Yara Demo, MD
The Story of Leadership and Executive Coaching for Healthcare Professionals
Hi,
I’m Yara Demo, MD. I am a mother, a wife, a practicing neurologist, and a leadership coach. I completed my undergraduate degree at UCLA. I attended medical school and completed residency and two fellowships at Northwestern University. After completing my training as a triple boarded physician and starting my first job as an attending, I realized that I was burned out and I wanted to leave medicine.
I was very successful on the surface, but I reached a point where I could not recognize me anymore. I was not living my life; I was merely surviving. I approached life as obstacles to overcome and tasks to complete, rather than my ONE LIFE to live and enjoy. I was cynical, resentful, and, let us face it, angry most of the time. For a period of time, I accepted that this is the “normal” life of a working physician. Then, I discovered coaching.
Through coaching I re-learned a simple fact: MY thoughts create MY feelings! All of my feelings: frustration, cynicism, anger (the list goes on) were a result of MY thoughts. Through coaching I learned to manage my thoughts, be deliberate and intentional and choose thoughts that SERVE me.
After the transformation I had, I decided to become certified as a life coach. After coaching countless of physicians, I noted a pattern; they all complain about the healthcare system and about leadership. While I do believe that we can learn to manage our minds around any situation, I started to wonder if coaching was also needed for executives and leaders in the healthcare system.
Executives in other industries have coaching available to them. They are intentional about the culture they create. I wondered if the same was true about healthcare leaders. Are they intentionally creating a culture where 50% of attending physicians are burned out (according to the literature)? Are they intentionally creating a culture where more and more physicians are leaving clinical medicine every day? I hoped the answer was no. This is not a culture created intentionally.
Thus, I decided to complete the Organizational and Leadership Coaching Certificate offered by Northwestern University to learn the tools needed to coach healthcare leaders. My goal is to coach leaders, so they are intentional about the culture they create and to coach physicians, so they feel empowered and find the joy in medicine again.
I utilize a combination of cognitive behavioral coaching, positive psychology coaching and goal focused coaching. Discover some of my favorite resources here. Read more about my expertise and how I add value here. Read more about my professional background here.
I offer coaching packages for institutions that is tailored for their organization’ needs. My packages combine burnout and life coaching for physicians and leadership coaching for non-clinical leaders as I believe that this is the ultimate solution for physician burnout. Learn more about how I add value here.
Join me in bringing health to medicine.