What happens when a doctor decides she doesn’t need more money - she needs more peace?

In this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei sits down with psychiatrist Dr. Claire Oduwo to talk about choosing a “soft life” after medical training—and why that phrase is wildly misunderstood in medicine. Claire shares her path from Kenya to Nebraska to the Pacific Northwest, how her immigrant upbringing shaped her relationship with work and money, and why working part-time as a psychiatrist was a deliberate, values-driven choice—not a failure.

Together, they unpack:

1. Why physicians are conditioned to operate at 500% (and why anything less feels uncomfortable)
2. How money becomes a stand-in for validation after years of sacrifice
3. The stigma doctors face when they step outside the expected hierarchy
4. Why surgeons struggle so deeply with emotional regulation—and what psychiatry does differently
5. How chaos can feel “normal” to our nervous systems, even when it’s harming us

This is a conversation about identity, shame, creativity, and the courage it takes to choose a life that actually fits—especially when other people don’t understand it.

If you’ve ever thought, I worked this hard—shouldn’t I want more?

This episode might help you ask a better question.

Host: Frances Mei Hardin, MD

Guest: Dr. Claire

Connect with Dr. Claire:

IG: @drclaireomd

Tiktok: @drclaireo

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.

On this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei Hardin, MD is joined by Alan Chien, MD, a pediatrics resident and lifelong magician practicing in Los Angeles.

What begins as a conversation about magic quickly opens into something more expansive: identity formation in medical training, the quiet pressure to abandon creativity, and what it means to remain in relation—to patients, to others, and to oneself—inside a system that often rewards self-erasure.

Alan reflects on growing up as an only child, discovering magic as a grounding force, and carrying that creative identity through medical school and residency. He shares how performing magic—whether for hospitalized children, co-residents, or strangers in a bar—has shaped his understanding of connection, wellness, and presence. Together, they explore mentorship that protects wholeness rather than performance, the guilt trainees feel around non-medical passions, and why tolerating both the highs and lows of residency—not constant happiness—is the real work of staying well.

This episode is a meditation on refusing to flatten oneself in training, on staying three-dimensional inside medicine, and on the radical act of not giving up the thing that made you human in the first place.

Host: Frances Mei Hardin, MD

Guest: Alan Chien, MD

Connect with Alan: alanchien.com

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.

In this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei sits down with Mohini Dasari, MD—a general surgeon and writer—who speaks candidly about one of the most taboo topics in medicine: leaving a surgical fellowship mid-training.

Mohini shares what led her to step away seven months into a transplant fellowship, the quiet suffering that preceded that decision, and how shame, identity fusion, and “just push through” culture keep physicians trapped long past the point of health. Together, Frances and Mohini unpack the myths we’re taught in training—that it will all be worth it later, that attending life fixes everything, and that wanting something different means failure.

This conversation explores:

1. Why surgeons are encouraged in… and abandoned once they’re in
2. The difference between what’s “possible” and what’s healthy
3. Motherhood, medicine, and the cost of suppressed humanity
4. Shame as a hidden driver of physician burnout and exits
5. Why careers don’t have to be linear—and why medicine resists that truth
6. Reclaiming joy, creativity, and identity beyond the operating room

Mohini also discusses returning to writing after years away and her debut novel releasing January 13, a coming-of-age story rooted in heritage, dance, and self-reclamation.

This episode is for medical students, residents, attendings, and anyone questioning the life they were told would finally make sense “on the other side.”

🎧 Listen if you’ve ever wondered:

What if the problem isn’t me—but the story I was told about this career?

Host: Frances Mei Hardin, MD

Guest: Mohini Dasari, MD

Connect with Mohini: @modawrites

https://www.mohinidasari.com/

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.