Happy In Medicine with Dr. Christina Arnold
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Episodes
What if your employer was already willing to give you an extra $20,000 a year — and all you had to do was say yes?
No negotiation. No meeting. No asking anyone for anything.
You just... claim it.
Most physicians aren't claiming it. This week's episode is going to fix that.
Here's what we cover:
- Why the employer match beats a $20,000 bonus — by a lot (the math will make you want to log in today)
- The pre-tax concept t...
I just figured out how to give myself an at least $10,000 raise every year of my life. I have to tell you about it.
I finally sat down with a trusted accountant — someone who specializes in high-earning physicians — and she showed me I could save at least $10,000 a year on my taxes.
Now — if taxes give you the heebie-jeebies, if money talk makes you want to close this email right now, go back to the beginning of t...
If you've ever looked at booking a family vacation and thought “that's four extra urgent care shifts” — this episode is for you.
If you think about splurges like a new TV, a designer purse, or sending your kids to a high-end summer camp in terms of how many urgent care shifts you need to pick up — this episode is for you.
Because that's not freedom. It's a trap.
In this system, the only w...
I found tens of thousands of dollars I didn't know I had.
Not from a new contract. Not from a raise. Not from picking up extra shifts.
It was sitting in my own accounts — money I was already earning, already saving — and I just hadn't looked closely enough to see it.
Here's what I found when I finally did look.
A subscription I thought I'd cancelled five years ago. Still running. **$250 a month.** Over six years, that's...
What does moving to California with no house, no plan, and 80% of your belongings in a donation pile have to do with your career as a physician woman?
Everything.
I just survived one of the hardest transitions of my life — selling in Colorado, landing in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country, and getting the house anyway. And every single lesson I learned applies directly to your job.
These aren't soft ...
Early in my career, a very senior woman in my field decided she didn't like me, even though we had never spoken.
She rejected every paper with my name on it. She openly challenged every leadership nomination. At one point, she told me she was going to destroy my career.
She didn't. Because I had a Promotion Coalition.
In last week’s episode, I taught you how to build a Promotion Coalition (make sure you check it out!).
...
One senior male physician left a scathing anonymous Amazon review on one of my books. He called us authors "the mafia," trying to tank our sales, publicly humiliate us.
I was horrified. Humiliated. Embarrassed.
I didn't go looking for a fight. I didn’t have to. I had a Promotion Coalition — women physicians looking out for me in rooms I wasn't even in.
Because he didn't have a Promotion Coalition, his career...
I walked into my first annual review nervousssss!
My chair looked me dead in the eye and said:
"The point of this annual review is to make you feel bad so you work harder."
Gulp. I wanted to ask for schedule support. I never got a word in.
She talked for the next 60 minutes about her vacation home in Hocking Hills.
I never let that happen again.
This episode will give you everything you need to use your one hour Annual Review to le...
I thought I was a lock for promotion.
Most papers in my department. Elected President of an international society. Twice. Highest RVUs. Leading ALL of the med school lectures. Fastest turnaround. Books.
When I asked my Chair abo...
You give notice. You've thought about it for months—maybe years. You finally do it.
Two days later, your chair calls a meeting. Suddenly there's money on the table. A new title. The schedule you begged for last year.
Read more
After I turned in my resignation, things got weird. Worse. And Petty.
People I had worked with for years stopped talking to me.
People came to my office to ask for my books, lamps, and decorations.
It felt like I was attending my own professional funeral while still showing up to work every day.
One colleague finally said it out loud: You get to leave. We have to stay and protect ourselves.
I got it. She was right.
Our Chair ...
Big mistake. HUGE mistake. Let me share it with you so you never make it:
I told my chair I was exploring other job options. My intent was to be transparent and respectful.
I didn’t realize she would use it against me.
Once she knew I was looking to leave, she created a new departmental policy that required 120 leave notice. She buried it inside my annual review and pressured me to sign.
No announcement, no email notifi...
If you've ever dreaded a faculty meeting, a hard conversation, or an annual review — this episode is for you.
Conflict-Free Leadership for Women Physicians covers the next-level coaching skills that get you top pay, a better schedule, and a workplace where you are genuinely respected.
Here's what’s actually happening inside the hospital:
We weren’t given leadership skills. Neither were our bosses.
We go to m...
The clinical work is the easiest part of our job.
Diagnosing. Operating. Making decisions. We were trained for that.
The hard part is everything else. The politics. The passive-aggressive emails with 27 people CC'd. The faculty meeting tension. The unfair schedule nobody will talk about.
The worst part is that the conflict follows us home.
It wakes up up at 3 a.m. We think about it in the shower. We are rehashing old emails in our ...
It’s that time of year again.
My clients start stressing about annual meetings — awkward coffee breaks, giving talks, what to say at lunch.
Totally normal.
But here’s the truth:
One meeting can move your career ahead 5–10 years.
It happened to me in a 10-minute hallway conversation with my chair. That single moment advanced my career by 5 years.
In this episode, I show you how to use societal meetings ...
I made $125,000 in about one week.
Here's what the secret was not: it wasn't sacrifice. It wasn't hustle. It wasn't working around the clock.
I actually only coached about one hour a day.
The real secret? Something I call Baby Girl Week.
And before you think this is just an entrepreneur thing — it's not. Every iconic woman physician you admire is doing this.
This week's episode gives you the full formula — the sec...
My department chair had a little box on the annual review form: Do you want a raise?
Check yes, you meet with the chair to discuss the raise. Check no, you don't get a raise.
Every single year, the white men checked yes: “because why not????” one said to me. He didn’t wonder if he’d done enough or had been there long enough.
The women? Mostly checked no. Even though they were more qualified, worked harder, a...
I stopped sleeping. Here’s what happened:
I had 20 new clients join all at once. I was ON. Inspired. Fired up. Checking Voxer after dinner. Solving problems in my dreams — literally dreaming about my clients and waking up at 2 a.m. excited to email them back.
I'm a physician. I know better. And I still broke my own sleep.
So I fixed it. And I turned everything I did into this week's podcast episode — because my on...
We can’t choose when life happens.
In September my beloved (best dog ever) died unexpectedly.
I spent almost a month in Germany where the grief felt suspended, and coming home made the house feel even emptier.
My grief was so severe, I thought I might have been clinically depressed and reached out to my doctor.
We’ve adopted a rescue sweetie named Lucy and she is keeping us busy.
We’re packing to put our hou...
At a very busy private practice, the last hire now leaves at 4 p.m. every day—and it took one week to build.
She wasn't in a slow group or a place where no one notices.
She didn't shift work onto others.
She didn't damage her relationship with her boss.
She actually strengthened it.
In this week's episode you learn how you too can leave at 4pm everyday, even if you're in a busy center, the most junior faculty, or a fellow.
H...
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