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What happens when a successful surgeon starts having panic attacks in the operating room?
On this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei Hardin, MD, sits down with fellowship-trained rhinologist, Hippocratic Collective co-founder, surgeon coach, and author Mel Thacker, MD, to talk about her debut memoir, Scrubbing In, out October 6, 2026.
Mel shares the story behind the book, from growing up with housing instability and becoming financially independent as a teenager to building a successful career in ENT. For years, medicine represented an escape and an arrival point. Becoming a physician, she thought, would mean she had finally made it.
But seven years into a successful surgical practice, Mel began experiencing panic attacks in the operating room. She talks candidly about the shame, fear, and uncertainty that followed, including the worry that patients or hospital leadership might see her differently if they knew.
Rather than hiding that experience, Mel chose to write about it.
Together, Mel and Frances Mei discuss why surgeons are so often expected to perform as if they are immune to normal human experiences, why silence can be more dangerous than vulnerability, and what it means to stay in surgery while redesigning the profession around a life you actually want to live.
They also talk about the craft of memoir, learning to see yourself as a character rather than always the hero of your own story, and why storytelling may be one of the most important skills physicians never learn.
In this episode:
• Mel’s childhood and path into medicine
• Why becoming a doctor felt like an escape
• The arrival fallacy in medicine
• Learning to write a memoir as a surgeon
• Panic attacks in the operating room
• Shame and vulnerability in surgical culture
• Why talking about struggle can improve patient safety
• Redesigning a surgical career instead of leaving it
• Moving from private practice to locums and part-time surgery
• Storytelling as a leadership skill for physicians
• Why surgeons need permission to be human
• Who Mel wrote Scrubbing In for
Mel ultimately wrote Scrubbing In for the surgeon who feels too sensitive, too different, or too far outside the traditional mold of what a surgeon is supposed to look and act like.
Host: Frances Mei Hardin, MD
Guest: Mel Thacker, MD
Connect with Mel: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/members/mel-thacker-md
Scrubbing In available now: https://a.co/d/03CPHRRm
Presented by: The Hippocratic Collective
Follow Frances Mei on Instagram & Tiktok @francesmeimd
And subscribe to @HippocraticCollective on Youtube for all of the other shows the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.
