ADHD, Neurodivergence & Burnout in Medicine: Why Masking Takes Such a Toll

What happens when you spend years becoming excellent at medicine while constantly masking who you are?On this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei Hardin, MD, sits down with OB-GYN, physician educator, and creator Jessica Geida, DO, for a candid conversation about neurodivergence in medicine, adult ADHD diagnosis, burnout, masking, people pleasing, and the complicated relationship between physician identity and personal identity.Jessica shares what it was like to move through medical school and residency with undiagnosed ADHD, why she often felt like she “fit in everywhere but belonged nowhere,” and how becoming a mother eventually helped her recognize her own neurodivergence.Together, they explore the strengths neurodivergent physicians can bring to medicine—including empathy, creativity, pattern recognition, and unconventional thinking—as well as the cost of repeatedly shrinking yourself to fit systems that may conflict with your values.They also discuss toxic teaching environments in surgical training, why leaving clinical medicine does not automatically untangle your identity from your work, and a different way to think about burnout: not simply as exceeding your capacity, but as the exhaustion that can come from constantly forcing yourself to fit into a system that does not fit you.In this episode:• ADHD and neurodivergence in physicians• Adult ADHD diagnosis in women• Masking and people pleasing during medical training• Feeling like an outsider in medicine• Strengths of neurodivergent physicians• Burnout and values misalignment• Toxic surgical training environments• Physician identity outside of clinical medicine• Learning to ask, “If I say yes, what will it cost me?”• Unmasking and building a career that fits who you actually areA thoughtful conversation about what happens when the same traits that can help someone excel in medicine also make traditional medical culture especially difficult to navigate.Host: Frances Mei Hardin, MDGuest: Jessica Geida, DOConnect with Jessica: @smilesandscrubsPresented by: The Hippocratic CollectiveFollow Frances Mei on Instagram & Tiktok @francesmeimdAnd subscribe to ⁨@HippocraticCollective⁩ on Youtube for all of the other shows the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.