About Rachel

My story

The old analogy has it that if you plop a frog into a pan of hot water, it’ll jump out straight away. If you put a frog in a pot of cold water, it’ll just sit there. But if you turn up the heat very slowly… it’ll slowly boil to death without noticing.

In 2016, a paper in the British Journal of General Practice by Natasha Dornan et al compared GPs and healthcare professionals to frogs in boiling water. The pot has been heated up very, very slowly, so long hours, awful on-calls, and complaining have gradually become the norm. They found that the overwhelming reason for GPs leaving their job was its effect on their wellbeing. After all – you didn’t spend years at medical school only to end up in a role that stopped you from enjoying your life.

Being burnt out – repeatedly – has started to seem normal, but it genuinely wasn’t like this 15-20 years ago. While it was always a hard job, there wasn’t a relentless sense of overwhelm, which so many GPs and healthcare professionals feel right now. And it’s the same in other workplaces too. Our culture of productivity and busy-ness is causing brilliant people to leave their careers and limit their impact. And that’s not OK with me!

I know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed and one crisis away from not coping. I’m a former GP who now helps doctors and other professionals in high stress, high stakes jobs beat burnout and work happier. I’m also the host of the Apple Top 100 UK Business Chart podcast You Are Not a Frog, keynote speaker, coach, and creator of the Shapes Toolkit resilience training programme.

You are not a frog. There are things you can do to avoid burnout. You don’t have to leave your job, although that may be necessary for some people. You can change your job, craft your job, or do different things within your job to make it more tolerable.