She was seeing 22 patients a day and slowly disappearing. Then she cut back to three days a week, gave every patient 30 minutes, and started making more money than she did full time. Jerina Gani, a primary care physician of 20 years, spent 15 of them burned out before she slowed down and got her life back. Her story is a direct challenge to the see-more-patients model every clinician is told to accept.

⏱️ Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:22 Fifteen years of seeing 22 patients a day
2:34 What finally made her slow down
3:57 Why fewer patients meant more money
5:56 The one thing administration never tries
9:31 The primary care crisis no one is fixing
10:53 What to do if your system won't budge
11:55 The congressman who said quit if you can't do 20 years
14:01 The urologist lecturing primary care on time
16:28 Take home messages

About this episode:
Jerina Gani is a primary care physician who spent the first 15 years of her 20-year career badly burned out, seeing 22 or more patients a day in 20-minute slots until she was too depleted to see friends, enjoy vacations, or think clearly at the bedside. Four years ago she made a change she had assumed was financially impossible: she went part-time, three days a week, and stretched her visits to 30 minutes. The counterintuitive result is the heart of this episode, because by documenting and billing more thoroughly and resolving more in each visit, she ended up earning slightly more than she had full time. She argues that the standard administrative fix of packing in more patients is exactly backward, that slowing down keeps doctors healthier, keeps patients happier, and keeps physicians from leaving primary care altogether. Kevin Pho pushes her on the physicians who have no scheduling flexibility under rigid corporate systems, and she makes the case for speaking up and renegotiating anyway. She also responds directly to Congressman Greg Murphy, a urologist who posted on X that anyone unwilling to practice full time for 20 to 25 years should pick another profession. Her closing dream is a day when primary care physicians walk into work happy to see patients instead of dreading the grind.

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