Integrating Coaching in Medicine:
What It Adds Beyond Mentoring and CME

Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast — Episode 92: Integrating Coaching in Medicine with Dr. Annie Wildermuth. Host: Lillian Liang Emlet, MD MS CHSE CPC ELI-MP. Guest: Annie Wildermuth, PhD PA-C EM CAQ RD ACC — Vice President of Medical Education at AACOM and founder of First Road Leadership Solutions. Published January 19, 2026.

Annie Wildermuth: A lot of the clients that I work with who are often clinicians or leaders, feel like they should have all the answers already. The word 'should' comes up a lot, and I think it's driven by the highly perfectionistic nature of medicine and really feeling we've been trained already. The idea is not to turn them into coaches. But rather build a culture where people are asking questions, offering space for reflection, generating ideas together. And that really creates a culture and a place where people want to work.

Lillian Emlet: Welcome everyone. It is now a new year and we're excited to begin the new year off right with thinking about coaching and education and personal development.

Lillian Emlet: And so I'm super excited to have with us, Dr. Annie Wildermuth, who's has done many things in her career in her lifetime, we'll let her get into it. She's a physician associate. She has her PhD. She's a coach. She actually also is vice president for medical education at AACOM currently. And Annie, tell us a little bit about yourself and welcome so much to the Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast.

Annie Wildermuth: Thanks so much for having me, Lily. I'm so excited to be here. You did a great job summing up some of the things that I really care about and what I do. I'm an Emergency Medicine P.A and also a dietician, and found my way into coaching and leadership development when I entered academia about 10 years ago from now, or 10 years ago, and. Really have been looking for ways to help other people on their journey and in the leadership development and coaching space, have found some great science and resources and strategies to help people do that. So I've worked in academic environments, hospital environments, and a lot with the military and the government supporting the growth of their people.

Lillian Emlet: We're so glad to have you with here with us. And so tell us little bit about the job you currently have right now. The medical education job.

Annie Wildermuth: Yeah, I spend my time full-time working as the Vice President of medical education at AECOM, where I'm supporting faculty development and leadership development for faculty who are working in colleges of osteopathic medicine, and so that looks like teaching them practical skills that can be helpful as leaders in those roles, building out coaching, and coaching related frameworks for them to use in their schools. And also doing research in those spaces to support the growth of leadership and faculty support for osteopathic education.

Lillian Emlet: That's amazing. So I have a I have a feeling that you and I will definitely, hopefully get to continue this conversation because that is a place that I've now discovered as well, trying to figure out how am I going to put all of my academic and teaching and merge it with the coaching hat in general. And I think it's really funny because, as educators and mentors and developers of physicians across many decades we have been coaching, but we just never named it that way. And I'm curious most clinicians that I talk to still equate development with mentoring or CME, like I don't know how many people who I've talked to, especially physicians, I should just go get another degree. I'll go get an MBA. Can you explain what makes coaching distinct as a toolbox of skills that are necessary for all physicians and especially medical educators?

Annie Wildermuth: Yeah, absolutely. So coaching is definitely distinct from mentoring and CME. I like to use the metaphor of 'a ship approaching an iceberg.' A mentor is someone who's going to give you direct advice based on what they would do in that situation, because they've already done it before. So as you're driving this ship, you see an iceberg. Your mentor's going to say, 'steer', right? Because that's what they've done. If you are getting some CME or continuing education or another degree, you're going to learn all about the perils of that, what those icebergs are, what makes them up. You're going to learn the functions of the ship and what options you have. And if you engage with a coach on the same topic, you're going to come up with a whole suite of different options and potential solutions based on the skills that you have and your experience, which may be in alignment with what your mentor suggested, but it could also be turning the ship left, stopping the ship, turning it around or even, bailing out into a life raft and going a different direction entirely. So coaching really builds on your own expertise and your own knowledge of your context and situation to help come up with workable situations for you. And that's why I think it's so powerful as a tool, not to replace getting another degree or additional education, but really helping clarify where you want to go and the best way to get there.

Lillian Emlet: I love that analogy. I also see it as a lot of times our mentors give you a recommendation based on their lived experience and their unique constellation of lived experiences, prior experiences, and all of us come to our careers, whether it be clinical education or clinical research, or clinical administrative with our own lens. By which we see the world. And so without having a coaching skill of the mentor or coaching skill of your boss, your administrator, or a coaching skill of your research mentor it's sometimes hard to meet the learner where they're at. And we often see this in the five generations that are in the workplace right now. The coaching skills that get us through that communication divide rather than the more knowledge, more book smarts, more mentorship.

Annie Wildermuth: Absolutely. Sometimes when I think about all of the advice that I've gotten, even today or this week or throughout my career. Which is quite a bit and I'm grateful for it. People come to you with advice, with the best of intentions of trying to help you, but I would say only about 10% of it is something that's actually workable in my life based on my context. And so coaching helps bridge that gap for sure. And really, I love your point about it crossing generations. It's so true that exploring things together can really help us identify new ideas.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, it's really about having people find their own ahas rather than telling them, this is what you need to do. And I love the advice thing, everybody has their own piece of advice. They. Feel like it's, so worth giving. And yet did anyone ask you to give the advice?

Annie Wildermuth: Yeah. Oh man. That's sure. True.

Lillian Emlet: And I know you work with lots of different busy high achieving clinicians who are really possibly skeptical about slowing down for coaching. That's probably the biggest barrier that I see with our clients, "That I just don't have time for this." What kind of internal barriers or mindsets do you see most often and how do you help people move past them?

Annie Wildermuth: Yeah, a lot of the clients that I work with who are often clinicians or leaders, feel like they should have all the answers already. The word 'should' comes up a lot, and I think it's driven by the highly perfectionistic nature of medicine and really feeling we've been trained already. We should know how to do this. But when I look at other professions, professional athletes, executives in other industries, professional speakers, they all have coaches. And so it's really about shifting the mindset that this is something that's normal and helpful. It would be really great to have more universally available in our medical profession. And so I start with that in terms of helping people think about slowing down is that it's normal to partner with somebody and really helpful to get outside input and just have a reflecting space and talk through this where someone's only dedicated to you and your success and how you want to move forward.

Annie Wildermuth: I also think that, one of the selling points here is that teaching people that self-reflection is actually a really powerful leadership and medical skill. We teach medical students this, it's an accreditation standard about self-assessment and then we move away from that. I feel when we get into our professional spaces where we're really busy and somehow shift into thinking we should have all those answers. So reconnecting with self-reflection, self-assessment. It makes you better. It also makes everyone else around you better, and I think that's really a selling point too about coaching, is that you really are helping those around you by engaging with this.

Lillian Emlet: So interesting because I just think about, even our own journeys right after training and then into practice. Once you're into practice, I think that's when you suddenly just feel like I'm just going in and weighing it all the time. And your boss or your immediate supervisor may or may not be really the person that you're going to seek direct mentorship from because you have made different, may have different clinical or research or educational interests. And then trying to find someone who is both your mentor, sponsor, and coach can be really challenging for many clinicians.

Lillian Emlet: What kind of advice do you have for, as we both are in different circles trying to help people find their way, get their right leadership and professional development resources to them. There's a plethora of things out there. How do you even tell them to start?

Annie Wildermuth: That's a really great question. I think some of it starts with that self-reflection piece that we can't lead or work or really do anything effectively if we're either running on autopilot or running on empty. And so coaching and mentoring, it's not about taking your foot off the gas, it's about figuring out what direction you want togo before you hit the gas. And so in thinking about who might be a good mentor or who might be a good coach for you, thinking about some of those possible directions where you might want to go, and then looking for someone who's spent some time in that space can be really helpful. From a mentorship perspective, I think most people have, benefited from having multiple mentors depending on different areas that they might be exploring in their life, whether it be personal or professional areas. And so thinking through what are those things that I really want to lean into and grow in, and then finding people in that space can be a really great place to start. Something that I hear from people often is that they're worried about reaching out to somebody and asking for mentorship. But my experience is that most people really feel honored and flattered when someone approaches them and says, "Hey, can I have some mentorship? Can you tell me some advice or input based on your own career?" Most of us will feel really good if somebody approaches us with that kind of thing. Coaching is a little bit different though I think in that you don't necessarily need somebody who has a direct understanding of everything in your situation. Some context can help, but coaching is effective because they're focused on the person, not necessarily the topic or content area. So finding someone that you connect with well is really important in finding a coach, and so finding someone who's willing to set up a meeting with you to talk through what your coaching goals might be, to see if it's a good fit and if you feel like you're going to work together with them well is more important than what their background is, in my opinion.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, and it's really interesting too, like you had said the board of directors and having a number of people to bounce things off of is really important. And just even thinking through the the idea of a mentor and a coach can be time-limited experiences that you have. And so really you have a lot of agency in deciding, "This year or these next six months, I have a really specific goal I'm looking for. And so what am I going to look for in that mentor? And can this develop into a longer, more lifelong type of relationship with different projects spinning off of it?" It is like hitching your wagon to like, together to see we have to walk along and you're hopefully publishing together, presenting together and growing together. And then I like to think of coaching similarly where basically you begin with a time limited trial for what is your goal, achieve that. You might leave that coach for a little while, you might come back. Many of our clients come back to us and we also have different packages for things that can support people in different areas. Once you know someone, it's easy to kinda go back to that relationship when you want to be able to grow again. And just like you said I don't know that it has to be exactly the same lived experience because that's really not what we're giving. We give no advice as coaches. But it is really about the chemistry and the ability. As one of my clients said, "Ask the hard questions to see the things that you cannot always see."

Annie Wildermuth: Yeah. I completely agree with that. And when I reflect on my career, I have had different mentors for different seasons of life and different coaches for different seasons of life. And some of them have remained the whole time and sometimes we just need to pivot based on a specific goal for, especially for all of us wearing different hats. I have my hat as a PA in the emergency room as a coach doing faculty development, working at an association, but also, hats of being an athlete and being a stepparent. And so I go to different people for advice and for coaching in all of those different spaces because one would certainly not work for all of them.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, and I think just like we often talk about being more welcoming of different perspectives gives you a greater flexibility and ability to manage it all because none of us are just one of those things. We all have many identities and many roles that we serve people in.

Annie Wildermuth: Yeah.

Lillian Emlet: And we are an external coaching company where we partner with organizations to bring our coaches into the organization. And at the same time, we also recognize that many organizations have decided that they want to create internal peer coaches or internal hire coaches to work inside the organization. Professional coaches that are full-time employees. And so if an organization or an academic center wants to bring in more coaching into its culture, how do they start? Where should they start?

Annie Wildermuth: That's a great question. I think that there are a couple of things that organizations can do to one, build a coaching culture, and then two, actually provide coaching for people who work there. It's really important for especially your senior leaders or leaders who are working with a lot of people to have direct access to coaching and bringing in certified coaches who really have an understanding of the coaching mindset is important and helpful for that. One of the hats that I've worn throughout my career has been teaching people about career literacy, job contract negotiation. And I really encourage leaders when they're moving into new roles, to negotiate coaching into their contract, to make sure that they have that support. But organizations can do people a favor and do really the mission, a favor and the success of the organization a favor by building that in. The other thing that I think works really well in parallel with that is actually teaching some basic coaching skills to everybody in the organization. And this really transforms culture. We're talking about people who are on the front lines. We're talking about frontline managers. And truly everybody up to the executive level can benefit from learning some basic coaching skills. The idea is not to turn them into coaches. But rather build a culture where people are asking questions, offering space for reflection generating ideas together. And that really creates a culture and a place where people want to work. People come up with new ideas, and people are really much more effective in achieving the mission. So if you're looking to hire some people to come in to support that. Hiring a group of coaches is really helpful to both support your leaders, but also people who can do that development work work with the entire team and help build those coaching skills into the organization.

Lillian Emlet: So well put in such a lovely synopsis of two different things. One, right in terms of the financial allocation and investment into the entire leadership chain, no matter what profession or what discipline you're in, is to have a little money set aside. It most likely will be a negotiable piece and something that people will ask for as they rise through the ranks, to give them the ability to select their own coach and have financial, partial or full compensation for professional development to let them become the best leader they can be so they can stay your organization. So time and money well spent to be able to have that freedom for the person to choose and also financial support of it. And then I'm hearing the second thing, which is either hiring external or developing internal, a culture where everyone knows the basics, which is instead of just telling people what to do, it's to just pause and reflect and use different techniques that we learned in coaching in terms of being curious about helping someone unpack what the solution might be and help them see for themselves via questioning. So more of a Socratic debriefing sort of method so that they can find their own solutions. Because when everyone has that same language, then the whole entire culture changes where we can all be more curious, innovative, respectful, and hopefully become a better workplace for everyone to be in.

Annie Wildermuth: Just the shift of even, asking a question instead of just jumping in with something can just transform entire conversations and generate new ideas. And that's one of the things that I like to teach when I'm going into organizations to build some of these coaching skills is how to ask better questions and how to feel comfortable doing that.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, it is really interesting because when I've done a little bit of these workshops as I develop fellows as they're about to become physicians and refine their medical education skills, especially with using coaching as a way to improve their teaching skills, they find it so interesting that these scenarios, they often just blurted out and taught right in that moment. And since the obvious point of the role play is to have them go through a coaching framework and use the questions they're surprised how challenging it is and how often they have to check themselves in that process. Which goes to show that even though many of us in medical education, those of us who think of themselves as educators and teachers and developers and mentors, we often have to even self critique ourselves in terms of, "Am I showing up as a good coach today?" Or "Am I just telling someone what to do?" Or " Am I even just explaining this is what you need to go get this project done rather than allowing your mentee to have the agency to figure it out themselves."

Annie Wildermuth: Yeah, coaching is a tool in the toolbox. It's not the panacea answer to everything. And there's certainly times as educators, as clinicians where we have to directly communicate, there's one right answer or several right options and we just have to go down one of those pathways. But recognizing that this is a tool, a multi-lane highway, it's one of the lanes and we're going in this direction and giving people the agency to choose that tool is really effective and powerful for them and their growth.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah.

Lillian Emlet: I'm wondering, as we think about how coaches can change the culture within an organization and how certain places are developing coaching internally, also investing externally, are there any common pitfall. All that you've seen in terms of when people either have a bad experience with coaching or are unsure or skeptical about coaching.

Annie Wildermuth: That's a great question. I think there's a couple of things that are important here. One is. If people are going to engage with coaches, giving them some choice about a coach that they might want to work with is really helpful so that they can build a partnership. So whether you're building a coaching program internally or bringing in external coaches, having a variety of options for people to choose from is really important. Some other pitfalls would be it's really important for coaching clients and coaches to have a confidential relationship and be able to explore things openly and without judgment. And having an employer recognize the importance of that to actually allow people to grow and develop is critical. And so there needs to be an agreement upfront about how the coach can engage with the client and what actually gets shared with leadership. And so everyone is on this same page about that. I think the last thing that I've seen not go so well for organizations who are trying to build in coaching is using coaching as a form of either punishment or remediation. People have to want tobe there and have to want to engage in this process for it to work. And so when organizations tie coaching to performance improvement rather than as personal and professional growth and development and opportunity, things tend to not go very well. And it really gives coaching a bad name and a bad taste for people who might experience it that way.

Lillian Emlet: Those are really all very true. It is interesting how there are still some misconceptions out there about coaching. And actually it's funny, some of the coach physician coaches I've met have stated that they were offered this as a part of their improvement plan and in the end they fell in love with it. And of course have now gone on and started and went back to school, and the rest is history. But it is really funny how sometimes our Achilles heel may end up being the doorway towards something really amazing and powerful. And so thankfully there was no bad outcome. There's only good outcomes. And at the same time you're write that it's probably one of the most common things that we see that, your recommended coaching and it's not quite clear why.

Annie Wildermuth: Yeah, one of the things that I think people worry about when they think about coaching is they're thinking about it as that either performance improvement or something is wrong with me or I have this deficiency and when I'm coaching clients, nearly all of them have reported that they actually enjoy the process. And I don't think that's highlighted nearly enough how nice it is to have a space to explore things that are purely related to your growth and what interests you. And I know from being coached myself that I have found that to be true as well. It doesn't mean you don't talk about hard things or sometimes experience challenging emotions or find yourself in situations that you're not thrilled with. But the coaching process itself, people tend to really enjoy and thrive with.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm wondering, so for other healthcare professionals who are listening today who are feeling stuck or burned out and you're wondering about leadership growth and wondering is coaching the right thing they should do? Or maybe are they too burned out? They shouldn't, try a coach? What's the first step that you encourage them to take right now if you're just feeling really stuck?

Annie Wildermuth: Yeah, I think so often when we feel stuck, we actually start piling more onto our plate. We try to explore all of the things and sign up for all of the activities and build our schedule so full to try and figure out a way out. What I think is actually helpful is doing the opposite of that. Take some things off of our plate so we can actually give ourself a little bit of a space to pause and reflect on what is it that's actually important to us, not what we think we should be doing, not what others think we should be doing, but what's actually important to us. And often there's really a role for coaching within that to help identify some of those things and help get us realigned with the direction that we want to go. So take a deep breath. Find some space to pause, reflect, and then think about reaching out to some coaches to have a conversation. Most coaches that I know are very willing to meet with somebody to start to explore the idea before you actually jump into a coaching contract or full engagement. And so just having that conversation can give you some insight about, is this a potential avenue I'd like to explore moving forward?

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, that's such, so well put. A lot of times people get always a little bit confused about, "Is this therapy?" "Should I go to my EAP?" "Should I get free sessions that way?" "Should you go the coaching route?" I don't know if you have any things that you tell people when they're should I do both? Obviously, probably not. Do both, but.

Annie Wildermuth: Yeah, coaching and therapy are definitely distinct therapy we're looking backwards at traumas or mental health issues or things that cause us to react the way that we do in the current circumstance. And so it's very valuable for helping us work through some of those kind of past challenges or current challenges through. Lens of past and how we can choose to move forward. Coaching is really focused on the future and our goals and where we want to go moving forward and helping us align those decisions with our values and things that matter to us. And so if you think about a situation, trying to understand 'where am I going next?' Coaching is a great place to reach out and start to explore that. And so that's how I like to explain the difference.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah. And I would say some of our clients need both. Some of them just need coaching. And then sometimes, the other thing to also be aware that most coaches are trained in the fact that if we start to see signs for inability to make progress that we often have referral networks for therapy. Because there is a line where we would not step into these land. And we would actually refer out and then you can always pause the package and come back whenever you're in a different headspace to be able to make the progress that's needed.

Annie Wildermuth: That's such a great point. We want coaching to be a positive experience where people are moving forward and if they can't because of some other challenges that are going on in their life, then sometimes you pause. Sometimes you do both concurrently. I think this can be especially an interesting space for clinicians and for clinician coaches because we may have some knowledge of how therapy and things like that work. But when we set up our arrangements and agreements with the people that we're coaching, we make it really clear what hat we are wearing in certain roles so that we can make sure we're supporting them in that area.

Lillian Emlet: As we come to a close, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you want to share with our audience today?

Annie Wildermuth: Ooh, that's a great question. Coaching has truly transformed my life, and for years have been trying to figure out better ways to help people. I found that to be the most fulfilling aspect of my work as a clinician, as an educator, as a leader. And I would just encourage you to give it a try in some various space. They often have coaching available at conferences. You could reach out to a coach. There's lots of us available on LinkedIn and other places. See if your organization is offering it or thinking about offering it. Because just trying it out and understanding what it really is changed my life and I'm confident that I can be so helpful for so many people.

Lillian Emlet: Great. Thanks so much for sharing. And how can people get in touch with you? Continue the conversation. Where can they find you?

Annie Wildermuth: That's a great question. So I'm on LinkedIn you can look me up. Annie Wildermuth on LinkedIn and my company is also on LinkedIn, First Road Leadership Solutions, and we do coaching and consulting and I would love to engage with you in either of those spaces. I'm also on Instagram at Annie, the PAC.

Lillian Emlet: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. And so everyone, please continue the conversation subscribe, leave a comment, share with your colleagues. We have lots more to discuss. And it's 2026. Looking forward to all that the new year brings. Thanks for listening, everyone.