322. Is It Too Late to Change Careers as a Doctor?
How Retreats and Coaching Helped Dr. Karen Fromhold Start a Fellowship at 58
Dr. Jessie Mahoney talks with family medicine physician Dr. Karen Fromhold, ten days into her hospice and palliative medicine fellowship.
Karen had a good enough job. One she had loved and was a great fit for a while. She wasn't burned out. She simply had a dream she'd carried for over 20 years.
Our conversation explores what it took to voice her dream, trust it, and finally move toward it, and the role retreats and coaching played at each step along the way.
In This Episode:
Why leaving a job you love can be harder than leaving one you don't
How retreat spaces create room for clarity to surface
The difference between moving away from something and moving toward something
Why Karen waited for the right opportunity instead of rushing
What it means to give yourself grace as a beginner again
How the Retreat Space Made Room for This Decision
Karen attended four retreats over four years, each meeting her at a different point in the decision-making process. At her first retreat, the dream was voiced out loud for the first time — in what Karen calls a "fragile, baby idea" state. Coaching conversations that followed helped shape the idea. By her second retreat, she'd begun pursuing an alternate mid-career fellowship path.
Jessie offers a framework for why this kept happening in the retreat space specifically: stepping out of daily environment and into relaxation activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is often why clarity that's been hidden or hard to access at home surfaces in that container of safety.
Karen also describes going back through her retreat journals before quitting her job and noticing the same themes recur and deepen each time she returned — what Jessie calls "peeling a different layer of the same onion."
Pearls of Wisdom
Once you make the decision, you make it the right decision.
We don't want to run away from something — we want to move towards something.
A busy life makes it easy to leave a dream on the shelf.
If not now, when?
Reflection Questions
Where have you made do with "good" instead of pursuing "great"?
What dream have you left on the shelf, telling yourself it's too late?
What would it look like to move toward something instead of just away from what isn't working?
FAQs
Is it ever too late to change careers or specialties as a doctor? Karen started her fellowship at 58, after a full first career and 20 years of a dream. This episode is proof that timing doesn't have to look the way medicine's culture tells us it should.
What if my current job isn't bad — just not quite right anymore? That's exactly the spot this episode addresses. Karen's job was good; it just wasn't a fit for who she'd become, which is often the hardest place to make a change from.
How did retreats and coaching play a role in Karen's decision? Across four retreats, Karen moved from first voicing a long-held dream, to actively pursuing a path toward it, to finally saying yes. Coaching and the retreat environment — stepping away, relaxing the nervous system, and being in community with other women physicians — created the conditions for clarity that were hard to access in daily life.
Ways to work with Jessie:
CME Wellness Retreats: www.jessiemahoneymd.com/retreats
1:1 and Small Group Physician Coaching: https://www.jessiemahoneymd.com/coaching
Free Live-Stream Mindful Yoga:www.jessiemahoneymd.com/yoga
Jessie's Blog: www.jessiemahoneymd.com/jessies-blog
*Nothing shared in the Healing Medicine Podcast is medical advice. The Healing Medicine Podcast was formerly known as the Mindful Healers Podcast.