Supporting Physician Spouses

Supporting Physician Spouses is the podcast for physician spouses and partners who are done white-knuckling through medical training and ready to think clearly about what comes next.Hosted by Kendra Harvey, a physician family advocate, coach, and the person who will say the thing no one else is saying but we are all thinking. This show is for the spouse standing at the finish line of their partner's residency wondering why it doesn't feel like relief yet. Or the one already in attending life, realizing the transition brought a whole new set of questions nobody prepared you for.Each episode goes deep on the real stuff: finances, identity, relocation, career, family dynamics, and the marriage underneath it all. Not surface-level inspiration. Not cheerleading. Just grounded, honest conversation that helps you figure out where you actually stand and what to do from there.If you're navigating the medical school-to-residency, residency-to-practice, rebuilding after years of training, or l

Supporting Physician Spouses is a education podcast hosted by Kendra Harvey, with 71 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Kendra Harvey hosts Supporting Physician Spouses, a education show with 71 episodes published.

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  Episode #70

  Residency, Three Kids, and a Novel: Keeping Something of Your Own with KAYLA MACNEILLE

  Sep 29, 202638 min

  Kayla's husband promised her he wouldn't be a surgeon. Then he promised he wouldn't be one of the hard ones. Then he became an orthopaedic surgeon. If you laughed and winced at the same time just now, you're in the right place. I sat down with Kayla MacNeille, physician spouse, mother of three and debut novelist, to talk about the parts of this life nobody warns you about. She met her husband in undergrad. She had one baby during medical school and two more during residency. None of them were fans of sleep. And like so many of us, she heard the advice early. Don't expect anything from your partner during training. Just get through it. She didn't agree with it. She absorbed it anyway. That's the part that stopped me. Two years out of training, Kayla described something I hear from so many women. Residency was supposed to be the obstacle. Once it was gone, everything would settle. Instead, she found a household full of patterns they had built out of necessity. Nobody's fault. Just habits that now needed to be noticed, pulled apart and asked a hard question. Did we build it this way because we value it, or because it was all we had? One of my favourite moments is when she realized, months after training ended, that they could simply hire a babysitter every Friday night. The option had been there all along. They were just out of practice at considering it. Then we got to the writing, and this is where Kayla's story really got me. Somewhere in those sleepless years, someone suggested she step back from writing until life calmed down. She sat with that longer than she'd like to admit. Then she decided the opposite. Writing was the one thing no call schedule or crying baby could touch, and it poured energy back into her instead of draining it. She finished her first draft before her second baby arrived, late at night with candles lit and coffee house music playing. That draft, started in 2018, is now her debut novel, Haunting Coretta Jones. I'll be honest. I'm a big believer in sleep, and my own early residency years had a lot more Netflix than novel writing. So you'll hear me working out my own hypothesis in real time. What I keep coming back to is this. When you have something that belongs only to you, something you tend and grow that isn't a person, it gives life back. You end up with less time and somehow more to give. The maths doesn't add up. It works anyway. Kayla said she felt less resentment toward training once she realised she didn't have to check every dream at the door for ten years. I haven't stopped thinking about that. If you've been waiting for a calmer season to have something of your own again, I think you'll hear yourself in this conversation. Grab your headphones and come listen. What You'll Learn (with Timestamps) [00:30 - 01:40] How "I won't be a surgeon" turned into orthopaedics (and three kids) [01:50 - 03:00] Why "don't expect anything from your partner" sticks, even when you reject it [03:10 - 04:30] The patterns built out of necessity that need undoing after training [04:30 - 06:40] Asking "what kind of family are we?" once time, energy and money show up [09:10 - 12:30] Why Kayla kept writing when she was told to step back [26:50 - 29:15] Protecting something of your own during training, and why it feels like magic Resources Mentioned Haunting Coretta Jones by Kayla MacNeille: Buy on Amazon The Veins of Venice, Kayla's next novel: Pre-order on Amazon Kayla on Instagram: @author_kbmacneille Kayla on TikTok: @author_kbmacneille Kayla's website: kbmacneille.com Your Next Steps Take the "Are You in Survival Mode?" Assessment Schedule a Complimentary Consultation to see if coaching is right for you Learn more about coaching with me Connect on Instagram: @supportingphysicianspouses and @kendra_itgetsbetternow Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

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  Episode #69

  Budget Meals, a Food Blog & Finding Yourself During Residency with Christina Musgrave

  Sep 22, 202636 min

  The week we recorded this episode, Christina Musgrave's washing machine, dishwasher, and refrigerator were all broken. The dog was sick. Her daughter was starting school. Her husband had been on call for what felt like forever. She was in her first trimester with their second baby. She still made dinner. That detail has stayed with me. Not because it's impressive, though it is, but because it says something true about what happens to women in this season. We keep going. We find the one thing that centers us and hold onto it, even when everything else is coming apart at the seams. For Christina, that thing has always been cooking. She's the food blogger and recipe developer behind Tasting with Tina, a wife in her husband's chief year of neurosurgery residency, a mom to an almost-three-year-old, and a woman who built an entire career out of a $40 weekly grocery budget and a lot of free time that didn't feel free at all. Because here's the part of Christina's story I didn't expect. The loneliness is what made room for the business. When they moved to St. Louis in 2021, knowing exactly two people, eight hours from family, her husband working surgical intern hours, she poured every spare moment into a food blog she'd started just for herself. She wasn't building a strategy. She was surviving. And somewhere in that survival, she built something that would eventually let her walk away from a corporate career she was good at but deeply unhappy in. She describes the rest of her life as being "Miss Rabbit," the Peppa Pig character who holds every job and shows up everywhere. The cook, the bill manager, the school coordinator, the dog wrangler. Most of us in this community could draw that picture from memory. But when Christina steps into her kitchen, she's also just herself. A woman who has always found her reset at the stove. What I love most about this conversation is how practical it gets. Christina has been feeding her family on resident budgets her whole adult life, and she still uses the same strategies she used when $40 a week was the actual number. Shop your freezer first. Buy protein in bulk. She built a cookbook around the idea that dinner on a Tuesday night can still feel like a moment worth sitting down for, even when everything else is chaos. But the thing Christina said that I keep coming back to is this: wanting something of your own isn't selfish. For physician spouses who move when medicine says move, who manage everything and everyone while their partner becomes a doctor, who give and give and give, having something that's just theirs isn't a luxury. It's what gets you through. It doesn't have to be a business. A book club counts. The kitchen counts. It just has to be yours. If you've ever quietly wondered whether there's room for you inside this season, this conversation is your answer. What You'll Learn [04:00 - 06:00] How Christina turned isolation and a lot of free time into the foundation of her business [09:00 - 10:00] The month she felt inexplicably awful, and what she finally realised was going on [13:00 - 14:30] Why cooking is her mental reset, and what she means when she says it's where she feels most like herself [19:00 - 22:30] Budget meal planning for residency families, including the salmon strategy that makes three dinners from one purchase [29:00 - 31:00] What Christina says to physician spouses who are afraid to want something of their own [31:30 - 32:00] The one thing she wishes someone had told her at the very beginning Resources Mentioned Tasting with Tina Christina's Cookbook: Easy Weeknight Dinners Christina on Instagram: @tasting.with.tina Your Next Steps Take the "The Hidden Cost of Being the Strong One" Assessment Learn more about private coaching with Kendra Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

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  Episode #68

  Physician Burnout & Why Hospital Wellness Programs Miss the Mark

  Sep 15, 202632 min

  There's a version of physician wellness we've all quietly accepted. The physician finds something that fills them back up. Golf. The gym. A solo trip somewhere. And the family waits for them to come home. Nobody's wrong for needing that. But nobody's talking about what it costs the spouse who's been home all week, holding everything together, watching the car back out of the driveway on a Saturday morning. That's where this conversation starts. Mike and Ashley Christensen are a physician family from St. George, Utah. Mike is an anesthesiologist, about ten years into practice. They have four kids. More than a decade of medical marriage behind them. Together they built the MedGolf Wellness Foundation and a golf tournament series called Clubs and Scrubs. The whole premise: physician wellness that actually includes the family, not just the physician. But before Mike became the person who organizes those tournaments, he was the person Ashley quietly resented for golfing. She'll say it plainly. When he'd head to the course on a rare day off, she was home with kids, running on fumes. His few hours on the fairway felt like something taken from an already thin margin. She didn't say it out loud. She just held it. Then one day he asked her to ride along. Not to play. Just to ride. She had never actually been on a golf course. Her dad had golfed her entire life. She got in the cart, looked around at the open air and the quiet and the people unhurried out there on the grass, and thought, "Oh! This is what you've been doing." She plays now and genuinely loves it. But what shifted wasn't the golf. It was the understanding that a husband who fills himself back up shows up differently at home. And that was what she wanted all along. There's a line from this conversation I want you to hear for yourself. Resentment doesn't come from your spouse having something they love. It comes from being the only one who doesn't. If that landed for you, this episode is worth your time. Mike and Ashley also get into something that has been frustrating physician families for a long time: why hospital wellness programs keep missing the mark. Mike's Doctor's Day story alone is worth the listen. And in the back half, he talks about the physician families he's building this foundation for. Some of what he shares is hard to sit with. It's also exactly the kind of thing this community needs to hear someone say out loud. What You'll Learn (with Timestamps) [00:03:00 - 00:07:00] How Mike went from cold-calling golf courses to founding a nonprofit from scratch [00:08:00 - 00:10:30] What it looks like when physician wellness events actually include spouses and kids [00:11:00 - 00:13:00] Why Ashley's resentment about golf had nothing to do with golf, and the shift that changed everything [00:14:00 - 00:17:00] What hospital wellness programs keep missing, in Mike's own words [00:20:00 - 00:22:30] The physician families Mike and Ashley are building this foundation for, and why it still gets emotional Resources Mentioned Fair Play by Eve Rodsky (mentioned in relation to "unicorn space") MedGolf Wellness Foundation Follow on Instagram: @clubsandscrubsgolf Upcoming tournament: October 3rd, Thanksgiving Point Golf Club, Lehi, Utah, with a portion of proceeds supporting Kylee Dart Your Next Steps Learn more, donate, or register for a tournament: medgolfwellness.org Follow Clubs in Scrubs on Instagram: @clubsandscrubsgolf Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

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  Episode #67

  When the Lawsuit Comes Home: The Secondary Stress Nobody Measures

  Sep 8, 202616 min

  The Lindsay Clancy case opened a lot of important conversations. I was inside one of them last week, talking about the maternal mental health side of what happened. Today I want to stay inside the same story and move to a different part of the room. Patrick Clancy has filed a civil malpractice suit against the physicians who cared for Lindsay. Somewhere, in houses nobody is talking about, the spouses and families of those named physicians are waking up every morning under a cloud that has no guaranteed end date. Nobody is asking how they are. I want to. If you are a physician spouse, you already understand better than most what it means to carry something significant and carry it quietly. You understand the performance of steadiness when nothing feels steady. You know what it costs to make it look easy when easy is the last thing it is. Litigation season is unlike any other hard season I have witnessed inside a medical marriage. It is not acute. It does not move through you and pass. It is ambient. It lives in the background of ordinary life, the school pickups, the dinners, the day that started like any other, and occasionally breaks through without warning when a stack of documents arrives or an application asks the one question you have started to dread. What that does to you personally, to your marriage, to the quiet texture of your daily life, is something nobody is counting. The moral injury your physician carries does not stay at the hospital. The chronic anxiety that replaces their confidence comes home. This episode is for the spouses in the background. The one holding everything together while the case moves at its own pace on its own timeline, entirely outside your hands. The one who has gotten very good at answering "fine" just convincingly enough to get through the next question. Who is handling it. And who is not okay. And who may not be sure, at this point, whether those two things are still different. They are. And that distinction is where everything begins. What You'll Learn [02:00 - 04:20] The four risks every physician family quietly carries, and why litigation is the one nobody says out loud [04:20 - 06:40] What moral injury is, where it lives, and why it does not stay at the hospital [06:40 - 09:40] The difference between an acute crisis and an ambient season, and why that distinction matters for how you cope [09:40 - 11:20] What "the drop" is, why it happens on an ordinary day, and what it is actually made of [11:20 - 13:40] How litigation changes the texture of a marriage without a single fight or rupture [13:40 - 15:20] The professional ripple effects that come home and quietly reorganize your family's life in ways nobody predicted Resources Mentioned The Hidden Cost of Being the Strong One — free 15-question assessment Your Next Steps Take the free assessment: The Hidden Cost of Being the Strong One Connect on Instagram: @SupportingPhysicianSpouses and @Kendra_ItGetsBetterNow Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

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  Episode #66

  Inside America's Maternal Mental Health Crisis with Emily E. Johnson

  Sep 1, 202643 min

  A woman who did everything the system tells you to do... reached out early, trusted her providers, brought every insider advantage a medical family has to the table... and it still nearly wasn't enough. When Emily E. Johnson's son was born in 2023, her husband was finishing his fourth year of medical school. Between the two of them, they had more healthcare literacy than most families walking through a hospital door. So when her anxiety started building, day by day, when small things like strapping a car seat or cleaning bottles started to feel impossible, they knew what you're meant to do. They asked for help. Early. Within the first couple of weeks. What they weren't prepared for was what came next. The providers they trusted kept offering appointments months away, then weeks away, then finally next week, while Emily was losing her ability to eat or sleep and having thoughts that terrified her. Two and a half weeks. That's how long it actually took her to land in the kind of specialised care that made the difference. Two and a half weeks doesn't sound like a long time until you're the one living inside a crisis, watching every hour stretch into its own kind of eternity. What struck me most in this conversation wasn't only Emily's story, it was what she's since learned about the rest of the world. In many countries, new mothers are never left alone for the first forty days. Someone comes and stays, cooks, holds the baby so she can rest, treats her recovery as seriously as the baby's needs. Here, whether a mother can access specialised, mother and baby together care depends almost entirely on whether her community happened to have someone fight hard enough, or grieve hard enough, to build it. Fewer than ten of these perinatal partial hospitalisation programmes exist in the whole country, and most exist because of a tragedy, not because anyone decided in advance that mothers deserved the infrastructure. I sat down with Emily to talk through all of it: the traumatic first weeks, the walls between healthcare systems that nearly cost her the help she needed, and what she wants every hospital system watching the news right now to actually do about it. It's a hard conversation and an important one, and I think you'll come away from it, like I did, with more hope than you'd expect. What You'll Learn (with Timestamps) [01:00 - 03:00] Why "we did everything right and still couldn't get an answer" became the scariest part of Emily's early postpartum weeks [06:00 - 08:00] The impossible choice between a months long outpatient wait and the ER, and what finally forced her to go [18:00 - 22:00] What other countries do differently: the 40 day postpartum tradition the US has never adopted [25:00 - 27:00] Why fewer than ten perinatal partial hospitalisation programmes exist nationwide, and what makes them different [28:00 - 31:00] How tragedy, not need, is what actually builds these programmes, including one built after a mother's death by suicide [33:00 - 35:00] The walls between healthcare systems that kept her own providers from ever mentioning the programme that ultimately helped her Resources Mentioned Women Are Dying, Deb: Inside America's Maternal Mental Health Crisis — Emily's book Mission Just One Mom — Emily's site, including her free care-access map and data dashboard Postpartum Support International — mentioned in conversation as a resource for finding language and support Postpartum Support International Your Next Steps Take the "Hidden Cost of Being the Strong One" Assessment Grab Emily's book, Women Are Dying, Deb — currently 99 cents on Kindle for a limited time Connect with Emily at Mission Just One Mom Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Follow on Instagram

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