Suck It Up, Buttercup: The Burnout Culture Medicine Can No Longer Ignore with Todd Otten, MD

Medical culture has a long-standing message: keep going. Skip the meal. Finish the chart. Push through the exhaustion. Compartmentalize what happened with the last patient and walk smiling into the next room. In other words, suck it up. For Todd Otten, MD, FAAFP, that mentality eventually collided with the reality of physician burnout—and changed his career.

In Episode 47 of The MedLife Support Podcast, Todd joins me to talk about his own experience with severe burnout and the documentary he executive produced, Suck It Up, Buttercup: Trust and Betrayal – Healthcare in America. The film pulls the curtain back on problems that go far beyond individual physician well-being, including corporate medicine, private equity, prior authorization, administrative burden, loss of autonomy, and financial incentives that can put profits ahead of people. Todd’s point is not that one documentary can solve healthcare. It is that change becomes possible when enough people stop accepting dysfunction as inevitable.

One of the most important parts of our conversation, however, happens after the physician leaves work. Todd speaks candidly about what burnout did inside his own home: the compartmentalization, emotional distance, and moments when he was physically with his family but mentally somewhere else. His experience reinforces something we talk about frequently on this podcast—physician burnout does not remain neatly contained inside the hospital or clinic. What hurts the physician can cross over into the marriage, the family, the organization, and eventually patient care.

Todd also challenges one of medicine’s most entrenched beliefs: that physicians should carry difficult experiences by themselves. Physicians may remain silent because they do not want to burden their spouses or colleagues, yet isolation can make an already difficult situation worse. As Todd says during our conversation, “Connection mitigates trauma. Period.” Sometimes change starts before the policy overhaul, organizational restructuring, or national movement. It starts when someone notices another human being struggling and simply asks, “Are you okay?”

This episode is ultimately about refusing to accept burnout as the unavoidable price of practicing medicine. Todd wants physicians to ask for help earlier, families to remain connected, organizations to listen to the clinicians doing the work, and all of us to recognize that healthcare will not change through one dramatic solution. It changes when enough people begin creating ripples—and those ripples become waves.

About Todd Otten, MD, FAAFP

Todd is a board-certified family physician, former Naval flight surgeon, co-author of Ripple of Change, Lead Catalyst and Board Chair of Medicine Forward, and executive producer of Suck It Up, Buttercup. He currently sees patients with Plum Health Direct Primary Care in Lansing, Michigan.

Connect with Todd:
Suck It Up, Buttercup Film
Ripple of Change Book
LinkedIn
Medicine Forward
Plum Health DPC