Physician Community and Professional Isolation:
Why Going It Alone Costs Clinicians Their Autonomy

Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast — Episode 110: Creating Community with Dr. Zhen Chan of Grapevyne. Host Lillian Liang Emlet, MD MS CHSE CPC ELI-MP interviews guest Zhen Chan, MD MBA, board-certified pediatrician and Founder and CEO of Grapevyne. Published May 25, 2026.

Zhen Chan: Empowered physician autonomy is you chose to do something that is really as true to helping people as possible. You should not burnout. You should be able to have control of your life, of your destiny, of your career. And so I want to provide you that autonomy to build a career that's going to be most fulfilling to you.

Lillian Emlet: I think coaching finally, for the first time, it's been prevalent in the business world for decades, for Fortune 500 companies, It's normalized. And it's incredible. Only finally now after many years of hard work for other physician coaches finally is getting normalized in the undergraduate medical education and throughout the career lifespan that it's normal to have a coach and it's not abnormal or punitive or remediation in some way. When did you last feel truly known by a colleague? Not just recognized in the hallway, but actually seeing someone who understood where you came from, what you're navigating and where you're trying to go? For a lot of us in healthcare, the honest answer is it's been a while and we train in cohorts and then we scattter. We work in systems that keep us heads down moving fast and really sometimes not having the time to connect and somewhere in that pace, the community that could sustain us, it gets left behind. So my guest today feels that gap so deeply that he decided to do something different about it. As a pediatrician running in a busy clinical practice, Dr. Zhen Chan also found himself building something called "Grapevyne"— a peer powered physician community designed to break the silos that quietly exhaust us. Today we're talking about why he did it, what he learned, or what every healthcare leader can take from the startup mindset into their own work in teams. Stay with us. This one's for anyone who ever wanted to feel less alone in medicine. hi everyone. Welcome to the Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast, and I'm excited to introduce to you Dr. Zhen Chan. He's a board certified pediatrician in the DC metro area. He's Founder and CEO of Grapevyne, a peer-to-peer physician community platform built to break the professional silos and help doctors build meaningful connections that support both career development and personal wellbeing. Zhen, graduated with a MD MBA from the University of Miami, then completed Pediatrics at New York Presbyterian where he did a lot of quality improvement advocacy work. He got interested in impacting healthcare at scale beyond the clinical and so he went on to work in a pediatric focused venture capital firm, and then finally founded Grapevyne with the backing of health work studio. And so he describes himself as a pediatrician by day and a community architect also by day. And so we're really excited to have you on here with us today then.

Zhen Chan: Thank you so much for having me, and thank you so much for that beautiful intro.

Lillian Emlet: And so when you were in residency, or I guess maybe early in your practice, what did a typical week look like in terms of connection with your colleagues outside your immediate service? Were you already plugged into communities? Sort of been a thing you've always been about, even back when you were young as a resident?

Zhen Chan: Great question. So in residency, I think community was something that really just relied on myself to build and a couple of friends. It was the Thursday evening after like a long shift and making sure that when you're a senior resident, like your interns are coming out with you to a bar or getting dinner together or something like that. That was the sense of community being built. Through my advocacy work and through some of the quality improvement projects, I also really cared about how do I work with other people in a team-based setting. And so I felt like there was also a community building aspect there. And it was a great opportunity to work with individuals outside of my own institution, meet residents from, like I was at New York Presbyterian, Cornell, through some of the advocacy work that my colleagues actually were spearheading. I got a chance to meet some of the pediatric residents from the Columbia side of New York Presbyterian. And so those moments to work together, to brainstorm that was kind of the objective, or not objective, but like formal community building type opportunities. And then going out on weekends, having breakfast after a 24 with everybody who came off of weekend nights. We had this place called Cafe Luca, we absolutely loved. and getting breakfast together with mimosas at like seven in the morning, that was that informal, right? Like that social network kind of building that, that bonding moment. And, you know, not everybody was interested. I was definitely someone that was like, "Hey, you got to come out. You got to come out. This is for better or for worse. Like this is for your mental health. Come like, hang out with us at seven in the morning even though you've been up for 24 hours." And so yeah, that's what that was it's like. And I think it came a lot too from my earlier days, honestly, in high school and undergrad in med school even. I was just always very extracurricularly involved. And when I got into leadership positions the relationships were the things that I cared the most about. You know, I was actually, I don't usually talk about this, but like, I was president of a organization called Phi Delta Epsilon. It was like an international medical fraternity. This was an undergrad, and when I had started we were at about like maybe 15, 20, 30 members around there. I believe about 20 to 30 members. And after I got on e-board and of course alongside the, the others that were on my, the executive board with me, we over two years got it up to like 150 members. Actually, over that. And we were actually so popular at, by that point we got an office that was like given to us by the school, by the university. So we had an actual office to use in the main building. We had to reject like more than 50% of people applying to want to be part of this group. And so it turned into this like huge powerhouse. And now when I look, when I do visit campus as an alumni, I see this office still there. I see how much of a powerhouse they still are. And it's like, "So this iso fulfilling because like that was kind of something I going to be part of growing." And I think it really came down to being able to build a really like engaged, relationship driven community of people who wanted to be together and knew that they were all like, "Hey, we're all going into healthcare, we're all going into medicine. Let's like do this together."

Lillian Emlet: That's really a beautiful story. Because I think, we've on this podcast and our different newsletters, we have talked about relational leadership and so really finding people who want to embody that and take the action to be able to bring that to life is really, is really powerful. And I think since the pandemic with all of the social isolation that's happened for all of us, I mean, I'm an extrovert and I have to admit, I began to really appreciate the introvert life. I have to admit I'm guilty of that, that we have become much more disconnected overall post pandemic.

Zhen Chan: Yeah, I hear you on being easily sucked into the introvert life. It is very easy to just sit on your couch and hang. It's very, very tempting. Very, very easy. It's actually funny, like people joke now, like what you'll see things on Instagram. It's like, "I love it when my friends cancel plans because I get to stay. I don't have to change nothing." But I do think, yeah, like we are in a world that is very sucked into your phone you have screens, you have entertainment available to you at all times. So opportunities for relationship building, for community, it's just not where we, go to to like occupy our time. We go back in the day like, I mean we can talk about even, even like church going or, or temple going. These were foundational components of towns, villages, and civilizations, and that was where you always went to, to occupy your time, and it was always a source of community. As the entire world has become more secular and things like that. and I myself am not particularly religious, but I do understand the value of the community that that provides. And so now people, I think opportunities to like volunteer, go to do sports, like all these different things. And what they're going to do that for is not necessarily because they're trying to be the best soccer player, but because like soccer in DC is how I'm going to be with other people. Once a week or something like that.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah. And community is interesting, right? So I think there's definitely many tribes in medicine. whether it's by your specialty or by your gender or by your organization, by your state. There are so many ways you could split the pie. And so you know, your a pediatrician and an MBA and a founder. And do you think that in any way by seeing things from a more of a business perspective that you looked at the problem differently? Because the reality is people could bucket us in different ways. How do you see the physician community differently because of your background and training and experience?

Zhen Chan: Ooh, that's a fascinating question. I almost feel, hope I'm answering your question because of my MBA, because of like the things, I became interested because of the route that I chose. After graduating residency, I got put in this like separate bucket. like you have doctors and then you have like this, "Zhen type of doctors", like, you know what I mean? Like,

Lillian Emlet: Oh no, those. Oh yeah. So there we go. You already have a tribal, you have a tribal segregation of the MD MBAs. There's something different about them.

Zhen Chan: are they actually here to care for patients? I've gotten that before. I've gotten the feedback from when I think about a patient in front of me. When I'm thinking about the care process, I'm thinking about like. the systems issues that led to this. I'm thinking about the five why's, the root cause analysis, the fishbone diag. I'm thinking about all that stuff and even though I'm thinking about the patient maybe like at the entire unit of how we going to this point. It feels like sometimes, not every, not every doctor, I, I cannot say it's a, it's a generalizable thing to everybody, but there are some docs that are more of the old guard, more traditional, who like see that as a distraction. And so like, bucketed me in this separate category. And of course like now I've been able to because of building Grapevyne, because of I'm just an active relationship builder. I've been able to find my tribe of other, like entrepreneurs, doctors in tech, all these people who share this similar passion for helping patients for medicine. Just doing it in a very different way, and I think it's important to have that. So that's just my own experience for it. How I see the physician community now with the business lens. I think it's just trying to actually sometimes feels like yelling at a wall, but try to like emphasize the social connection piece to the "traditional docs". Try to bring community, try to bring networking events and happy hours and socials or like going together to a yoga class, like having those kinds of things be more emphasized because I think part of our loss of autonomy in the system. Not that it's the only, that's a, not that it's the only contributor, but one of the contributors in my opinion is that we are such an isolated profession. Whereas, those that have taken over the health system, those who have taken over this sort of business beast of an industry are the business people, are the tech people, are the lawyers, are all these other individuals who came from educational paths that emphasize networking and emphasize community. And there's a lot of like, "Hey, I know this person If..." "oh, this is the type of job you want. I know who you to talk to." "oh, I can get you promoted." Like all these kinds of things are happening and doctors and nurses and other clinicians who see patients who actually understand patient care. Are often out of the room. They're not in those room where those decisions are being made. And if we banded together more, and even if it's in informal casual settings we spend sometime understanding healthcare from the business lens, then we speak the same vocabulary, then we start knowing more people who can also get us into the right rooms and maybe we can get some of that autonomy back. I hope that answered your question a little bit.

Lillian Emlet: Awesome. And so, I completely agree. I think we have done a disservice in much of our training programs to really shelter clinicians from the entire infrastructure and complexity of what it's like to build a private practice, to be part of an organization and understand the finances. And there's so much financial literacy, both from a business perspective and an individual perspective that is missing. And then, you know, the reality is there's just so many limited hours of the day and yet there's probably some basic fundamental things that we really do need to make a modern clinician or physician for the future,

Zhen Chan: right. I think it is important, right? Like I don't want to take anyone away from the things we need to know to be a good doctor. But I do agree with you. I think what you're alluding to is that the definition of what a quote unquote good doctor today is, is a much broader, I think, definition than what it might have been 50, 60, 70, 80, a hundred years, years ago. And that is we need a balance of physicians who are. let's say, I don't know neurology, we need someone who is just like the expert neurologist, who is just going to be every single day, like seeing patients and can use their specialty expertise to just be as good as possible, as good of a neurologist as possible. But we may also need the neurologist to work in the medical device company to come up with a better way to do a, functional MRI or like a portable MRI to assess for strokes and reduce that radiation. We need a neurologist there too. We can't just let the tech people build that machine and then kind of come over to neurologist, be like, "Hey, are you going to use this? Did this work?" We need both. And that's how we improve healthcare kind of at a broader scale.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah. So tell us about Grapevyne. You've talked a bit about your why for making impact at scale beyond the exam room. Tell us about how Grapevyne fits into that. You know, why you started. What's it about? Who is it for?

Zhen Chan: Yeah. Grapevyne is for myself eight years ago. It's, and what I mean by that is, I, going through the process as a first generation college student, first generation medical student, like, you know, doctor in the family. Family doesn't really understand US education system. And so having to navigate a lot of that on my own and then getting to a point where I actually started having other interests and wanting to explore them, meaning like the business side of things and, and whatnot. I had to go through like finding and building a network very much on my own the whole time. I also didn't really know how to find a proper mentor. Like sometimes people gave the advice, it's like, oh, you just have to ask them, you just to ask them to like be your mentor. I'm like, what does that really like? And then, am I supposed to meet with them once a month? Like, know, like most of the doctors I talked to when I was a younger med student and like seeing attendings above me, like most of the doctors that I talk to seem so busy and like they don't want to talk to me. So you know I'm building Grapevyne to provide the resources and the connections that I felt. I was missing and I wanted to, and I want to bring that to everybody else. And so what that means tangibly is Grapevyne's a free community for physicians, practicing, non-practicing for medical students, NPs, PAs are allowed as well. Those that are training to become nurse practitioners and physician assistants, physician associates now are also welcome. And the goal is that. If you need something for your personal life, for your professional development you want to find a person to help you with that journey. You want to find a resource guide or a video or something, whatever it is, Grapevyne is there to support that and to provide that for you ultimately with the idea. my sort of tagline is Empowered physician autonomy is you chose to do something that that is really just like as true to helping people as possible. You should not burnout. You should be able to have control of your life, of your destiny, of your career. And so I want to provide you that autonomy to build a career that's going to be most fulfilling to you. And I think also with that autonomy comes better wellbeing and a less, a little bit less burnout and moral injury too.

Lillian Emlet: I think the reality is a lot of times we don't know what we don't know, right? and we're just sort of exposed to our same little bubbles. And I think the hardest thing, well, coming from the coaching land, you don't really realize until you become more aware. And the Grapevyne really helps you just to become aware of the breadth and variety and lived experiences. And diversity that is out there because you know, I mean I've been, have been very involved with all of my professional societies and all the little learning opportunities and groups. but by the end of the day, until I went to this entrepreneur land, then you start to realize there's an even bigger world and there's even more different ways that you can spin things. That is really sort of, until you get into the business role, you don't really realize is even out there.

Zhen Chan: Yeah. in the business world every, what I've noticed, and this was in my MBA year as well, is there seems to be just a lot more natural support. And I, I don't know why that is. and what I mean by natural support is like you reach out to someone and someone and that person on the other end naturally feels like they naturally just want to help you out, And they're like more willing to take that phone call and like kind of chat with you. And I've oftentimes had people after an initial phone call that through a LinkedIn connection go, "Hey, do you want to make this like. Once a quarter, like, let's just chat. Like I'll see how you're doing, you'll see how I'm doing, and, and we can like maybe throw some ideas at each other. Talk about our successes, failures, mistakes." And I'm like, "yeah, I love that. That's awesome." And I just don't see that happening in medicine. And I think that's because like our, you know, training track has been so independent. It's so based on test scores, research publications and all this stuff. And it's just very like self minded,

Lillian Emlet: Yes. And I do think it is interesting, like really good business really is about helping another person in a different way. So I think we help patients in a very specific protocolized, evidence-based way, and yet business people are just trying to help people with their problems, and it makes sense then that, you know, sometimes it really is just about ending a call with how can we make this a win for both of us? How can we keep on, helping it pay forward? And it's just so interesting because I think in many ways, I still remember some people call in, at least in the clinical land, it's the dark side, but it's not really a. dark. side is just a different side. When we realize that business isn't selling or just trying to, it's not a scam. It's people just trying to help find a solution, a solution's. So good, it's worth paying for.

Zhen Chan: Right.

Lillian Emlet: Right, I agree with that.

Zhen Chan: It's something that like, one of those things that, that when the people say the dark side of medicine or the dark side of healthcare, or like, "oh yeah, you joined the dark side," whatever. Like, I don't know. I just get a little of that, huh? Yeah, I, and I just kind of let it go over my head.

Lillian Emlet: Well, it's, it's interesting because these are all narrative. as a coach, we often talk about the fact that we often have different sunglasses that we put on for different identities and the way we want to see the world. And really, it's a choice on how you want to see the world. And that's one way. And so oftentimes we, we ask, you know, well, what, what can make that different? And so until you go explore, which was, which is what I love about Grapevynes like. See what it's like to be on the other side of the shoes, hear other people talk about things.

Zhen Chan: Mm-hmm.

Lillian Emlet: it's you, you don't know until you've had one, even microsecond next to somebody with a different lived experience.

Zhen Chan: Yeah, I tell residents and medical students that I meet, like one of the best things you can do is just as busy as you are once every other month. So six times a year have a 30 minute conversation with a new person. Like know what, like that could be like just a great friend in the future. That could also be like your potential job opportunity 20 years from now when you are thinking about a transition. Could be clinical to clinical, could be clinical to non-clinical. Whatever it is. Like you never know where that, that relationship can end up. And so just like meeting new people I think is very important as simple as that sounds.

Lillian Emlet: Right. So you've had to recruit people to this idea of Grapevyne before you even really had the product and you had to convince doctors, busy doctors, that community was essential. And I can already hear like some like, you know, side eyes. So when many of them really don't really see it as necessary, they might see it as optional. So how did you help convince the first initial few people? And then what has it taught you about leading this change? Because things are different now from when I first met you.

Zhen Chan: The first physicians that came on, I think like already, right? Finding the, the individuals who align with you already or align with me in this case, like already on the vision and the idea. it didn't take too much convincing there, they shared the skepticism of, well, how are you going to convince like everyone else? And I have this vision of like, How do I actively bring Grapevyne to the most passive physician or medical student when it comes to all of this other stuff that's happening in healthcare. All of this other stuff that like maybe is important for you, like your retirement planning and personal wealth and all this stuff. So that's like my North Star. I'm nowhere near that. But I think over time through building the libraries, through building the material, through hosting some of the webinars and the in-person events. and when I'm meeting a new doctor, who is just like, "Hey, what is Grapevyne? Why do I need this?" I actually just ask them like, "Hey, what are you going through in your life right now that maybe you want some help on?" And then I go back into Grapevyne and I go into the things that I built and just send it to them. And then,, so like from the get go, it's like, here's exactly how this community can help you. And then on that link, in that same message, I'll add a couple things. Like, by the way, you should talk to this and this and this person. I'll try to give two or three and say they've done X, Y, Z. And I think they would be even better than I am at answering your questions and helping you out with your journey. And so now I'm not only delivering something that you can read or watch or listen to, I'm also delivering you extra people who you can connect with. And again, I also tell people if you are passionate about networking- which you should be- you should at every moment also ask for a connection to someone else. Like come up with another thing that you want answered or a solution that like to or a problem space that you care about and see if, like, just throw that question at the end of the call and be like, Hey, do you know anybody that works in like food insecurity research? Or like, do you know anybody that has built a private practice on their own? That maybe would be willing to chat with me. It's something that I'm thinking about, like, not right now, but maybe in six years, I kind of want to do and just like throw that question out and then most of the time people will be like, yeah, of course. And maybe if they don't give you someone, then they'll give you someone by email a couple hours from them.

Lillian Emlet: That's a really great tip. You know, so I mean, you, you seem to have the natural skill of being a connector, right? So I think there's definitely some people who, that's their superpower in life is just to. It's just normal and natural to connect and to also sort of have that invisible memory where like, "oh yeah, I remember this person who, these are the things they, they, they mentioned at one point." But that was a really great teaching pearl. So I just want to really, really emphasize it for our podcast and video viewers. The fact that you can find something. because I know most physicians are very curious people and also have lots of different interests that we often have put into the back burner. And a lot of times with our coaching clients, we remember what it's like. we have lots of different passions. And so the best thing about networking is, is you can tap into all those other aspects of yourself, even if just to have a question, a curiosity, and to end the conversation with another fresh forwarding the action type of question. So I really like your tip that you just gave.

Zhen Chan: And I love the work that you do. I mean, I know I didn't know anything about coaching prior to building Grapevyne, but one of the first things I wanted to do was create a space to feature physician coaches because I think what. Oftentimes, like you could read anything you want on the internet. You can go to Claude and ask any question right now. but at the end of the day, hearing a person talk to you about it, hearing a person, giving you the recommendation, I think that human element still matters. And hearing these kinds of tips and tricks, recommendations, strategies about your life from a career coach, from someone, especially a physician coach who has gone through this journey themselves, right. I think is very, very important. So the physician coaching space on Grapevyne is actually one of the first things that I put together, and I hope that more coaches kind of come join Grapevyne so I could put them there too.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, there was many. There are many, many physician coaches, so I'll definitely have to, but give you more recommendations and at the same time, the reality is. I think coaching finally, for the first time, it's been prevalent in the business world for decades, for Fortune 500 companies It's normalized and it's incredible. Only finally now after the work, many years of hard work for other physician coaches finally is getting normalized in the undergraduate medical education and throughout the career lifespan that it's normal to have a coach and it's not abnormal or punitive or remediation in some way.

Zhen Chan: it's more like it's like

Lillian Emlet: preventative. Right, So I'm curious you know, what's it look like when Grapevyne is working exactly as you hoped? You know, you're sort of in this junction point right now. We're still growing organically. Can you tell me, share any stories of the people who've connected through the platform and sort of what's shifting for them and what kinds of things that people have been like, "oh yeah, this was great. This really was worth." You know, coming to, because you've done some webinars, there's been some speakers, there's been in-person events. So I'm just curious if you wanted to share any stories of what it's like that you've received from the people who are in it.

Zhen Chan: Yeah. So from a webinar value standpoint, the last one I hosted was on medical writing and I didn't realize how many people would be interested in this one. I had like, I think. near 30 people, RSVP to it. And this is a, you know, Grapevyne, like you said, it's still at a junction point. It's early growth. This is all organic, word of mouth. And I got a lot of people joining just to come attend that webinar. And what was really rewarding was not just the people attending not all 30 attended about half actually physically attended. But multiple people were asking questions and seeing that active, like. Hey, I hosted something right through Grapevyne that people wanted to come to, and not only did people come to, they actually got questions they had answered itself a very rewarding — piece. Another instance is just people organically across the country, across the globe. I've recently had a couple medical students in Nigeria and Kenya join someone in Cyprus joined. how did Word get to you? and then I've had like a doctor last, just last week said that they heard about Grapevyne through some other docs and didn't want to sign up just yet, but wanted to kind of meet me and I put my calendar scheduling link on my LinkedIn profile, like anybody can schedule a call with me. And so she did that and she was talking about, you know, "hey, I've been in practice for over 20 years. To be honest, I'm pretty burnt out. I am just starting to think about like finding some nonclinical work. I don't know if I want to do it. Part of the time or, or completely transition, but I heard about your group. I heard maybe you can help me out." And she kind of asked that question like, "how can Grapevyne help someone like me?" And so immediately I told her, look, I, I'm going to send you a couple links, like, don't let me just tell you how it can help you out. Here are the links of the things that can actually, you can read and take a look at. And then I know other, here's three other people on Grapevyne right now. Who you should talk to and chat with. And I just did a warm introduction. I did a warm introduction. Both of them responded. And I think they're hoping, I'm hoping they're connecting soon. So, you know, like the fact that someone found Grapevyne through organic word of mouth and is getting some kind of value from the networking piece has been really rewarding to me too. I'm not looking for Grapevyne to be like another social media feed or another place where like everybody's going to come post and like, and comment. But another thing that hasn't happened yet, but I hope happens one day, is like if people are creating content that is supposed to be educational, is supposed to help another doctor out, or, be a patient care resource that they want to share, whatever it is, I hope Grapevyne is the place where they think of like, "I want to share this here." So that other physicians can access this. And then also if physicians want to use this to help their friends out or whatever, like they can find it here and I can have a space for whatever the, the kind of niche interest is. Actually right now I'm working with a she's a PGY 2 family medicine doctor who is creating a sort of like. Healthcare background systems course in a very digestible, quick way. There are plenty of doctors out there that have YouTube channels and things like that that do this. But I think what I like about hers is that it just, it takes maybe five minutes to watch a video or like less than 10 to watch the video and read the content. So I love that because it really breaks the information down into digestible pieces. And she said, "Hey, like I would love to just have this hosted on Grapevyne and on the platform I'm using, which is Circle, I have the ability to put courses." So we're putting that together and then I'm hoping to get like some other physician contracts, courses, materials, and things like that all in there as well. So you can tap into that course at any time.

Lillian Emlet: Oh, that's so lovely. It's one of those things where it's going to become a clearinghouse for different things you need and information and community and networking. It's all of it at once. It's funny 'cause we both have communities on circle. So we have the MedThrive Connect and similarly it's more just for people who want to figure out how they want to transform their, their health and improve their wellbeing, plus their leadership. And so we also do once a month, you know, a webinar. But I think we need to join voices.

Zhen Chan: Yeah. No, maybe you told me this in the past and I just forgot, but I would love to collab.

Lillian Emlet: Yeah, I think we definitely need a class. So we're here already. So I guess this is a public promise in this recording, that we're going to be doing something together here in the future. So I think you've really highlighted something that's been missing in how we've we're structured as a healthcare system in general. And so really whether you're thinking about how you want to think about your leadership, whether how you navigate your career understandings, what the ups and downs and all those different meandering pathways that we all take we're super excited about the fact that we might do a collaboration and you know, the fact that Grapevyne is a place for really everyone internationally, students, physicians, everywhere. I'm curious, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you want to bring home to our listeners today about what it's like for the journey, you know, in healthcare, right? Because all of us are on the journey of our life and career altogether, all mixed together. Anything that you'd like to share in terms of either advice or wisdom?

Zhen Chan: Yeah, I think a couple of the things that we already talked about allude to this, but I just want every person to know, for me, it's speaking to physicians and medical students because that's my home. But this is, can probably be extrapolated to anybody, is like, do what you love, build a career that you are truly, truly fulfilled by. if you're feeling stuck, if you're waking up feeling dread about your work every single day, something is wrong and you can do something about it, and that something doesn't have to be doing it alone. You don't have to go through that. That whole mental health like journey, burnout, journey alone, there are plenty of other people who are willing to help who, if you literally just tell them I need help or I could use some advice. There are so many people out there that are willing to go through that journey with you, who can tell you about their lived experiences. And yeah, like go out, find community, find networking, build relationships. I think that truly can provide you honestly more autonomy in the career that you're building and a little bit more peace of mind.

Lillian Emlet: Really great advice and so thank you so much for being here. Basically what you're suggesting is that Grapevyne, you could maybe find your sponsor, your advisor, your mentor and your coach, all there on the platform and education along the way. So how can people find Grapevyne? How do they sign up to be part of the platform in the community? Where can they find you?

Zhen Chan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The website is the easiest. So Grapevyne.health, now it's Grapevyne spelled with the Y G-R-A-P-E-V-Y-N-E.Health is the website. You can, it's free to sign up. You'll go onto the Circle platform if you want to download the Circle app. It will, you know, put everything in kind of an app format. I described the layout as sort of like a, it's kind of like a Reddit layout, but you can also host live events and have the coursework and everything on it as well. and then I'm on social media too, if you just aren't interested in joining a new platform. I totally understand sometimes like it's another profile to create and all that stuff, but if you want to just follow some of the content. I'm on Instagram, I'm on TikTok. I post all my stuff on LinkedIn so you can find me on all of those platforms. on Instagram, I'm ZhenMD and on TikTok, I'm just ZhenMD no underscore. And yeah would love to to connect with anybody who needs a friend, advice, whatever.

Lillian Emlet: Awesome. We're going to have everything in the show notes here on YouTube. And to our listeners, if this episode made you think differently about community, leadership and what it means to build something that matters in healthcare each other. Please share this episode with a colleague who needs to hear it. Leave us a review, tack us on social and come find us between all of our episodes here at Trinity Transforming Healthcare Coaching on Instagram, LinkedIn, and here on YouTube. Thanks everybody. Thank you Zhen for joining us, and we look forward to the collab. So all of you stay tuned.

Zhen Chan: Absolutely. Thank you.