Can becoming an artist make you a better doctor, or simply help you become more of a person again?

On this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei Hardin, MD, sits down with dermatologist and artist Rachel Lee, MD, whose oil paintings are now being exhibited for the first time.

Rachel did not grow up thinking of herself as an artist. Creativity entered her life near the end of residency, after years spent almost entirely inside science and medicine. What began as a creative outlet eventually became an important way to process the grief, stress, and accumulated experiences of medical training while discovering who she was outside of being a physician.

Together, Rachel and Frances Mei talk about why medicine teaches physicians to think of their careers as their entire identities, and why pursuing something outside of medicine can initially feel almost transgressive. They discuss the strange difficulty physicians have calling themselves writers, artists, entrepreneurs, or anything else without first earning another degree or credential.

Rachel also shares exactly how she started. No art degree. No childhood spent painting. She signed up for a weekend workshop, then enrolled in a class literally called “Drawing for the Absolute Beginner.” From there, she kept taking classes, eventually found oil painting, and years later exhibited and sold her work.

They discuss why trying something new as an adult can require real courage, how investing money can create useful accountability, and why physicians already possess many of the skills necessary to become beginners again.

Rachel also shares the story behind one of her paintings, Sad but on Vacation, which began as a painting inspired by tulips in Amsterdam and eventually became an exploration of sadness, dissociation, and the strange reality that beautiful things can be happening around us while something inside still does not feel right.

In this episode:

• Why physicians need identities outside medicine

• Art as a way to process medical training

• Becoming creative later in life

• Why doctors struggle to call themselves artists or writers

• Starting with “Drawing for the Absolute Beginner”

• Learning to tolerate being bad at something new

• Why creative work can be deeply healing

• The difference between medical education and art education

• How financial investment can create accountability

• Why oil painting taught Rachel patience

• Letting go of linear timelines

• Creating Sad but on Vacation

• Why life is often more interesting when you take the exit

Rachel leaves us with advice she now gives aspiring medical students: life is much more about the exits than the highway. The exits are where we take the scenic route, try something unexpected, and discover parts of ourselves we never would have found by staying on the prescribed path.

Host: Frances Mei Hardin, MD

Guest: Rachel Lee, MD

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 happens when you do everything “right” in medical school and still don’t match into residency?

On this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei Hardin, MD, sits down with Dr. Sijia Zhang, a PGY-2 psychiatry resident at UCSF, to talk about one of the most painful and stigmatized experiences in medical training: going unmatched.

Sijia entered the Match with strong clinical grades, extensive research experience, and reassurance from advisors that the question was not whether she would match, but where. Then Match Week arrived, and she received the email telling her she had not matched into any position.

She shares what happened next, from the shame and shock of Match Day to navigating SOAP, institutional pressure to secure any available residency position, and the mentor who gave her a completely different piece of advice: if she had been selective about college and medical school, why should she suddenly stop being selective about residency?

Instead, Sijia took additional time, rebuilt her application around psychiatry, pursued research and away rotations, found mentors who believed in her, and gradually rebuilt the confidence she thought she had lost forever. She ultimately matched into psychiatry at UCSF.

Frances Mei also shares her own experience of not matching and SOAPing into ENT, and together they discuss failure, shame, mentorship, the hidden curriculum of medicine, and why a professional setback does not necessarily mean what we immediately assume it means about us.

In this episode:

• What it feels like to go unmatched in residency

• Why strong medical students still sometimes do not match

• The emotional aftermath of Match Day

• How SOAP works and why medical schools may encourage it

• Deciding not to SOAP into a program just to move forward

• Rebuilding a residency application after going unmatched

• Changing specialties from dermatology to psychiatry

• The importance of mentors after professional failure

• How to increase your “surface area for luck”

• Being highly productive while privately struggling

• Why failure can fundamentally change your relationship with risk

• Rebuilding confidence after rejection

• Matching at UCSF after an unsuccessful first cycle

• Sijia’s future in women’s mental health and consultation-liaison psychiatry

A conversation for anyone who has ever received an email, score, rejection, or result that made them wonder whether the future they imagined for themselves had disappeared.

It hadn’t.

Host: Frances Mei Hardin, MD

Guest: Sijia Zhang, MD

Connect with Sijia: @sijialater

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 happens after you leave the path you spent your entire life building toward?

On this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei Hardin, MD, is joined by Colin for a reflective birthday episode after officially turning 35.

Frances Mei talks about what it has felt like to step off medicine’s conveyor belt and build a career without a clear blueprint, including the uncertainty, fear, and freedom that come with losing sight of the shore for a while. She shares one of the questions that has become central to this season of life: is it really a risk if what you are risking is a life you do not want?

They also talk about the criticism Frances Mei still gets for leaving surgical practice, why “you could have just done locums” misses the point, and why working harder now feels completely different from working hard at a job she did not want.

The conversation moves into entrepreneurship, ambition, birthdays, gratitude, and the tradeoffs involved in building work that actually matters to you. Frances Mei reflects on why she no longer expects a perfect separation between work and life, and why meaningful work can feel life affirming even when it is demanding.

And yes, Stardew Valley makes an appearance. Frances Mei realizes that even in a video game, she loses interest once the farm is fully optimized and profitable, raising a bigger question about whether the real reward is sometimes the act of building itself.

In this episode:

• Turning 35 after leaving surgical practice

• Getting off medicine’s conveyor belt

• Becoming more comfortable with uncertainty

• Why leaving surgery was not about working less

• The criticism physicians face when they change careers

• Building a portfolio career without a blueprint

• Risk, ambition, and trusting yourself

• Why meaningful work feels different from burnout

• Entrepreneurship and the “love of the game”

• Gratitude without suppressing frustration

• What Stardew Valley can teach us about ambition

• Why how your life feels matters more than how it looks

Frances Mei ends with the mantra that may best summarize this new chapter:

“How my life feels is a lot more important than how my life looks.”

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.