188. Dr. Erin Hurley: What Sports Figured Out That Medicine Hasn't

Every elite athlete performs with a coaching staff behind them. It's just part of how high performance works. Physicians perform at the same level of intensity, with far higher stakes, and a coach was never part of their contract, their training, or anyone's expectation.

Drs. Hurley and Sotelo both hired their first coaches when physician-specific research on coaching was still in its early stages. For Erin, the twelve months that followed included a breast cancer diagnosis and her mother's failing health. For Joanne, early skepticism as a psychiatrist gave way to building and running a group coaching program inside her own health system. In this episode, they make the evidence-based case for why coaching belongs in medicine as the rule, not the exception, and what it looks like to advocate for it inside your organization.

Key Takeaways To Listen For

• Physicians are trained for elite-level performance but rarely given the support that athletes and executives simply expect as part of how their world works
• A randomized trial showed a 29.6% absolute reduction in burnout rates with small group coaching; a separate 2024 RCT by Kiser et al. found significant improvements in burnout, fulfillment, and work engagement in just three months
• Women are leaving medicine at a median age of 49 compared to 64 for men, and inadequate support is a factor organizations can no longer afford to ignore
• Coaching and therapy serve different purposes and physicians don't have to choose: the most effective outcomes often happen when both are part of the picture
• Replacing one physician costs anywhere from $500,000 to over $1.2 million, and physician turnover costs the US healthcare system an estimated $4.6 billion annually

Resources Mentioned

• AMA Physician Turnover Calculator: search "AMA physician burnout calculator" to access through the AMA website
• Learner Plus: a platform offering self-directed CME credits that can be applied toward coaching programs

"One of the things I love about coaching is that it's very future-oriented. You make a different decision, you're going to get a different outcome." — Dr. Erin Hurley

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