When did volunteering stop being a choice and start being a condition of professionalism? Pediatrician, certified coach, and mindfulness and yoga teacher Jessie Mahoney realized she had donated over 2,000 hours of uncompensated work as a volunteer clinical professor, all while holding leadership roles and raising three kids, and she had never once questioned it. Her episode is based on her KevinMD article, "The hidden cost of uncompensated work on physician burnout," Mahoney traces how residency culture normalized unpaid labor and how systems now depend on it, framing obligation as generosity and penalizing anyone who pushes back. You will hear why she believes uncompensated work is low-hanging fruit in the fight against physician burnout and how the expectation of free labor disproportionately affects women, who now make up roughly 60 percent of the physician workforce. She offers practical language for setting boundaries, including the phrase "I wish I could, but I don't have capacity right now," and explains why compensation does not have to mean money alone. Mahoney also explores how generational tension among physicians reinforces the cycle and why collective action, from retreats to unionization, may be what finally shifts the culture. If you have ever felt guilty for questioning what medicine asks of you for free, this conversation will reframe that instinct entirely.

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