Dr. Stephanie Waggel's Personal Experiences In Medicine By: Gloria Zhang

A career in medicine can become an entire identity. For Dr. Stephanie Waggel, that idea was once an integral part of what being a physician meant to her.

“When I first was in training, I thought being a physician was a complete self-sacrifice. When you're a physician, it's your identity, that's all you are. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you're a physician, and it was kind of ingrained in me since the first day of medical school.”

Over time, however, her understanding of the physician identity began to change.  

“I think when I became a mom is when I realized it's like, you know what? Like, there's that saying that goes, ‘you are replaceable at work, but you're not replaceable at home.’”

Becoming a mother helped her recognize that professional dedication did not have to mean sacrificing every other part of her life. Her commitment to medicine remained, but her understanding of what it meant to be a physician began to change.

While motherhood played an important role in changing Dr. Waggel’s perspective on life in medicine, she had already begun building a career based on her own interests and passions. Rather than limiting herself to just one specialty, she explored geriatrics, neuropsychiatry, perinatal mental health, research, and medical education. Although these pursuits may seem unrelated, she does not believe that her interests need to follow a single path to be valuable.

“I like theoretical physics, and I also like martial arts, but they don't necessarily have to do with one another,” she explains. “I don’t know that things necessarily need to have a commonality for somebody to do them all.”

This openness to exploring different interests extends beyond her professional life. Even outside medicine, Dr. Waggel pursues interests that challenge her in different ways. After having a baby, she decided to run a marathon.

“After I had a baby, I told my husband, ‘I think I'm gonna run a marathon in a couple of months.’ And instead of being like, ‘Uh, what?’ He was like, ‘I bet you will.’ And I did. I went and I just ran a marathon, right after having a baby, because it's like, you gotta go big or go home.”

Her decision to run a marathon reflects her determination, but it also shows how she makes room for goals outside her career. Rather than allowing any single aspect of her identity to define her life, she makes room for experiences that bring her fulfillment.

“I do them because I genuinely like them and I'm trying to keep myself in a good mental health state. And so doing things that I really like does that for me. I think what helped me more than that was the fact that while I was doing them, I was really happy about it.”

Although Dr. Waggel has found fulfillment in interests in and beyond medicine, her experiences outside the role have shaped how she practices medicine today. In fact, one of the most significant was her own experience as a patient.

“I had cancer in my fourth year of medical school, first, and second year of residency, but I didn't know it, because I kept going to the doctor and they just kept, like, saying it was my period,” she recalls. “I'm like, ‘Ah, I don't know about that.’ And then it turned out to actually be kidney cancer.”

Her experience as a patient gave Dr. Waggel a personal understanding of what it feels like to seek medical help and not feel heard.

“I think a lot of doctors are maybe a little bit too dismissive," she observes. “It helped me to not be very dismissive in actually looking into things, a bit more than some other doctors might look into things.”

Her cancer journey became formative in how she approached treating her own patients, and it also influenced how she viewed challenges within the medical field. After her experiences with cancer during medical school and residency, Dr. Waggel continued her medical training and eventually became a psychiatrist. She later established her own practice, Improve Life, and founded Improve Medical Culture, an organization that addresses challenges within the medical profession she experienced firsthand.

“There's a lot of stuff about the culture of medicine that I want to change, and that's why I run Improve Medical Culture. It started with the fact that I wanted to go to a therapist. My program had a list of therapists that the trainees could go and see, and I called every number on that list, and the numbers were either disconnected or to someone who was not a therapist.”

“I thought, ‘Hmm, I wonder if this is pretty common all over the place?’ And I found from talking to quite literally hundreds of residents and med students that a lot of [programs] have a really nice list of all the things that [they] do, like, ‘We make you have yoga and eat pizza,’ but none of those things are actually helpful. They're just trying to get credit for supporting mental health without actually having to do anything to support mental health.”

Through her organization, she has found another way to make a difference beyond treating patients: advocating for the well-being and mental health of healthcare professionals. By addressing the challenges that can prevent medical professionals from receiving support themselves, she hopes to create a culture that better cares for those who care for others. 

“Maybe we should go one step above and actually make sure that they get the help,” she explains.

Beyond redefining what it means to be a physician in her own life, Dr. Waggel has also found ways to use her experiences to support the next generation of doctors entering medicine. Through her mentorship of aspiring physicians, she continues her efforts to improve the culture of medicine while pursuing her passion for teaching. Her commitment to mentoring students is personal, coming from a time when she needed encouragement herself

“It was really weird because I had all A's in college, so I don't know why this woman would say this, but my guidance counselor in college weirdly kept telling me I'd never get into medical school,” Dr. Waggel says. “I don't know why. I had perfect grades and, like, a million extracurricular activities, but she kept saying, ‘You will never get into medical school.’”

After facing discouragement from someone who was supposed to guide her, she resolved to become a source of support for the pre-med community. 

“When I see young people who want to go into medicine, I'm like, ‘You know what? There's probably a lot of haters that are in their lives.’ I think that they could probably use some support, because there's probably like 10 people telling them ‘you’ll never get into medical school.’”

Through mentoring students and offering internship opportunities through Improve Medical Culture, Dr. Waggel provides the kind of support she wishes aspiring physicians could always count on. In doing so, she has found another way to make medicine meaningful beyond her work with patients, using her experiences to help others navigate the profession.

Her journey has changed not only how she sees herself as a physician but also how she supports those hoping to enter the field of medicine. With her experiences as a cancer survivor, mentor for students, advocate for mental health, and a marathon runner, Dr. Waggel created a life that is fulfilling for her and not just about treating patients specifically.

In the beginning of her career, Dr. Waggel believed that being a physician meant making the profession her whole life. Now, she sees that medicine can be part of one life shaped by many interests and experiences.

“I think once you get a little older and wiser, you realize that there are in fact other things to life other than being a physician, and being a physician does not have to be your entire identity.