Full Transcript Burnout and Returning to Medicine 0:00 So the cure to burnout is listening to your heart. 0:02 And when you do what your hear tells you to do, I love medicine again. 0:09 I know that I went into the field that was meant to go into. 0:13 This is my passion. 0:17 Welcome to the Integrative Medicine Roundtable, where practitioners lead, brought to you by the North Carolina Integrated Medical Society, 0:24 join integrative health care leaders, clinicians and innovators as they share practical insights, emerging research, and the conversations shaping the 0:32 future of patient care. 0:36 Hi, I'm Dr. 0:37 Amy Duffy. 0:38 I am the president of the North Carolina Integrative Medical Society and we are launching the Integrate of Medicine Roundtable podcast here at the Synergy 0:46 Conference in Asheville. 0:48 And I super excited to welcome Dr Lisa Broyles. 0:51 She is a board member here with North Caroline Integrated Medical society and local to this side of North Carolinas. 0:58 So I really excited hear her story. 1:01 Tell us a little bit about Just go way back to like, what even started you thinking I wanted to be a doctor? 1:08 Oh my goodness. 1:09 Well, I'm originally from Asheville, North Carolina. 1:11 My family, my great-grandfather built a lot of downtown Ashevill. 1:14 So the Jackson building with the gargoyles hanging off, that was my Great-Grandfather. 1:18 He helped build the Grove Arcade. 1:20 We've got a long history here in AsheVille. 1:23 But I come from a line of builders and developers. 1:25 I was the first doctor, although my first cousin, he's also a family doctor now. 1:31 I just, as soon as I figured out when I was a kid that I wasn't good at math, I wanted to be an astronaut, but astronauts had to good math.
Early Life and Path to Becoming a Doctor 1:38 So I switched to doctor. 1:39 And that was it. 1:42 Yeah. 1:43 I went into medicine, like most of us do, where we truly want to heal. 1:50 We want make people better. 1:52 And then you actually get into medicine and you discover that administration and charting take up more time than the time you had with your patient and 2:02 all of the pressures to to do a certain protocol and prescribe a certainly ways and and then, you don't get enough time with their patients and I think 2:13 that over time after 7 to 10 years, I started getting burned out and we all went through covid and i think, that accelerated our burnout. 2:21 going through wearing that mask all got burn out we all did absolutely and so I kind of hit up a crisis in my career in 2021 where I remember telling my husband, 2:34 I'm either going to have to get out of medicine and figure out a new career or I have 2 do medicine in a way that for me fulfills my Hippocratic and Yeah 2:43 and is ethical and moral because I just felt like the pressure to see patients every 5 to 10 minutes and that pressure wasn't coming from my employer so 2:52 much as the insurance companies that don't pay for primary care to actually see their patients, right? 2:57 Right. 2:58 And so I left traditional primary in 2021 and launched my own business and way to health MD and I just went full on functional medicine. 3:10 I'd gotten my jump in the deep end. 3:12 Yeah. 3:12 Right. 3:13 And I, you know, after four years of trying to practice functional, medicine in, the insurance setting, I realized I can't do functional in five minutes. 3:20 Now I need an hour with my patients. 3:22 Two hours to really get to the root of what's going on. 3:26 What contributes to burnout with physicians is we don't have enough time with our patients, right?
Burnout in Primary Care and Leaving Insurance Medicine 3:31 I think you. 3:32 That's the frustration is there's so much more that I could do. 3:35 Right. 3:36 And I'm stuck in these walls and I can't do them. 3:39 You become just a referral referring to all these different doctors because you don't have time to address what you couldn't handle if they just gave you 3:46 more time. 3:47 that was my frustrations like you know what I'm going to have to just do my own thing I had never been to business school scared to death coming. 3:55 Okay, I just got to go for it. 3:56 Yeah, and I started off just doing home visits and zoom and then I partnered with a nurse anesthetist Maria Pellegrino and she has a business fortify wellness. 4:08 So I now see patients at her clinic and have partnered with her as her medical director and it's worked out amazingly. 4:14 And I can tell you the cure to burnout is listening to your heart and when you do what your hear tells you to do, I love medicine again and I know that 4:25 I went into the field that was meant to go into. 4:28 This is my passion, this is calling. 4:30 I loved every encounter. 4:33 And even patients that in the old setting were difficult for me because they were complicated. 4:39 Now I see that, well, I have lots of time, so I can spend as much time with you as you have. 4:46 So I think functional medicine helps us as doctors get to the root of what's really going on with our patients. 4:52 And I love how functional is grounded in science. 4:55 I've always told my patients when they've asked me, what is functional? 4:58 I'm like, it's applied biochemistry. 5:01 So I always loved biochemistry and I thought in medical school this magic was going to happen where they were going take this bio chemistry from year one 5:10 and apply it to how we practice. 5:13 And honestly I didn't see that happen. 5:15 I agree with that. 5:16 Instead, we went from, We memorized our biochemistry. 5:19 We memorize our anatomy and our neuro and how everything works, pathophysiology. 5:24 And then we got into residency where we followed people around them. 5:27 They're like, this is how we do it. 5:29 This is what the studies say.
Functional Medicine and Root-Cause Care 5:31 this Is what? 5:32 The drug reps are offering us. 5:33 How we're going to do things. 5:34 Well, This Is the surgery that, you know, surgery needs to happen. 5:38 Yeah, they're, these are all the band aids, you know, to sort of interestingly like bypass the biochemistry right or like manipulate it or mess with it 5:47 instead of staying in what your own body naturally should flow. 5:51 Right. 5:52 We're in here like You know putting dams up in places and rerouting, you know You give it fertilizer and so that's what functional medicine has taught 6:07 me to do to take that biochemistry from my first year of medical school and say hey What is the thyroid need to thrive? 6:13 What toxins are affecting thyroid function, right? 6:16 What does this 48 year old woman that's starting to have her life fall apart? 6:20 You have to look at her stressors. 6:23 Is she taking care of herself? 6:24 She's probably taking of aging parents and young kids and not exercising, not eating right. 6:30 She needs hormone therapy. 6:31 So now we have time to address all of that, and to adress it for ourselves. 6:38 One of my pet peeves too was Physicians that someone goes to their doctor and their doctors tells them to quit smoking and the doctor reeks of cigarettes. 6:45 Right? 6:46 Right. 6:46 The doctor is clearly not exercising themselves. 6:49 And so functional medicine also teaches us, I live what I preach. 6:55 You know, the self-care is important. 6:58 you have to have time to exercise and to sleep enough. 7:01 Sleep is when, of course, we were taught that our bodies are repairing and healing. 7:05 So you can't push your body to excess and expect your to stay healthy. 7:09 Stress literally can kill us, right? 7:11 Well, and what happens, residency, like we are working on call every other night. 7:16 When I was in residency we were probably around the same time was the 80-hour work week actually came out. 7:21 My first year was before the eight hour work. 7:22 Exactly, I like third year during that time. 7:25 So it was like they finally put this limit that could only work 80 hours, so again, that's the pressure that that you get put on it. 7:33 So, you know, when you're thinking about how we take care of our patients, and that's exactly what I was going to say is like, 7:39 You know when, look at the practitioners that are that, are in this room and in, this space that that. 7:45 Are holding on to this functional integrative whatever it is, like you can tell that You, know we got to take, care, of ourselves first and and part of 7:54 that is right, what good of a doctor are you if you are burnt out. 7:56 Right. 7:57 You're not going to be able to really take care of your patient. 7:59 And that's what happens is we get in that burnout from so many different reasons. 8:03 But then, you know, your brain can't function. 8:05 So you're just doing the minimal amount that you have to do to get to the next patient and the Next patient, so they're Not getting your time and attention. 8:18 so you know you have a family right and you actually take care of yourself and then you're happy and not screaming at your kids and frustrated with your
Self-Care, Family, and Physician Wellbeing 8:28 husband we all get a little bit but it's definitely better when you've had your time yeah yeah absolutely so. 8:35 You know I think that's what we see so often is that we're We're not only doing this to be better doctors for our patients, 8:43 we're doing it to better humans for ourselves and for families, our friends, colleagues, right? 8:50 It allows us time to actually have fun. 8:52 Children sometimes speak it like it is. 8:54 A few years ago, my daughter said to me, Mom, your sign is perfect for you. 8:59 My sign, the crab, is cancer. 9:03 And my daughters like, you're a crab! 9:04 It's perfect! 9:05 And it's just like wow. 9:08 How am I behaving? 9:10 How I am treating my children? 9:12 It really made me re-examine what's coming out of my mouth, how am i portraying, and what comes out the heart the mouth speaks, 9:19 right? 9:20 So a real introspective time followed that. 9:25 Well, tell me a little bit. 9:26 You were telling me now that we have more time with our patients, you have time for yourself, more for your family, and you somehow have found time to 9:36 do some new things. 9:37 So you're launching something new that I'm sure speaks to your heart and your passion and whatnot. 9:42 Tell us a bit about that. 9:43 I launched Way Too Health MD back in 2021. and I'm still seeing patients consulting with functional medicine through that. 9:51 So last year I launched Doc BMD. 9:53 My patients, when I was in primary care, often called me Doc B, so it just kind of stuck in my heart. 9:58 Yeah, that's fun. 10:03 And it was a necessity as the mother of invention kind of thing. 10:07 I ride horses, I run long distance, and I do this crazy sport no one's heard of called ride and tie where you have two people and one horse and you alternate
Launching New Wellness Products 10:15 running and riding for about 30 miles. 10:17 Wow. 10:18 And, it's really fun for crazy people that like trail running, horseback riding, right? 10:23 And so last summer, I was competing in the World Riding Tide, which was three days of doing this in a row. 10:28 And I got to two days in, about 50 miles in of running and riding horses. 10:33 My skin was just chafed to shreds. 10:35 I couldn't walk, much less compete the third day. 10:38 and I had to drop out of the competition for the 3rd day and i was so upset. 10:42 i had tried every sports balm and tried to do everything right and still just my skin shredded. 10:48 So I came up with my own anti chaffing sport cream. 10:52 So I've named it way too active sport and it works great. 10:55 I wish I'd had it last year. 10:57 Uh, I have also come up with way to active restore, which is for perian postmenopausal women. 11:03 So you can apply this balm vaginally two nights per week and restores the vaginal tissue back to the way it was like twenties, 11:12 pre-kids. 11:13 Everything gets younger again. 11:15 There's none of the itchy, burny stretchiness, this chafiness. 11:21 That's really been Wonderful. 11:23 And then the third thing, and you're going to laugh at this, but I was really unhappy with the intimate lubricants available on the market. 11:32 As a married woman, I wanted something that I could use just to make things more comfortable because as women go through menopause, 11:40 things get drier, right? 11:42 And so I came up with what I'm calling Summit Foreplay Gel. 11:46 And it's for men and women, just to make things more comfortable and pleasurable during intimacy. 11:53 One of the things I realized, I've been in practice a little over 20 years now, and as people age, they still want to be intimate, 12:00 but there become these physical barriers to intimacy, a lot of them are on the woman's side, some on man's sides. 12:06 So I have come up these products to try to restore intimacy again. 12:10 That's awesome. 12:11 So again, we're bringing that connectedness, togetherness. 12:15 But in the space of let's not add more crazy chemicals, because when you're thinking about the products that you just mentioned, 12:23 you go to the drugstore and it is just a wreck of not being able to find something that really supports I made every single ingredient be something good 12:33 for our bodies down to the preservative. 12:35 Cause I realized, well, I have to have a preservatives. 12:38 So I chose silver because silver is naturally anti-fungal, antibacterial, perfect, right?
Where to Find the Products and Closing Remarks 12:43 Still good. 12:44 For us. 12:45 I'm putting all of my products in glass bottles so that you don't get any plastics absorbing into your product and therefore into our skin. 12:51 Definitely pledging that my product is safe and everything I put in it is good and safe for the environment and infinitely recyclable. 12:58 Pretty excited about it. 13:01 So how do we find out more about these products like you've launched? 13:04 Are they ready to go? 13:05 This fall so coming soon. 13:07 I have a website launching docbmd.com We'll be launching this fall right now. 13:12 There's just a little hold the site and I'll have Facebook page I will be selling on Facebook and Instagram. 13:18 We will see you here next year. 13:22 And then I do have my website for my my current business, which is my way to health. 13:30 And that's waytohealthmd.com. 13:32 The two is the number two. 13:33 So thank you for your time. 13:34 I love it, Lisa. 13:35 Thank you so much. 13:39 Thanks for joining us on the Integrative Medicine Roundtable, where practitioners lead. 13:44 If you found value in today's conversation, follow our podcast, share it with a colleague, or visit us at ncintegrative.org and join our community today. 13:53 We'll see you at the next roundtable.
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