my babies, I pump in the night, I get up and start all over again. "

Most of the guidelines recommend breastfeeding for at least six months. Some women choose to do a year, some women choose to go beyond that.

But, it is taxing on your body too. There's a lack of connection, like an automatic pump to do it for you. And there's a sound. It's a background that everybody around you hears.

So, we have not structured this environment to be easier for women to do that. You know, the most ideal case would be a woman that goes to work and in the break time she runs home to feed her baby, or someone brings the baby to her at work.

And now with the COVID upgrade, there's more jobs that people do from home. So that helps a lot of moms to parent and have a job and breastfeed during a meeting and do it all.

Dr. Cindy: That's true. It’s very interesting how things have changed even in the past 17 years since I became a mom.

Why Women and Men Work Differently – and How Medicine Ignores That

Dr. Cindy: You and I spoke in a previous discussion and you mentioned the idea that women and men work differently, not in their ability, but in their approach to problems.

And I'd love to explore that.

So basically you made a powerful distinction in that men tend to work from point A to point B, whereas women may have point A to B to C. Women work through a process. Can you explain that a little more in depth for us?

Dr. Tanase: Yeah, and these are, let's say pattern archetypes is not that it's a rule that is set in stone.

The male mind or thinking is more towards outcomes. The female mind is more about the process. So the journey is how to get to the outcomes.

For example, a man says, "Oh, I need to work on physical exercise. I need to improve it." But he does not really want or have the joy in doing that. So, to have motivation for that, let's say he signs up for a marathon.

This is something really palpable. I need to train for that. Now I can make a routine. That's the goal and that's the expectation.

A woman may say, “I need to work on workouts but I don't particularly like it.” Maybe she'll join a Zumba class, a dance class, meet with a friend, do something, add something to this process, but tries to make the process enjoyable not to reach a goal.

In that aspect, we usually use this in processes that we make decisions and how we function in society. But the women mostly worry about how this is going to happen. Not necessarily I have to reach this goal.

Dr. Cindy: How do you think this shows up as a physician? Would there be a difference in male physicians versus female physicians and how they approach problems at work and maybe even the time they need to help a patient with a problem?

Is there a difference?

Dr. Tanase: Yeah. The way that our clinics are set or the hospital or what are the set of expectations that we have to do. Our expectation is, you go in a room, you have to make a diagnosis, have an RVU, be on time, make the patient happy and be satisfied.

And that's it.

So, this works in a metric system, but there is no room for connection there. If you want to build a relationship, it's not that standardized from A to B. And if you want to enjoy what you're doing. So as long as your schedule is full and you're generating RVU, it's like factory work.

You know you are okay, you are meeting your metrics. But the metrics for self-satisfaction, it's not there. There are some metrics sometimes for patient satisfaction, but that's why so many women got tired of this assembly line style of work and go into concierge medicine or direct primary care or start their own practice where you can customize your patient load, how much time you want to spend with patient.

Some people have started Integrative Medicine fellowship just to start thinking outside the box. And I was surprised that in my training there were people that were retiring and I said, “Why are they starting to learn something new now, because they won't use it for their patients?” But they use it as a self-care tool, for their own.

So in primary care, maybe it's easier to step out of the system. If you are a surgeon, it's really hard to make your own hospital. You have to work part of a system.

Some women decide to just do part-time, not full-time, so they can work with their family too. But, yeah, these are sometimes difficult decisions to juggle.

Imagining a New Model of Care – and Remembering You Are Enough

Dr. Cindy: I love how you say work outside the box. The box was not necessarily created by women.

Dr. Tanase: No.

Dr. Cindy: And so maybe start creating our own box and not exclusive to women, but a different box. One where people have the time and energy to connect with their patients.

Like you said, there are metrics for patients too. And the patient feedback, as we know from women physicians, is more impressive than for male physicians because women, like you said, are more into building relationships and spend more time with them.

So if we can create this new box where you actually have time to connect with the patient, and maybe that is concierge medicine. I don't know the answer exactly, but I think women are starting to do that.

And, yes, break the box. Let's find a new one.

You mentioned integrative medicine, that integrative side of your work today. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do today? I'd love to hear about your practice.

Dr. Tanase: So right now I work in corporate medicine, I work in the outpatient clinic of a hospital where I'm a salaried employee. I work on RVU. So the only thing I do differently, I do primary care and integrated medicine consults. And I can have extended time, but the most extended time I get maybe is 40 minutes, rarely could be 50 minutes.

A lot of time I use my own time that I need to spend, you know, more with patients to explain what things I'm trying to do, what tests I'm trying to achieve, how their body works, what are the things we can customize to help their body work better.

A lot of time it's education and it's the connection and the talking about whether it's education or trying to move them to the next step in the readiness process. It's this part of talking, it's part of medicine that we don't see as such.

We try to adjust in the system, but yeah, sometimes it becomes chaotic and people get upset because the next patient has to wait because I'm not done with talking.

It's a compromise, so if you ask me about how my ideal clinic should look…

Dr. Cindy: There you go. This is how it is – what would that be?

Dr. Tanase: It would not be a building without windows like I work in now.

Dr. Cindy: Got it.

Dr. Tanase: Which would be probably like a tiny cabin on a farm with windows, of course.

And a toilet, of course. But I will have some raised beds outside. I could talk to the patient, like taking a walk on a path outside. “This is your medicine. This plant is good for this. You can make tea out of it. You can say this is the sunlight. It's part of your treatment.”

You could do group classes or group meetings, either. Most people struggle with the same things, so you just repeat the same thing in different settings. The group itself is therapeutic because it's showing the patient, they're not alone, struggling with X, Y, and Z.

So yeah, there are tools, but incorporating all this into corporate medicine, the first question is, "Oh, is it gonna bring me money? What's the bottom line? And how expensive is it?"

Dr. Cindy: I love your ideal setting as a cabin. Well, in Japan they actually prescribe forest bathing and it's a real thing, so it can be implemented.

Dr. Tanase: Yeah.

Dr. Cindy: So maybe if we look to other countries and how they have brought some of these really important aspects into their healthcare, maybe we can not reinvent the wheel, but maybe we can incorporate some of their ideas into our system.

Dr. Tanase: Yeah. Those people work in, you know, an eight hour cubicle. But they do get an hour break at lunch and they walk in the forest because they're very organized and can respect deadlines.

In Europe, their one hour lunch is to go out with friends and have lunch. And it's somewhere nice. Connection is a different type of getting out of the box, but I don't want to be in a box anymore. I just want to move the box somewhere else.

Dr. Cindy: Exactly. And I'm sure you are not alone in that sentiment.

Dr. Tanase: I know. We have to have a vision. We can't live without it.

Dr. Cindy: Right. Your vision is going to stick with me. Can you imagine? Imagine being able to just walk with a patient on a beautiful path in the sun and have the consultation right there.

Yeah. Even if it's five minutes, you know, just outside, walk around the, oh my, beautiful.

Dr. Tanase: I can ask the same question walking, than sitting.

Dr. Cindy: Very true. And that would be good for your health too.

Dr. Tanase: Yeah.

Dr. Cindy: In closing, what is one message you want women physicians to hold onto this week?

Dr. Tanase: So I would say, just take a moment to look at yourself. Look at all the things you've achieved so far, all the lives you touch, all the support you gave to other people, and just say, I am enough.

Make space for yourself and give yourself time to breathe, play, step back. You know, self-care is not selfish. If your cup is full, you can give more to others, but you have to start with where you are now. You are enough.

Dr. Cindy: Hmm. Beautifully said. Thank you.

Dr. Tanase: Thank you. Cindy

Dr. Cindy: Yes. How can we contact you?

Dr. Tanase: I guess everything's online now. You can probably Google my name and find where I work. And I think I'm on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Dr. Cindy: Okay. I can put links to those places in the show notes so people can click that. And your name is spelled Ana, A-N-A. T-A-N-A-S-E for your last name in case someone's listening and trying to remember driving. Alright. Thank you so much. I appreciate you being here.

Dr. Tanase: Thank you, Cindy. I appreciate all you do for all these women.

Dr. Cindy: Thank you.

Dr. Tanase: Take care.

Guest links:

Instagram: @TMCHealthaz

Facebook: TMCOneTMCHealthCare Facebook

Website: TMC One

[Thank you for tuning in today to Inspired Mom MDs. If this episode resonates with you, please share with a friend who may benefit too. And I humbly ask to please leave a review so other doctor moms can find me too!

Just a quick reminder – this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and isn’t a substitute for medical advice or care. I’m a board-certified physician, but this content isn’t connected to my clinical practice, and no doctor-patient relationship is formed here. Please always talk to your own health professional about any mental or physical health concerns. And as always, take what helps and leave the rest. Please see InspiredMomMDs.com for full disclaimer.]