Five Lessons From Episode 4 with Dr. John Shufeldt What happens when being a physician is only the beginning of your professional identity? For Dr. John Shufeldt, the answer has included building healthcare companies, earning business and law degrees, investing in healthcare innovation, improving access to medical care in underserved communities, and helping create a new kind of medical school. But despite all those accomplishments, when asked how he hopes to be remembered, h

Five Lessons From Episode 3 with Dr. Stephen Anderson What happens when you leave a career that has given you purpose, identity, and a way to make a difference for decades? In Episode 3 of The Second Shift Podcast, I spoke with Dr. Stephen Anderson, an emergency physician whose career extended far beyond the emergency department into hospital leadership, public health, advocacy, and national involvement with the American College of Emergency Physicians. Steve retired from cli

Five lessons from Episode 1 with Bryan Jepson When we launched The Second Shift Podcast, the goal was never simply to talk about retirement. It was to explore what happens when people who have spent decades building demanding, identity-defining careers begin asking a different question: What comes next? In Episode 1, Aaron Milledge turned the questions on me. We talked about my path through emergency medicine, an unexpected detour into autism medicine, my return to the emerge

Most physicians have their number in mind—their retirement number. The amount that they have determined that their net worth must reach to sustain them for the rest of their lives. Once they hit it, they assume that they will be ready to hang it up and call it a career. They may have come up with this number on their own, using a tool like the 4% rule, or perhaps a financial advisor has helped them with some more sophisticated planning. Either way, the number becomes the g

Transitions are rarely just financial decisions. Whether you are thinking about retirement, cutting back clinically, selling a business, changing careers, or stepping away from a role that has defined you for decades, the hardest part is often not the math. It is the conversations. Most major life transitions place stress on identity, relationships, routines, expectations, and communication long before they create financial problems. And yet many couples spend far more time d