Meet Michael Carlini, a certified life coach and founder of Carlini Coaching, who specializes in supporting medical professionals with ADHD. Drawing from his personal experience and close family ties to healthcare, Michael sheds light on the unique challenges faced by physicians with ADHD, including time management, focus, and work-life balance. He discusses the prevalence of ADHD among medical professionals and the stigma that often prevents them from seeking help or disclosing their condition.
Throughout the interview, Michael shares his journey from teaching to coaching and reveals the strategies he employs to help his clients thrive both personally and professionally. He emphasizes the importance of setting boundaries, leveraging assistive technology, and creating a supportive environment without necessarily disclosing an ADHD diagnosis. If you’re a physician entrepreneur, investor, or considering a non-clinical career, this podcast is a must-listen. Tune in to discover how Michael’s insights and expertise can help you navigate the challenges of ADHD in the medical field and unlock your full potential.
Michael Carlini’s website:
https://www.carlinicoaching.com/
Transcript:
Dr. Mike: [00:00:00] Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another edition of Bootstrap MD. This is the podcast for physician and healthcare entrepreneurs. As from time to time, we like to spotlight coaches and consultants who are making a difference in the medical community. And we certainly have one who is, and this is certainly a topic that I have not seen covered.
So I’m really excited to hear about from him and his expertise and sharing with us. We’re going to be talking about ADHD and what we have, who we have here today is a certified life coach specializing in supporting medical professionals with ADHD, [00:01:00] leveraging his own personal experience with ADHD and his close family of healthcare professionals.
This gentleman brings a unique understanding and perspective to his clients. He recognizes the immense pressure faced by those working in the demanding medical field and how ADHD can further complicate challenges like time management, focus, and work life balance. Through personalized coaching, he equips medical professionals with practical strategies to overcome these obstacles.
Build strong and meaningful relationships and create a fulfilling life beyond medicine. His mission is not only to help his clients survive, but to thrive both personally and professionally. I’d like to bring to the program Michael Carlini. Michael, how are you doing today?
Michael Carlini: Doing great. How are you, Mike?
Dr. Mike: Great. And if I didn’t mention, Michael is the founder of Carlini Coaching, which focuses on ADHD for medical professionals. So Michael let’s talk about it. You mentioned in the bio that you have personally have dealt with ADHD as well [00:02:00] as with your family to talk a little bit more about that.
Michael Carlini: Which one would you like me to start with? Because I can talk about my personal experience.
Dr. Mike: Definitely. Let’s start with there.
Michael Carlini: Yeah. So I was actually diagnosed at a pretty young age. I presented as the stereotypical boy. It was a little bit hyperactive, but did well enough in class. Basically once my parents started to hear about that, they had already seen ADHD and my cousins.
And so when it came up, it wasn’t a surprise. Started me on medication and that kind of started my journey in terms of having ADHD and like receiving treatment and having intervention. So
that’s really where it started. And honestly, throughout my life, the goal was actually to avoid really looking at it and understanding it because it was too much.
It felt like it was going to be too painful to really dive into what is wrong with me. Eventually, as [00:03:00] I grew older, actually entered into coaching, I realized that if I can lean into this and
understand myself a lot better, I can feel a lot more confident in who I am and find ways that I can truly perform to the level that I want to.
So that’s my general experience. I understand that there’s a lot of stigma that’s felt in being open or disclosing your ADHD within the workplace. As a teacher, it was one of those things that when
I disclosed that my department head, really didn’t understand it, nor did he think it was an asset to the school.
Yeah, it was pretty painful to be open and honest about it. But in reality, it actually helped me to be more successful within that environment.
Dr. Mike: So you mentioned you ADHD, you suffered it as a child. How was it first brought up? [00:04:00] Was it from the teachers? Was it from your own parents or family members?
Michael Carlini: I think it’s unique in that once you know what it looks like. You start to be able to spot it pretty much anywhere. It’s showing up. And so I, my parents definitely recognized it early. They were more or less probably waiting for teachers to say, hey your son is having some difficulties sitting still, or controlling that impulse to just answer the questions before being called on.
Dr. Mike: And you mentioned you were on medications. Did you also have a coach or any other type of ways to treat this besides drugs.
Michael Carlini: Yeah, absolutely. So I actually started working with a coach in college and Casey Dixon she now focuses primarily on working with lawyers with ADHD, and the intervention [00:05:00] that I received from her really helped me to say, okay, what is this actually doing, what is ADHD actually doing in terms of like, how is it impacting my academic success? And it went so much further than I’m having difficulty with focusing in. It went more into having difficulties with activating for tasks on time, having difficulties with organization and prior prioritization.
So that’s really what opened my eyes in terms of understanding myself, my ADHD, and then really how do I approach these challenges in a way that is friendly for my brain.
Dr. Mike: You also mentioned you became a teacher and you said it affected your career. Can you talk a little bit more about that if you’re able to?
Michael Carlini: Yeah. As I’ll be as vulnerable as I can be about this. Cause I think that’s really important. I think so many people with [00:06:00] ADHD have these very challenging experiences and the reaction to that is generally to hide it and feel like I can’t share this with anybody else. As a teacher, I taught biology.
I actually have a degree in biology, and I decided late in my degree that I really enjoyed teaching. I was a TA for a lot of biology classes in undergraduate, and I just decided this is actually really exciting and engaging, and I really want to inspire the next generation of students to really fall in love with nature and biology in general.
Following that, I pretty much pursued a teaching career because, of course, I want to make and yeah, so getting into that environment, being a teacher, it requires you to do a lot of work and a lot of it not super well compensated for, but yeah, it was particularly challenging because it [00:07:00] required me to do a lot of organization, prioritization and giving direct feedback to a lot of
students.
The way it impacted me is that my one of my biggest strengths is actually being able to be creative and create lessons that were truly engaging. For example with the human anatomy and
physiology class that I was teaching to seniors, we used an Arduino to create a heart rate sensor. So they had to learn how to program it put it all together.
And really explain how it works. So really great at that innovative lab creation. But that means that I also feel like, okay if I’m capable of doing this level of work, this level of engaging lesson planning, I should be doing that all the time. But in reality, trying to do that for all of my classes every week just too much.
So it led to this kind of cycle of high [00:08:00] performance, burnout, which led to a little bit of a crash and then recovery and then keep on going like that. But those periods of burnout meant that sometimes things would get rated a little bit later than was expected. And so that eventually caught the attention of the administration. What I was really what I’ve heard since leaving this like this teaching environment is that a lot of teachers actually get great mentorship and support in terms of navigating those first two or three years. But in general, I wasn’t given any of that. So
it was it made it even harder on me to find some success in that environment.
But yeah, I hope that answer your question. Yeah.
Dr. Mike: Yeah. And I appreciate thank you for being transparent in your journey. So is that what led to you a way of, with your condition for the ADHD, did that lead to helping [00:09:00] others with this condition?
Michael Carlini: Yeah I really felt like the people that I was impacting.
The most were those who had ADHD. I had a lot of students who came to me. Some of them were my direct students that I was teaching, but some of them were just students within the school who heard that I was very open about my ADHD.
Dr. Mike: Was this high school or college?
Michael Carlini: This was high school. Yeah, this was a high School. And, they came to me asking me for some support.
And generally speaking, I just gave them some strategies and tools as well as really just discussed with them and their parents. What options there are out there to get support.
Dr. Mike: You were, they knew about your condition.
Michael Carlini: I was very open about it and I felt like it was important to be open about it just because I think there’s a lot of [00:10:00] misunderstanding around what ADHD is and, is it a like lack of parenting? Or lack of discipline. Is it being overdiagnosed, underdiagnosed? Yeah. So I felt like it was really important for me to be open about that. And, as a result, I saw several students go from, having to go to summer school. Failing classes to turning it around and having being on Dean’s list.
So it was really just that experience and how fulfilling it was to see these students turn it around. Made me go. Actually, I think the reason why I got into teaching is more this work, which I’m doing for 5 percent of my work day, rather than the other stuff that I’m doing, which is grading, classroom management, and all the other tasks.
So after three years of teaching, I just decided this [00:11:00] is way more fulfilling than my current job. And so I left teaching and started a coaching certification program that was focused on working with students with ADHD. But yeah that’s basically what led me into it. And obviously further down the road now I’m ending up with working with medical professionals with ADHD.
And I can explain that if you’d love, if you’d like me to.
AI: As a doctor, I wasn’t used to asking for help, especially when it came to subjects outside of medicine. But then I found physiciancoaches. com. In an instant, I found hundreds of experts to help me in all aspects of life. On areas I was afraid to ask. Dealing with burnout. Starting a side gig. Money management.
Even help with my marriage. And the best part? Nearly all experts are physicians [00:12:00] themselves. After reading their profile and a quick chat, I knew I found the right mentor for me. At PhysicianCoaches. com, help from professional colleagues is just a click away.
Dr. Mike: I’d love to, but since you brought it up, I do want to just a minute or two talk about the myths of ADHD, because there are some misconceptions out there where, oh, he’s you know we’re people say, Oh I’ve got too many things and maybe I have A DHD or even as an entrepreneur, we talk about entrepreneur ADHD.
And maybe it’s a bit flippant. And maybe it’s not. So let’s talk about it. You said one of the myths was lack of parenting or bad parenting. Can you discuss more about that?
Michael Carlini: Yeah, I think the assumption is that we see behavioral challenges occurring with a lot of kids with ADHD, and it’s usually a result of like impulse control.
Yeah, [00:13:00] impulsivity, hyperactivity, right? So when we look at that behavior from a neurotypical lens of just what is normal human behavior. And how do people normally act in terms of like intentionality? We go, okay this person or this child has decided to do this, and this must be a result of the parent not appropriately reinforcing the appropriate behavior.
So in reality, what you would hear if you were to talk to that same child is they knew what the right thing was to do but it wasn’t until after they had already behaved in whatever way that they realized Oh, oops, that’s not I didn’t mean to do that. And so yeah, you get this massive misunderstanding from people who just don’t understand that there isn’t that moment of pausing and considering what the consequence [00:14:00] is in that situation.
So that’s something that you’ll see a lot more with children, but with adults with ADHD, that impulsivity, hyperactivity tends to show up in different ways. It’s more of the impulsivity of thought.
It’s going from one thought to the next. And then not realizing that they’ve drifted away from whatever the original and important thought was until, I don’t know, 10 or 15 minutes down the line
or much longer.
Yeah,
Dr. Mike: Great. Thanks for sharing. So you mentioned you had been working with students, just off the cuff sharing that. And then you decide, hey, maybe I can, this can lead into something
more substantial, maybe into a career, and specifically health professionals.
So tell me about that. You got your coaching certification, what led you to draw to that group in particular?
Michael Carlini: Yeah I’ll just tell you, working with high school and college students during the pandemic was [00:15:00] painful. I’ll just say that, yeah, it was just like, the previous experience of having like in person interaction with these students and being able to like actually physically see their backpack and actually have that real one on one connection it disappeared.
And so it was a lot of I’ll keep poking and prying and hoping that they, the student would be open to sharing how things are truly going. So that on top of really, when you deal with a high school or college student, the parent is the primary driver for why the student has gotten into coaching.
And so I was trying to balance the satisfaction, happiness of the student and that coaching process and the happy happiness and satisfaction of the parent. And in reality, those things are in opposition, most of the time, right? Like the student might be happy that the parents off of their case, but the parent might [00:16:00] not be happy because the student is now having that opportunity to fail and experiment.
And they’re hoping for things to get turned around with no trip up. So all that to say is after a while of doing that and, having a couple of adult coaching clients interspersed in my like client load, I realized what I was really enjoying was working with adults. And then I had two doctors that I was coaching and then 2022,
and I realized, oh, wow, this is actually really engaging. I feel incredibly passionate about supporting these doctors because all of both of them were amazing at what they did and do but they just really were struggling with balancing the work and then life, right? So they were really great at showing up for patients.
They were by all means considered great doctors, but [00:17:00] they felt incredibly burnt out. And they felt, or a lot of them were way behind on documentation and image reading. Yeah it really made me go, Oh, this is really interesting. And I know that I have a lot of connection to this. I think if I could really help this doctors with ADHD find balance and success,
it will mean that their patients are much better off and the doctors much better off in the long term. And hopefully that means that they stay within field of medicine for longer rather than potentially deciding to leave as a result of how unhealthy that career was for them or is for them.
Dr. Mike: Yeah, it’s something that burnout is definitely something that is prevalent in medicine. But yeah, I think that’s an interesting point that perhaps, for those who have ADHD, or maybe they don’t know [00:18:00] it, it could be a factor. And before the call, you shared a statistic with me that was really revealing about clinicians or healthcare professionals and ADHD. Can you speak to that?
Michael Carlini: Yeah, I’ll definitely have to fact check this for specificity’s sake. But yeah, what I would say is ADHD is not widely recognized within medicine, right? So of the studies that I’ve looked at there was one from university of Michigan that looked at ADHD, the prevalence of ADHD in medical learners.
And what they found was about 0. 3 percent of all the medical learners studied reported that they had a diagnosis of ADHD. And what I found interesting about that is if we looked at careers like similar in level of achievement, so let’s say lawyers the National Bar Association did a study of all [00:19:00] lawyers or not all lawyers, but a large subset of lawyers.
And about 13 percent reported that they had a diagnosis of ADHD. So we know that ADHD impacts people regardless of IQ and achievement. So it doesn’t really make sense that we would see it at such a low prevalence level. Within medicine, I think that’s a lot more to do with the stigma as well as the lack of understanding around what is ADHD actually look like in people that never had behavioral issues and really performed well.
Throughout their entire academic career.
Dr. Mike: Yeah. And just throwing it out. I think that number is probably underrepresented. In addition to the factors that you had mentioned, I also think physicians being on medications, that for ADHD the stigma with Ritalin and these types of medications, they’re not going to take it [00:20:00] because in fear of being under treatment being on a medication like that, I definitely can tell you that physicians would probably not be on those type of medications if they can, or at least hide it. So they’re probably not representing it.
They’re probably not disclosing it.
Michael Carlini: Absolutely. Yeah, the hiding it is definitely true. I think there’s also a lot of fear and a lack of information out there about what is it, how does it impact your career? So people are concerned about liability insurance and how it might impact your ability to practice and will it drive up the cost of that?
It shouldn’t, right? Like the Americans with Disability Act should protect you, but of course, everything’s on a case by case basis. So I think most people in the lack of understanding of the legal implications of having a diagnosis and disclosing that diagnosis to [00:21:00] their workplace opt to play it safe, right?
I’ll just hide this. I just won’t even talk about this or bring this up in the workplace. So that fear or that inability to really be open about what challenges they’re facing often means that they’re working extra hard to compensate, and really keep up with their peers.
Dr. Mike: Michael, again, this has been a very illuminating conversation.
And if you’ve just joined in, we’re talking with Michael Carlini, founder of Carlini coaching he is a expert on and a consultant and he works with healthcare professionals who may be dealing with ADHD and you can find that more information on his website carlinicoaching.com We’ll have a link here in the show notes. So for those listening here who perhaps have been diagnosed with ADHD or I feel they may have some traits of ADHD, they wanna reach out to you, [00:22:00] they can go to your website. Can you tell them how does that work for when you’re dealing with prospective client and maybe share some of your methods and strategies for someone who might be interested?
Michael Carlini: Yeah, so of course they can go to my website. And then they can schedule a consultation with me. Consultations free if it means that they want to schedule maybe two consultations with me if they felt like they really enjoyed the first conversation, but they really just wanted to get to know a little bit more or do a little bit of a trial coaching session.
I’m very much open to that, right? So because it’s, of course, a big investment as well as I’m asking for someone to be incredibly vulnerable with me in terms of, embarking on this journey to understand their ADHD as well as start to make changes, right? Like change is hard, especially behavioral change.
So once they decide that they want to work with me, we’re really diving into creating that coaching relationship. So I’m using Mix of the [00:23:00] ICFs principles of partnering and contract, creating a contract or an agreement with our clients. And from there, we’re really just starting to dive into how is ADHD showing up so more often than not, people
are coming to me and saying, it’s really difficult for me to get my work done during the day because of the constant interruptions, and just generally very hectic environment. So what I do with my clients is basically awesome. What type of interruptions are happening? And how have you set the expectations with the people that are interrupting?
So in some examples, I would say emergency medicine. There’s not really much of an opportunity to be like we can delay that. But for G. I. for example, so my wife is a transplant hepatologist for the most part. She has the ability to delay until [00:24:00] she has completed whatever work, but her nurses, the schedulers, other the residents and fellows
they just need to know, hey, I’m going to be working on X from this time to this time. If you have any questions, just hold off. So what I’m doing with them is really helping them to see what opportunities are there in terms of setting boundaries how they can form those relationships in a way that actually serves them without having to ever say, the diagnosis of ADHD they can, everybody can have difficulties with multitasking.
So why not just say I have difficulties with multitasking and getting work done efficiently when being interrupted. That doesn’t no one’s going to go ding, ding, this is ADHD. They’re just going to go this person knows themselves pretty well. And they’re asking for this time and space to actually do their [00:25:00] work.
So that would be an example of how I’m supporting them or strategies that I might employ. Others would be, making them aware of assistive technology. I guess dragon has now come out with an AI note or note taking software. And then Epic has their own note AI note taking process as well.
So really we’re starting to see the decrease in demand on the executive function of trying to sort through all of the information that a patient’s brought into that patient interaction and it’s doing all that summarization. So it’s not having to be a burden on your working memory to go.
The patient talked about going to a baseball game. That’s obviously not important, but it’s still my brain is obviously still holding onto that. So instead of having to sort through that, it’s already sorted through for them. Yeah, it, it really is just about helping them to be better [00:26:00] to supported within their environment without necessarily having to do any disclosure.
Dr. Mike: Right? Great. Again, Michael, I want to thank you for your time. And they definitely shining light on a subject that’s not talked about a lot. This was Michael Carlini founder of carlini
coaching, and you can go to carlinicoaching.com to book a free consultation. And see if this is right for you.
Thanks again, Michael. And thank you for everything that you’re doing.
Michael Carlini: Yeah. Thank you so much.
Dr. Mike: Thank you. And thank you for listening as always, as an entrepreneur or as a physician, we’re going to have our ups and downs. Do something a little each day to get you closer to your goals, finding a mentor, finding a coach if that’s what you need, and keep moving
[00:27:00] forward.
