Episode
Treating the Wounded Healer with Dr. Stefanie Simmons | Flourishing in Medicine: From Surviving to Thriving #34
- Published
- Dec 22, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 1977
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Summary
Today, we are joined by Dr. Stefanie Simmons, emergency medicine physician, national leader in clinician wellbeing, and Chief Medical Officer of the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation, for a conversation about service, systemic change, and reimagining healthcare workers as emotional and intellectual athletes. In this conversation, Stefanie reflects on her unexpected path into medicine. Originating from a family ethic of service and her father's repeated message: our duty is to use our talents to make the world a better place. She traces how her historian's eye for systems and change, combined with early experiences of misalignment between medicine's ideals and realities, led her to focus on the interpersonal, cultural, and systemic dimensions of healing. We also cover: The tragic story of Dr. Lorna Breen and the foundation's mission to dismantle structural barriers to mental healthcare for clinicians, including invasive licensing and credentialing questions about past mental health treatment How personal struggles with unaddressed mental health needs and stigma shaped her commitment to changing medical culture and treating healthcare workers with the same care they provide to patients The foundation's comprehensive work across research, education, collaboration with national organizations, and accelerating solutions through the impact badge program that recognizes institutions removing stigmatizing questions Her vision for the future: treating healthcare workers as emotional and intellectual athletes who deserve proper training, rest, coaching, and supportive systems designed to help them thrive rather than injure them Throughout, Dr. Simmons embodies moral clarity, vulnerability, and hope—grounded in systems thinking, dedicated to cultural transformation, and committed…