Rob Orman, MD is a certified executive coach who works with physicians to build resilience within their medical practices, deconstructing ideas and strategies to live and work with intent.
He received his medical degree from Emory University and completed emergency medicine residency at Denver Health Medical Center, where he served as chief resident. Rob spent the next 20 years as a community emergency physician before becoming a full time coach.
A multiple award winning lecturer, Dr. Orman is the former chief editor of EM:RAP, creator of the Stimulus and ERcast podcasts, and for nearly a decade served as the host of Essentials of Emergency Medicine, the largest single track EM conference in the world.
The three burnouts and why I am a coach.
I burnt out three times during my career. The first time, as a second year attending, I assiduously applied to residences in both ophthalmology and anesthesia, thinking that would cure the utter crispiness I felt. I ended up staying in EM, with the perspective that I hadn’t given it a fair chance. The problem was… I had changed nothing about how I approached my job.
Two burnouts over the next 10 years taught me that I needed to approach work differently – with intent. The strategy of sucking it up, nose to the grindstone, had gotten me this far, but had become maladaptive. It was the wrong kind of grit.
What you hear on Stimulus, and by extension, what happens in our coaching practice, was borne out of this – developing strategies to live and work with intent, creatively solve problems, and have a little self compassion.
Looking back, I wish that I had had a coach to help me work through the challenges of being a physician. It doesn’t have to be onerous. In fact, it can be joyous, but it sometimes takes effort to get there.
