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Todd Otten

Todd Otten

Board-certified family physician (MD, FAAFP) at Plum Health DPC in Dimondale/Lansing, Michigan, former U.S. Navy flight surgeon, and author of "Suck It Up, Buttercup" on physician burnout.

Sep 15, 2026

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4:56
to be
4:56
honest with you.
4:58
feeling like I was never good enough and always chasing sort of the next thing.
5:01
And even as you list off some of my accomplishments, I think about how that relates to trauma in my past.
5:07
You know, one thing to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next, right? Yeah.
5:11
But the reality is there's really kind of three whys in terms of where I've gotten to now and what we're working on currently with the documentary and having written a book and all those things.
5:23
One, I went through the hells of burnout.

23 MINS LATER

28:33
Because I talk about it all the time.
9:23
As you started this process of planning and producing this movie, What guided you in terms of the voices you were including that were going to be expressing themselves in Suck It Up Buttercup?
9:34
It's a fascinating process of determining what is actually going to get into the film, right? Like, so I'm not going to sit here and tell you that, you know, I went to film school or all these other things.
9:45
A lot of this I learned along the way, and a lot of it was instinct and trusting colleagues and listening to other voices.
9:51
But part of what we were trying to accomplish with the documentary is to have a broad strokes in terms of the problems that exist, but also provide hope and some solutions and ways forward in the second half of the film.
10:03
But we wanted a multitude of voices, not just physicians.
10:06
We've got nurses, patients, former executives, a few celebrities are in there, but you wanted people where you could catch the emotion.
10:14
You wanted people that when you talk to them, you were yearning for more.

9 MINS LATER

19:37
I mean, I think we'll be able to do way more than what we even conceptualize it.

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