What happens when a successful surgeon starts having panic attacks in the operating room?

On this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei Hardin, MD, sits down with fellowship-trained rhinologist, Hippocratic Collective co-founder, surgeon coach, and author Mel Thacker, MD, to talk about her debut memoir, Scrubbing In, out October 6, 2026.

Mel shares the story behind the book, from growing up with housing instability and becoming financially independent as a teenager to building a successful career in ENT. For years, medicine represented an escape and an arrival point. Becoming a physician, she thought, would mean she had finally made it.

But seven years into a successful surgical practice, Mel began experiencing panic attacks in the operating room. She talks candidly about the shame, fear, and uncertainty that followed, including the worry that patients or hospital leadership might see her differently if they knew.

Rather than hiding that experience, Mel chose to write about it.

Together, Mel and Frances Mei discuss why surgeons are so often expected to perform as if they are immune to normal human experiences, why silence can be more dangerous than vulnerability, and what it means to stay in surgery while redesigning the profession around a life you actually want to live.

They also talk about the craft of memoir, learning to see yourself as a character rather than always the hero of your own story, and why storytelling may be one of the most important skills physicians never learn.

In this episode:

• Mel’s childhood and path into medicine

• Why becoming a doctor felt like an escape

• The arrival fallacy in medicine

• Learning to write a memoir as a surgeon

• Panic attacks in the operating room

• Shame and vulnerability in surgical culture

• Why talking about struggle can improve patient safety

• Redesigning a surgical career instead of leaving it

• Moving from private practice to locums and part-time surgery

• Storytelling as a leadership skill for physicians

• Why surgeons need permission to be human

• Who Mel wrote Scrubbing In for

Mel ultimately wrote Scrubbing In for the surgeon who feels too sensitive, too different, or too far outside the traditional mold of what a surgeon is supposed to look and act like.

Host: Frances Mei Hardin, MD

Guest: Mel Thacker, MD

Connect with Mel: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/members/mel-thacker-md

Scrubbing In available now: https://a.co/d/03CPHRRm

Presented by: The Hippocratic Collective

Follow Frances Mei on Instagram & Tiktok @francesmeimd

And subscribe to ⁨@HippocraticCollective⁩ on Youtube for all of the other shows the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.

What can Get Out, Kafka, surrealist art, RuPaul’s Drag Race, and contemporary film teach us about medicine?

On this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei Hardin, MD, and Colin sit down with clinical psychologist Sacha McBain, PhD, to talk about Pathologizing Pop Culture, her long-running Hippocratic Collective column exploring healthcare, illness, disability, trauma, and recovery through movies, television, literature, music, and art.

Sacha explains why art can give language to experiences long before medicine does, and how engaging with stories can expand perspective, empathy, compassion, and even our own capacity for emotional processing.

The conversation moves through some of the column’s most memorable pieces, including Get Out and its relationship to medical racism, trust, and the history of harm within healthcare. They also discuss Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, surrealist art, disability, grief, and how abstraction can sometimes help us understand experiences that are difficult to put into words.

In this episode:

• Why pop culture belongs in conversations about healthcare

• How art can build empathy and perspective

• Get Out, medical racism, and trust in healthcare

• Trauma, illness, disability, and recovery in art

• Why horror and science fiction can make difficult ideas more accessible

• The role of storytelling in emotional processing

• What clinicians can learn from patients’ favorite music, movies, and art

• How creativity can make healthcare professionals more human

• Why art sometimes understands suffering before medicine does

A conversation about what happens when we stop treating art as separate from medicine and start asking what stories can teach us about the people we care for.

Pathologizing Pop Culture: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/pathologizing-pop-culture

Articles mentioned:

1 Year Anniversary: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/post/the-benefits-of-pathologizing-your-pop-culture

Get Out: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/post/get-out-a-horror-story-of-medicine

RuPauls' Drag Race: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/post/chronic-illness-and-disability-on-rupauls-drag-race

Matt Sesow: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/post/matt-sesows-choice-life-and-art-after-amputation

The Metamorphosis: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/post/the-metamorphosis

Host: Frances Mei Hardin, MD

Guest: Sacha McBain, PhD

Connect with Sacha: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/members/sacha-mcbain-phd

Presented by: The Hippocratic Collective

Follow Frances Mei on Instagram & Tiktok @francesmeimd

And subscribe to ⁨@HippocraticCollective⁩ on Youtube for all of the other shows the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.

What does it take for a relationship to survive surgical residency, career changes, financial risk, and ten years of becoming very different people?

On this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei Hardin, MD, is joined by her husband Colin to celebrate ten years together and look back at what actually made their relationship work.

They met just months before Frances Mei matched into a five-year surgical residency, meaning much of the early relationship unfolded under what they jokingly call “wartime conditions”: sleep deprivation, brutal hours, emotional reactivity, uncertainty about medicine, and very little bandwidth for anything outside the hospital.

They talk about attraction, choosing a partner you genuinely enjoy, learning to let each other fail, and why loving someone does not mean trying to control or fix them. Colin shares what it was like supporting Frances Mei through residency when he could sometimes see a bad decision coming, but knew she needed to arrive at the lesson herself.

They also revisit one of the rules that helped protect their relationship during residency: a “work talk moratorium.” Frances Mei could unload about the hospital during the drive home, but once she walked through the door, work did not get to consume the rest of their night.

And they finally address a recurring assumption Frances Mei hears online: that she was only able to leave surgical practice because she had a “rich husband.” They talk candidly about their actual finances, the tradeoffs they made, living with limited savings during residency, choosing rural medicine intentionally, and taking real financial risk when Frances Mei ultimately changed careers.

In this episode:

• Why attraction matters in a long-term relationship

• Dating and marriage during surgical residency

• Supporting a partner without trying to control them

• Sleep deprivation, emotional regulation, and residency

• The “work talk moratorium” that protected their relationship

• Knowing when medicine is taking over your entire life

• Why difficult seasons can reveal compatibility

• The truth about Frances Mei leaving surgery and the “rich husband” assumption

• Financial tradeoffs behind a major career change

• Why you want a partner who works in both peacetime and “wartime”

A candid conversation about love, partnership, medicine, money, and what ten years together can teach you about building a life with another person.

Host: Frances Mei Hardin, MD

Presented by: The Hippocratic Collective

Following Frances Mei on Instagram & Tiktok @francesmeimd

And subscribe to ⁨@HippocraticCollective⁩ on Youtube for all of the other shows the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.