Frances Mei Hardin is an ENT surgeon who left clinical practice, wrote the memoir Surgeon on the Edge, and now leads the Hippocratic Collective, a physician media company bringing the hidden culture of medicine into the open.
Frances Mei Hardin spent her whole life becoming a doctor, and it built an identity instead of a person. As an only child, she grew up with her parents' expectation that she would become the doctor in the family. She survived a residency culture of bullying and hazing that left her wanting to die, before doing the work to untangle herself from medicine and leave her life as a surgeon. In this conversation, we explore what surgical training actually involves, the breaking point in the OR, learning to live in your body, turning to therapy and hypnosis, and how writing her story became a path to healing. Ultimately, Frances came to see that no experience is wasted.
Timestamps:
00:00 Identity & Family
05:53 Medical Ethics & Medical School
10:13 What is Residency?
14:57 The Culture Nobody Warned Her About
22:48 The Breaking Point
30:05 Finding Balance
31:56 Living in Your Body
41:37 Experience with Therapy and Hypnosis
48:22 Becoming the Person You Needed When You Were Younger
49:06 Hippocratic Collective
51:35 Writing Surgeon on the Edge
1:01:01 Pride Without the Ego
1:02:51 Closing Thoughts & How to Connect with Frances
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