077 - A Crazy Medial Story About Burnout and the Power of Persevering In Medical Practice & Residancy

In this week's episode of The Independent Physician's Blueprint, Coach JPMD takes you back to the early days of his medical training journey—when disaster struck just three months into medical  school.

Imagine coming home to find your apartment engulfed in flames, and with it, everything you own reduced to ash. It’s a story of shock, devastation, and an overwhelming sense of loss—but more importantly, it’s a story of perseverance.

What happens when life throws you off course in the middle of one of the most challenging times of your career? How do you bounce back from setbacks that threaten to derail everything you’ve worked for? Join Coach JPMD as he shares lessons learned from surviving this personal disaster.  Discover how resilience, support, and perseverance can help you overcome even the toughest obstacles in medical training.

Tune in to hear how he navigated this challenging experience and emerged stronger, and learn how you too can apply these lessons to your own life. Don’t forget to subscribe and follow the podcast to ensure you never miss an episode filled with real stories and powerful insights.

Takeaways

• Perseverance is the exercise for building endurance and strength
• Setbacks in medical school or any stage of your medical career can be overcome
• The support of others is crucial in difficult times

Chapters

00:00 Introduction: A Crazy Story of Perseverance
03:00 Staying Strong and Continuing Medical School
03:30 The Support of Others
05:31 Recovering from Setbacks
06:20 Perseverance and Building Strength

Discover how medical graduates, junior doctors, and young physicians can navigate residency training programs, surgical residency, and locum tenens to increase income, enjoy independent practice, decrease stress, achieve financial freedom, and retire early, while maintaining patient satisfaction and exploring physician side gigs to tackle medical school loans.

Transcript

Coach JPMD (00:00.62)
Welcome back to another episode where I help younger physicians decrease stress and increase income by transitioning from corporate to independent practices, even without any business experience. So welcome to another crazy medical story with your host coach, JPMD. That's me also known as Judea PRMD. And this week's episode is not directly related to medical care. Looking back at this story, it's really a crazy story about perseverance.

Overcoming disaster. It was a cool October Friday afternoon. I had just come back from the grocery store with a friend of mine. At the time, I don't think I had a car or if I did, I wasn't using it. And I was still in medical school. It was first year medical school, actually. And it was the first three months of medical school. So I would say that's October 1990.

Three. Wow, that's a long time ago. But anyway, as I'm coming back into my apartment and at Einstein, and Einstein, had three major towers, I think about 20 stories high, right in the middle of the campus. We had a gym downstairs, medical school is across the street. It was all kind of one complex contained.

Jacobi medical center was, I could see the hospital, which is a pretty prominent, trauma center in the Bronx. And I walk into my, my building to see my roommate freaking out. He was screaming, yelling, I said, Jose, what's going on? His hair was tinged, not tinged, singed.

And he said, there's a fire in our apartment. There's a fire in our apartment. I'm like, what? So I run back into the building with him. We lived on the eighth floor, I think, or 10th floor. And we did everything that you're not supposed to do in a fire. We got in an elevator. We got up there elevator and as soon as I got out that out of the elevator door on the 10th floor, you could see smoke. And we did another thing that we shouldn't do.

Coach JPMD (02:21.006)
we actually opened the door and a huge plume of smoke came out and it was, it was a disaster. It was a disaster. The apartment was on fire. We, I guess 911 had already been called, firefighters came and pretty much lost everything in the fire within three months of medical school. And that's how I started medical school.

At the time, my mom was actually in New York. She was on the island and called her. My dad was in Haiti. We decided not to tell him. And that was that Friday afternoon. And, you know,

I ended up staying on campus, even though I could have gone to my mom's house because I actually wanted to go back and there's one thing I wanted to try to salvage and that was a college ring that I had had saved some money to buy my Howard University college ring. And I thought I'd find it in the rubble. And I did not find it. But, you know, it was definitely an experience that I don't wish on anyone. But I have to say that it was in that experience, I realized how

how great humanity was, great a group of students I had in my class and at the school. I ended up staying with a good friend of mine, Ben Salento, who's actually an ENT out of Texas now. And I had classes on Monday. And on Monday morning, I went into the class, and obviously everyone knew about the fire, and the students...

Wanted an update so I actually gave him an update I told him I'm class some people wanted to know if I was actually gonna quit medical school after the incident and I said no, I'm gonna I'm gonna stay and continued on with classes continued on with my work, but I have to say that that probably wasn't the best idea because I ended up failing two classes in the first year medical school and Yeah

Coach JPMD (04:28.198)
The only two classes I failed in medical school and it was right after my fire. And I was able to retake those courses during the summer. But I was advised actually to take the semester off. But my hard head did not want to do that and I ended up suffering the consequences.

Hey, I'm an MD and I've been practicing for 23 years. so I think that may not have been the best idea at the time, but it turned out okay. I have to say that Einstein was great. I went to Albert Einstein College of Medicine and they actually found me another apartment within the week. And I was able to continue classes and really...

go through a tough experience. But with the takeaways that I want to bring to you guys, as my audience, you may be going through some some rough times. And I have to say that

You know, my roommate was actually sleeping in the in the room at the time that he smelled the smoke and God is good. He kept him from harm. He kept me from harm because this actually started in my actual my actual room. Not sure what happened, but. He kept us safe, so God is good.

The second thing I take away from this is that, you know, failing a course at the, medical school or in any, in any stage of your medical career is not the end of the story. There's always a way to recover. We just have to put our minds to it and involve the right people so that we can overcome things that happen in life. And the last thing I want to say is that perseverance, I think, is the exercise for building endurance and strength.

Coach JPMD (06:20.45)
because I've gone through some things in my life and I've persevered. And sometimes it's hard to think that you are going to get through it, but you are if you have the right people in place and have the right mindset. You know, that's what I want to give you this week on this week's crazy medical story. See you next week. Thank you for listening to these crazy medical stories. And don't forget to subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app so that you'll never miss an episode.