The 3 "F's" for Mental Wellness with Dr. David Weill

Bart Leger 

Are you struggling to leave the emotional weight of your job at work? In this episode, I sit down with Dr. David Weil, a former director of the Center for Advanced Lung Disease at Stanford University to tackle a challenge familiar to many of us, the difficulty of handling the emotional highs and lows without them spilling into your personal life. Dr. Weil shares what he has called the three F's and how These are key to managing the mental and emotional strain that comes with high-stress careers. Whether you're a first responder, healthcare professional, or anyone in a high-pressure field, this episode offers valuable takeaways to help you thrive, not just survive.

Show Intro

Bart Leger

Hey everyone, I know we often focus on the challenges first responders face, but the truth is the burden of a high-stress career isn't limited to just one profession. Whether you're in the military, working for an airline, teaching in a school, or even running a business, the pressures can really add up. More and more, we're seeing peer support programs popping up in these fields to help teams handle the weight of their work. And it's not just those areas. Medical professionals are carrying a heavy load too.

In fact, this December, I'll be heading to Nevada to teach peer support to hospital staff, helping them build the tools they need to support each other. So no matter what field you're in, this episode is for you.

Today's guest, Dr. David Weil, knows firsthand the intensity of a high-stress career. As the former director of the Center for Advanced Lung Disease at Stanford University, he led a team through the emotional highs and lows of transplant care. Now, he's using his experience to help others through his consulting work and writing. Dr. Weil's insights have been featured in major outlets like the Wall Street Journal and CNN, and his memoir, Exhale, Hope, Healing and a Life in Transplant, dives deep into the challenges he faced. With his debut novel, All That Really Matters, he continues to share powerful messages about purpose and resilience. David splits his time between New Orleans and Alys Beach, Florida. And today he has an important message for our listeners about managing the demands of a high pressure career.

Bart Leger 

Dr. Weil, it's a pleasure to have you on the Surviving Your Shift Podcast. Could you start maybe sharing a little bit about yourself?

David Weill 

Thanks for having me, Bart. I really appreciate it. I grew up in New Orleans. I went to college and med school here in town. I'm a big fan of the city. And I kind of then moved westward and spent most of my career in California at Stanford, where I directed the Center for Advanced Lung Disease and headed the Heart and Lung Transplant Program there, and a passion of mine is end -stage lung disease and transplantation. I've got two college -age daughters and have been married for 25 years.

Bart Leger 

All right. You all live in the New Orleans area and I just share your time with another location, right?

David Weill 

Yeah, I spent some of my time in Florida on the Florida Gulf Coast.

Bart Leger 

nice. Where about we lived for a couple of years in the St. Pete area.

David Weill 

Yeah, we're further up north. We're on the Panhandle in a town called Alys Beach.

Bart Leger 

okay. Yeah, I'm familiar with it. So what led you to the field of lung diseases and transplant?

David Weill 

Well, I got an early head start, Bart. My father was a lung doctor and I used to round with him at Charity Hospital in New Orleans when I was a little kid.

And then I started working in hospitals when I was 15 and I always wanted to be a lung doctor. I was just fascinated by everything having to do with the lung. And then early on in my career, I happened to be at the right place at the right time. I was doing my pulmonary training in Denver and they opened up a lung transplant program at the same time. So there I was and I hung around the transplant program as a young trainee and thought for sure that I wanted to do that for a career. And that's exactly what happened.

Bart Leger 

Okay. Well, that is, that's a good, a good start anyway, starting as starting young with your, with your dad. So as the former director, what were some of the biggest challenges you and your team faced in the field of transplantation?

David Weill

I think to be honest, was the emotional ups and downs of it. So in other words, we would do a lot of great work and save patients and then lose some that we became very close to. So each day, you know, you could save somebody in the morning and the afternoon, lose a patient on the waiting list or after transplant, and then you had to get ready to do another transplant that night. So I think it was just that constant tightrope that I was on. And also I felt like a choreographer in many ways because I was trying to get this team that of 60 people in all to pull in the same direction. And so that certainly created challenges for me as well.

Bart Leger 

How was that with, I know you talked about all these challenges and you had wins, had losses. How did that affect your team?

David Weill 

I think it affected all of us in different ways. I think some, it seemed to roll off their back a little bit more easily than others. I think people like me, I took some of those losses home with me. And so when I got home, I was really quiet or wanted to be by myself. And at that time I had two young daughters and I was married. And, you know, that's not ultimately how I wanted to live my life. So part of my decision to step away in 2016 was because I wanted to really be more engaged with my family and more engaged with friends as well.

Bart Leger 

Well, that's a very good thing to think about because we keep our families, hopefully, after the career is over. And that's a good thing to remember. As a matter of fact, we have so many of our listeners that that's a tightrope that they walk. And the careers that many have, especially the high demand careers like first responder or the medical profession, there's that tightrope of the job takes so much out of you and we see so many different things, you don't know really how much to share with your family, how not to share. Sometimes they feel left out and sometimes we put so many hours into the job. What would you say, did you see any, maybe any factors that might have led to some having more of a difficult time with the work, or others maybe who didn't, you mentioned you took the work home and some didn't have that much of a problem. Is anything that you could put your finger on maybe?

David Weill 

I think connection is the key. I think those of us that connect with our family, our friends, our faith, I call it the three F's, do better. I think that the folks that stay connected to one another and really could share some of the emotional difficulties of doing this kind of work did much better. I think those that stayed isolated and kept their thoughts to themselves didn't do as well. And I think one thing that has been a positive to come out of COVID is the recognition that we really do have to do a better job in the hospital about talking about the experiences that we have. And I think COVID really, really prompted us to set up situations where we could do that.

Bart Leger 

Right. So social support network, you saw was very, very important. How much did you feel comfortable sharing with your family? Let's say you had a particularly tough case or a loss.

David Weill 

Yes, indeed.

David Weill 

Well, my wife is a nurse and so she certainly could understand what was happening from a clinical standpoint, but really I was reluctant to come home and share frankly because I really had enough of thinking about. You know, that situation and really talking about what was going on in the hospital. So one of the mistakes that I made that I think your listeners probably should avoid is I really didn't talk it out with my wife very well. I think she could just tell that something was bothering me, but I was very reluctant to rehash the day because I was, you know, more likely to turn on a sports game or read a book or do something to kind of take myself out of the situation and a lot of times the last thing I wanted to do was relive what happened in the hospital.

Bart Leger 

Right. Now, how did that affect her? Did she feel like you were pushing her out or how was, how did that go?

David Weill

I think she felt isolated from me as well. And I think that that put a strain on our relationship. And one of the things that we talked about together when I decided to leave and...you know, it was a tough decision because I was theoretically at the top of my field and I chose to step out of there in 2016. And one of the things that we talked about is that we needed to work on our relationship a lot more. And I think that that's happened because I've gotten out of a situation where I'm thinking about, you know, the next patient and, you know, what happened and what could we have done differently and things that really lead to isolation from our family.

Bart Leger 

So having that conversation you think is important and helped your relationship.

David Weill 

I really do. I think that when we keep it to ourselves, we don't get a chance to really grieve through the entire range of our emotions. And I think when we talk it out, whether it's with a family member or a therapist or whoever, I think it really helps.

Bart Leger 

Well, I know for me with my wife, when I first started, was whether it might have been a SIDS death or it might have been a suicide and dealing with all of the trauma of it, I felt that I was protecting my wife by not talking about it. And then eventually, started sharing a little more. But she learned that when I became a little bit too graphic, you know, she would say, OK, that's enough. I've heard enough. But at least…

Cause she would ask, how did it go and what happened? And so I'd kind of give her the Cliff Notes version and that pretty well satisfied her and that, that was, that was good. What about with your peers? Was that ever something that, that you supported one another or how much did your team feel comfortable sharing with one another?

David Weill 

I think there were certain team members that I did feel comfortable sharing some of the ups and downs with, but as a leader of the team, probably mistakenly, I thought that I had to kind of show a really strong front and I had to give the impression that I was okay and that none of this was getting to me, but the exact opposite really was happening.

For whatever reason, I felt like that vulnerability was not something that I wanted to show as leader of this team. And ultimately, when I left Stanford, I wrote a book about all of it. My first book was almost entirely devoted to the emotional aspects of doing this kind of high intensity work. And I talk a lot about that in my book called Exhaled.

Bart Leger 

Yeah, now that's your memoirs. We'll definitely have that in the show notes for folks if they're interested in it. You have a new book, and we'll get to that in a little while as we talk about that. But I have a question. What impact do you believe it would have if more medical facilities, hospitals, emergency departments had a cadre of peers who are trained to support one another they go through a difficult case. You think that might help?

David Weill 

I do. And, you know, I saw a little bit, I work with hospitals now as a consultant, several of them tried to put in something perhaps more watered down than you're suggesting during the COVID pandemic. They were getting toward figuring out safe zones that clinicians could talk to somebody. They never quite developed it, I think, to the extent that you're suggesting. I think it would be extremely helpful. mean, what happens instead is you just find a colleague who you can talk to that's empathetic. But those kinds of people aren't always available. And they're certainly not trained the way you are and other folks are to do this kind of work.

Bart Leger 

And there's still the stigma out there of not wanting to appear weak when you talk to someone and say, know what, this rocked my world. I'm having a hard time with it. People have a difficult time opening up and saying that.

David Weill 

That's exactly right. I mean, I remember the first time I got emotional in a hospital. I actually went into a supply closet and closed the door and hoped that nobody would would find me there. And in fact, one of the social workers on our team opened the door because she knew I was struggling and found me in there. We sat down in the supply room and talked it out. But, you know, I was really trying to hide it at that time because I didn't know how it would be received by the rest of the team.

Bart Leger 

Well, I don't think you were the first one to have done that and probably not the last to have found a supply closet.

David Weill 

I don't think either. And I think that's right. Yeah, yeah, they were conveniently located throughout the hospital.

Bart Leger 

Right, right. Well, a few years ago, was a study done. I'll have to that again. A few years ago, there was a study done in Canada by a hospital and they found that when they instituted a trained peer support team within their hospital, primarily in their emergency department. They found that they had a $7 return for every dollar spent on their peer support team, their peer support program. And they found that their lost time went down to nearly zero. Their turnover went down. And what they were finding was, prior to that, if there was a loss in their department or if there was a particularly difficult trauma that they dealt with, especially involving children or elderly, that sometimes the staff wouldn't show up the next day. They would call in sick. And they found that when they had someone to talk to who was trained in how to communicate, how to show empathy, and how to give them some tips on how to process what they've been through, they found that their lost time went down. And also 

their turnover rate. As a matter of fact, December, I have a training down in the Miami area in hospital with critical incident stress management. We're trying to get that out to more hospitals. So you're saying that would be something that would probably be a good idea.

David Weill 

Yeah, I think it really would. I bet that would help a lot. You know, I studied actually burnout quite a bit. I'm not actually crazy about the term burnout, but for shorthand sake, we can use it here. It turns out that besides the human toll on it, it's very expensive for the health care system, you know, to lose, you know, great nurses, fantastic docs, other healthcare workers, train somebody new, get them in there. It's a lot of lost revenue as it turns out, and again, aside from the human toll of it. So I think what you're suggesting is a fantastic idea.

Bart Leger 

I can only imagine the cost.

Now, let's move on to, we'd mentioned some of the dilemmas, the ethical dilemmas maybe. I know transplantation probably involves a lot of ethical dilemmas, such as maybe organ allocation, patient selection. That's bound to be tough.

David Weill 

It really is. I found the most ethically difficult period in transplantation was when you're selecting candidates to go on the waiting list. I mean, we actually had a weekly meeting and we called it the selection meeting. It sounds very ominous. And we were really constantly making value judgments about human beings in that meeting without sometimes even being consciously aware of it. mean, we were bringing our own biases in, you know, and there's been studies about this. There's, you know, racial disparities in that process. There's socioeconomic disparities in that process. If you like somebody that you met, they have a better chance of getting on the waiting list. So it becomes like the tools you learned in high school can actually impact whether or not you get on the waiting list or not. And all sorts of problems arise when a group of people who have their own value systems have to make judgments about other people and we really did it every week. And so that was something that I've talked about and written about quite a bit and I work with hospitals now to make sure that that process is as objective as possible and that it's free of any of these biases because it really is a matter of life and death to the people involved.

Bart Leger 

So that's a lot of your consulting work that you do with these hospitals and these transplant teams.

David Weill 

It's a huge amount. I help them with clinical situations, but I also really work with the team in terms of team dynamics and to make sure that they're functioning in a certain way. And I also help them really with every stage of transplant, including mostly the recipient selection part.

Bart Leger

So what are some key lessons maybe you've learned from working with transplant surgeons and the teams that maybe could apply to other high stress professions like those of our listeners? What are some of those lessons?

David Weill 

You know, I think the greatest lesson is... is connection. You I think that what happens is in a hospital environment, there's all kind of little fiefdoms and, you know, petty disputes of various, various sorts. And what I do with the teams is I make sure that they get to know each other better and to actually have social opportunities. know, most teams don't think of happy hour as something that's important to a transplant team. I think it's really important because, you know, the better we get to know one another and believe it or not, a lot of transplant teams and a lot of any teams in healthcare actually don't know each other as human beings very much. You know, they know each other really as clinical people, but they don't really know each other. So I'm a big proponent of trying to get together in an out of hospital system and really try to talk to one another and try to maintain the connections.

I think that that's key because when I see the team dysfunction at hospitals, it's usually a result of teams not really knowing each other as human beings.

Bart Leger 

So that support within the team, you think, is important as well. And also that of that oil that keeps the machine going is them being able to know one another a little better.

David Weill 

That's right. I when we performed at our best, you know, during the 20 years that I did this work.

When we perform in our best, we were actually a bunch of friends doing this kind of work. When we did not perform in our best, we got to, somebody on the team laughed and we had to replace them with somebody else. We didn't bring that person along as one of our family, you know? And I think that that was a mistake, that you really got to incorporate new team members and there's a lot of turnover in healthcare.

but you've got to incorporate those new team members so they feel like part of the family instead of isolated.

Bart Leger 

So how did you get your team to, I know you mentioned the social aspect of it as well. know coming from the first responder realm, trying to work together sometimes is like herding cats and we've got a lot of egos that are part of it. So how do you get everyone to work together? sense of purpose or introducing our sense of purpose into the mix help somewhat.

David Weill 

Yeah, think that that's right. think that the one thing that as leader of the team that I constantly tried to emphasize, no matter what, no matter what disagreements we had, we all had one commonality, and the commonality was...

what's best for the patient. And so whenever we got a little bit off track and in every meeting we had, we talked about the person in the bed, because that's really what it's all about. The rest of us can have our own biases and ego issues and whatever, but at the end of the day, patients don't care about all that. They really us pulling in the same direction, and I emphasize that as team leader, that let's talk about the person in the bed. Let's not talk about all the other things. Let's make sure we're taking care of that person. So it is a common purpose, like you suggest.

Bart Leger 

So how did you find and how would you recommend maintaining that sense of purpose throughout your career, no matter what career you're in, especially given the high stakes and the emotional intensity?

David Weill 

I think hospitals now are full of meetings, right? We meet all the time about all these things. I think we should spend some of those meetings just talking about each other and talking about the patient that we lost last week or how do we feel about doing this kind of work. I think we end

We end up having so many meetings and we end up wasting time talking about other things. We ought to spend some of it actually on the personal and human aspect of it instead of just being robots taking care of patients in a sort of unemotional way.

Bart Leger 

Right, well, the medical profession, hospitals, it's like just about every other. You have to be able to continue providing care and bottom line is very often a factor. And so it can become like a business if you're not careful, I imagine.

David Weill 

Yep.

Yep. Yeah, I'm afraid so. I I think I see that more now than ever. Where the bottom line is the bottom line. And I, you know, that's that's one of the challenges that health care is facing right now. But I think as health care workers, we can fight that a little bit by at least taking care of ourselves, taking care of our own sanity while we're doing this kind of work.

Bart Leger 

Right.

Bart Leger 

Well, now that you mentioned that, let's go back to you working in such a high-stress environment. How did you maintain your mental and emotional wellness and how do you continue

David Weill 

Yeah, I think, you know, a major outlet, I wasn't even aware of it at the time, but a major outlet for me was exercise. I became sort of, you know, borderline obsessed with doing all sorts of different things, riding my bike and going to the gym and all that sort of thing. And I didn't really miss a day, no matter how tired I was, if I'd been up for three nights in a row. And I think I was using that as an

I also really relied on my friends. Most of my friends were not medical people.

It was really great to get together with them when I was in California and really just sort of, you know, be normal, you know, for a little while. You know, you're in the hospital and you have a certain persona when you're in the hospital, but I could sort of let that drop when I was with a group of people that weren't medical at all.

Bart Leger 

It's interesting that you mentioned that when pretty much most of my career I taught in the Academy and I would get these Academy students on the first day and throughout their time there and all the way through the end of the first day, I would deal with a little bit with the mental and emotional and how their personalities would change throughout their career. And one of the things that I always liked to make them aware of is you want to be able to retire with some of the friends you have now. Now there may be some friends that you need to get rid of, but for the most part, you have to be careful that you don't have around yourself, just people in the kind of work that you do, because otherwise we can, it can, it could be more detrimental. So I, I appreciate that you say that you were able to feel normal around.

And I use air quotes around normal people.

David Weill 

Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, that was important to me. You know, it's not that I didn't like anybody that was in the hospital. Quite to the contrary, it was just more my need to really be out of that sort of environment when I was outside

Bart Leger 

And you found that we, especially in certain professions, we tend to take on the identity of what we do. And so, you know, I find most, many, even after they retire, you know, they'll make sure, well, I'm a former this or I'm an, and so we still carry that, identity and maybe a little bit more than we should.

David Weill 

I think that's absolutely right. I I certainly identified closely with my work. And then after I left the hospital environment, it took me a little while to readjust to who I really was, you know, when I looked in the mirror, you know.

Bart Leger 

Right.

Yes, so you're also husband, you're your dad and you're not always doctor while understand what that's like. So what support systems were crucial maybe for you and your team while you were working there in the hospital setting? Did you all have anything that I know you mentioned the trying to get together socially?

were any of the hospitals that you worked with or still work with have things in place for their staff?

David Weill 

I see some of that now. I did not have that at Stanford when I was there. It was interesting. Our team also had a group of social workers that worked on the transplant program. Every transplant program has them. They actually, interestingly, perhaps not surprisingly, became sort of

you know, the psychologist, if you will, for the team as well. So a lot of us ended up talking with the social workers on our team, which I found very helpful, extremely helpful.

They were wonderful people, number one, but also number two, as part of their training, they talked to people that were struggling and had issues of various sorts. It certainly wasn't a formal process at all, but it ended up working out that way.

Bart Leger 

Well, that's one of the mechanisms of action that we see working with peer support is that active listening and just asking a question and shutting up, letting the person talk. And also being able to listen for understanding, showing empathy. Those were very, very, very, very important. Now, before we move on to your book, what...

What are some practical tips that you could share? And you've already shared a few about maintaining mental and emotional wellness that our listeners could implement in their own lives.

David Weill 

I tell you the things, the thing that I keep in mind is these three F's that I was talking about because family, friends and faith are things that I, when I even struggle currently.

I kind of think about the three F's and see how I'm doing in each of those areas. And faith to me, I family and friends is fairly obvious I think, staying connected to both of those groups. Faith is a little different, and it's a little different for each person. And when I say faith, I'm not necessarily talking about formal religion, but it could be formal religion. I'm talking about some form of spirituality that people can connect with.

And I think we all need it. No matter what form it takes, I think we all need it. For many, it does become a form of religious practice, but for some, it doesn't.

Bart Leger 

Okay. Well, you've transitioned from medicine to writing, and your memoir, Exhale, Hope, and Healing, is that what it was? A life and a life in transplant?

David Weill

It was hope healing. Yeah, hope healing and life in transplant.

Bart Leger 

Okay, and now you have a debut novel, All That Really Matters. What inspired you to start writing?

David Weill 

You know, I kept a journal while I was working in the hospital and I would put little snippets of what was happening either with the patients or me or my team. And that really became the basis of my first book, Exhale.

because I wanted to kind of peel back the curtain and let people have a peek at how this healthcare in a complex setting like transplant, how it's really delivered, how it really works. And I revealed all of the team dynamics, the emotional part of saving and losing patients, and also the impact it was having on me. And I shared all of that in my first book. And when it came time when I wanted to write a second book,

wanted to write a novel and fictionalize some parts of all of this because I felt like I could go even further with it. You know, when you write nonfiction, especially if you're writing memoir, you have to stick to the truth, number one, and number two, you have the ability to offend people you work with or institutions.

Bart Leger 

Right.

David Weill 

I wanted to write a fictional setting where I could tell the truth about all of it. There's a saying that fiction is a pack of lies that tells the truth. I wanted to tell the truth about what we experience, but do it in such a way where I wasn't calling out an individual or a hospital.

Bart Leger 

Right. Your novel, All That Really Matters, who would you say it would appeal to? More general audience? who would be your, who did you write

David Weill 

I think as a general audience, I think my main character was trying to seek his true purpose in life. think he was trying to deal with a set of high expectations that he set for himself and that others set for him. And I think he was trying to figure out what was most important to him, thus the title, All That Really Matters. And I think that that appeals to all of us. I think at one time or another,

I think most people ultimately try to figure out why they're here and what their main purpose in life is. And that's what my main character was trying to do.

Bart Leger 

Yeah, so pretty much anyone from any walk of life could enjoy the book, I guess, but then hopefully take something away from the you're trying to get across.

David Weill 

I think so, yeah, I think so. mean, so far I had some medical people read it, but the majority have been non -medical people and they seem to be responding to it, so that's gratifying.

Bart Leger 

Okay, well good. So how has writing about your experiences influenced maybe your perspective on your career and life in general? Being able to write about your ups and downs, your pains and how has that influenced?

David Weill

I think it's been great to reflect back on.

what's happened in the hospital through writing. I think it's been fantastic. Sometimes, you know, I get emotional while I'm writing it because it was emotional what happened. But a lot of times I marvel at it, frankly, because I think, you know, a lot of what happened in the hospital was magical. And I try to capture the magic in addition to the tragedy of it. And those two things live side by side in what I did. And I try to capture both in my writing.

Bart Leger 

Was it somewhat cathartic when you you wrote just to do you find it helpful to

David Weill 

I find it very helpful. I think, especially when I wrote my first book, I had a lot on my mind. I had just walked out of the hospital at that point and I a ton on my mind. But even writing the novel that I wrote, I felt like I was addressing some issues that were important to me. And it feels good to get them out on paper. And it feels even better when folks read it.

Bart Leger 

Yeah. Well, give us a little bit of a synopsis of your book, you your main character and what kind of what... Just give us the the Cliff Notes version, I guess.

David Weill 

Yeah, sure. mean, my main character is a heart and lung transplant surgeon named Joe Bosco. And Joe has, yeah, go figure, right? It's like Grisham, you write what you know, right? You know, he has this very steep rise in his career. He comes from a family that had very high expectations for him. He was the only son, only child of a very high powered couple. And Joe does...

Bart Leger

Go figure, right?

David Weill 

you know, has a steep rise in his career and then gets himself into a world of hurt, big trouble, and tries to get his way out of it. And through that process, he figures out really what's the most important thing to him. The book has a love interest. It's a love story in many ways. And Joe tries to grapple with, you know, his love interest as well during the the course of the novel. And I think I find this character going from a not so great place to to a much

place in the novel which hopefully will appeal to people.

Bart Leger 

Okay, well good. not without giving too much away. They're a positive ending. Okay, well good, good. I know when we travel, sometimes my wife and I like to listen to audiobooks and she said, I don't want to have a bad ending. We've listened to some that kind of left you, so well good, well good. Well, what's next for you? What are maybe some upcoming projects or maybe goals you're excited about?

David Weill 

There's a positive ending.

David Weill 

Yeah, I have a third book in the works. My publisher wants it by January 1st, which is anxiety producing. But I'm working on a third book right now that deals with identity. I think we touched on it during the course of our discussion. And I'm going to talk a lot about identity and specifically religious identity, something that I've struggled with during the course of my life. And I'm writing a book about it right now.

Bart Leger 

Okay, well that that sounds very good. I would look forward to it. And I appreciate that advanced copy that that that you sent and been enjoying it so far haven't had a chance to just begin it and kind of leaf thumb through it, but I will definitely finish it. So any parting advice you would give to our listeners, especially those maybe in high pressure jobs. I know you mentioned the three prongs. So anything else?

David Weill 

Yeah, no, I think that's the main thing. Just take care of yourself, just remember that. I think the tendency is to really just take care of the patients, but you gotta remember to take care of yourself. That's the main thing.

Bart Leger 

Okay, well thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Weil. Where can our listeners find your books and maybe follow your work?

David Weill 

I think the easiest place is at my website. It's davidweill.com. Pretty simple. You can find out what I've written both in long form like my books, but also I write opinion pieces fairly regularly and they're all there too.

Bart Leger 

All right, well, thank you again and thank you all for listening.

Bart Leger 

Thanks so much for joining me today for another episode of Surviving Your Shift. Are you wondering if you're experiencing some of the signs of post-traumatic stress or know someone who is? Grab a lifeline by going to survivingyourshift.com and on the right sidebar, click to download your copy of Understanding PTSD, Its History Causes Symptoms and Treatment.

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Bart Leger 

Are you feeling like your career might be taking more from you than it's giving? In our next episode, we'll be joined by Matt Domyancic, a medically retired police officer who's been in the trenches and knows the toll this work can take. Matt has dedicated his life to supporting first responders, not just in moments of crisis, but proactively before things break down. He's walked the walk as a former SWAT officer, police academy instructor, and collegiate strength coach.

He's got the experience to back it up. Matt's mission is to help first responders find deeper meaning in their careers and enrich their spiritual lives. Whether you're a police officer, firefighter or veteran, this episode will offer you practical insights on how to maintain your mental, physical and spiritual health while navigating the challenges of your profession. Don't miss it. Stick around and I'll see you on that episode. Till next time.

Let's learn how to thrive, not just survive.