Physician Burnout & Why Hospital Wellness Programs Miss the Mark

There's a version of physician wellness we've all quietly accepted. The physician finds something that fills them back up. Golf. The gym. A solo trip somewhere. And the family waits for them to come home. Nobody's wrong for needing that. But nobody's talking about what it costs the spouse who's been home all week, holding everything together, watching the car back out of the driveway on a Saturday morning. That's where this conversation starts. Mike and Ashley Christensen are a physician family from St. George, Utah. Mike is an anesthesiologist, about ten years into practice. They have four kids. More than a decade of medical marriage behind them. Together they built the MedGolf Wellness Foundation and a golf tournament series called Clubs and Scrubs. The whole premise: physician wellness that actually includes the family, not just the physician. But before Mike became the person who organizes those tournaments, he was the person Ashley quietly resented for golfing. She'll say it plainly. When he'd head to the course on a rare day off, she was home with kids, running on fumes. His few hours on the fairway felt like something taken from an already thin margin. She didn't say it out loud. She just held it. Then one day he asked her to ride along. Not to play. Just to ride. She had never actually been on a golf course. Her dad had golfed her entire life. She got in the cart, looked around at the open air and the quiet and the people unhurried out there on the grass, and thought, "Oh! This is what you've been doing." She plays now and genuinely loves it. But what shifted wasn't the golf. It was the understanding that a husband who fills himself back up shows up differently at home. And that was what she wanted all along. There's a line from this conversation I want you to hear for yourself. Resentment doesn't come from your spouse having something they love. It comes from being the only one who doesn't. If that landed for you, this episode is worth your time. Mike and Ashley also get into something that has been frustrating physician families for a long time: why hospital wellness programs keep missing the mark. Mike's Doctor's Day story alone is worth the listen. And in the back half, he talks about the physician families he's building this foundation for. Some of what he shares is hard to sit with. It's also exactly the kind of thing this community needs to hear someone say out loud. **What You'll Learn (with Timestamps)** - \[00:03:00 - 00:07:00] How Mike went from cold-calling golf courses to founding a nonprofit from scratch - \[00:08:00 - 00:10:30] What it looks like when physician wellness events actually include spouses and kids - \[00:11:00 - 00:13:00] Why Ashley's resentment about golf had nothing to do with golf, and the shift that changed everything - \[00:14:00 - 00:17:00] What hospital wellness programs keep missing, in Mike's own words - \[00:20:00 - 00:22:30] The physician families Mike and Ashley are building this foundation for, and why it still gets emotional **Resources Mentioned** - Fair Play by Eve Rodsky (mentioned in relation to "unicorn space") - MedGolf Wellness Foundation - Follow on Instagram: @clubsandscrubsgolf - Upcoming tournament: October 3rd, Thanksgiving Point Golf Club, Lehi, Utah, with a portion of proceeds supporting Kylee Dart **Your Next Steps** - Learn more, donate, or register for a tournament: medgolfwellness.org - Follow Clubs in Scrubs on Instagram: @clubsandscrubsgolf - Listen on Apple Podcasts - Listen on Spotify