WATCH: Reclaiming the Meaning of Medicine — A Conversation with Dr. Mary Brandt

In this episode of Women in Surgery, Dr. Shlomit Schaal sits down with Dr. Mary Brandt, Emeritus Professor of Surgery, Pediatrics and Medical Ethics at Baylor College of Medicine, for an inspiring, wide-ranging conversation that traverses surgical training, pediatric care, medical education and the evolving conversations around physician wellbeing.

On pediatric surgery: "It chose me"

Dr. Brandt's journey began at Baylor College of Medicine, where she was only the third woman in the history of the general surgery residency program. While many of her peers pursued cardiac surgery, Dr. Brandt was drawn to pediatrics. "In pediatric surgery, we talk about saving lifetimes, not lives," she says.

Dr. Brandt dispelled the myth that children are simply small adults: "Children are not just little adults. We have to say that. That's part of our training." She emphasized the intellectual and emotional demands of the specialty, noting, "You have to understand the whole spectrum of how things can go wrong in development in order to be able to repair them."

From surgeon to educator and advocate

Her transition into education was serendipitous. "So much of how we move in our careers comes about because of these moments," Dr. Brandt explains.

She became a program director and later Dean of Student Affairs at Baylor College of Medicine, where she began to notice a troubling trend. "I watched these students and residents all of a sudden fade into a lot of angst and depression," says Dr. Brandt. "These super bright people who were so motivated...and there was a percentage of them that would just derail."

This observation catalyzed her involvement in physician burnout and wellbeing — a field she has helped shape over the past two decades.

Reframing physician wellbeing

Dr. Brandt critiques early wellness efforts: "We just kept saying, 'Do more yoga. Be more resilient.' And now, we look at that and say, 'Well we totally missed the mark."

Today, she advocates for a deeper structural shift. "We've taken people who want to learn to be healers and put them into an environment that is highly regulated, highly business-oriented, and there's a disconnect," Dr. Brandt explains.

To better articulate the moral and spiritual dimensions of healing, Dr. Brandt pursued a Master of Divinity. "Sometimes it's that you've lost the context, you've lost the meaning, you've lost the why," she says. Her theological training gave her "a lot of tools and a lot of perspective" to support physicians in rediscovering their purpose. She aligns with Tait Shanafelt's framework of Wellness 2.0, which emphasizes systemic change in collaboration with administration — one where physicians are encouraged to champion compassion, speak the truth and decide who they work for.

"Who employs you is not necessarily who you work for," she says. "We work for our patients, we work for our trainees, we work for each other."

(RELATED: Advancing Physician Well-Being with Tait Shanafelt, MD | Quality Time with Dr. Schaal)

Final reflections: mission over margin

Dr. Brandt warns against the commodification of care.

"There's nothing wrong with profit," says Dr. Brandt. "But when the margin becomes the mission is when you have the moral distress and the healers that can't figure out why they're so out of alignment." She urges institutions to prioritize meaning, compassion and healing over metrics and margins.