Stephanie Waggel is a physician and founder of Improve Medical Culture. She can be reached on X @imedicalculture, Facebook, and Instagram.
At her clinic, Improve Life PLLC, she helps adolescents, young adults, and women treat anxiety, depression, relationship problems, stress, OCD, ADHD, and self-esteem issues. She also founded a concierge medical practice for mothers at Moms Physician, which provides personalized care and support for mothers navigating the physical and mental health challenges of pregnancy, postpartum life, and parenthood.
Dr. Waggel is also a mother, cancer survivor, author, marathon runner, motivational speaker, and teacher. She has lived in the Washington, DC area for over fifteen years and enjoys serving the community. She has worked in health care in five countries and is overall very familiar with many cultures.
Dr. Waggel works to decrease the stigma of mental illness that is present in our society. She was filmed for the movie Do No Harm, which focuses on and discusses abuse in the medical education system, and has been asked to speak for various organizations such as Public Citizen, Care2, and One Story. Her story was chronicled in the KevinMD articles, "Hospital fires doctor for having cancer" and "The doctor fired for having cancer speaks up."
She is a member of Postpartum Support International, with a focus on perinatal mental health, and offers internship programs for high school students, college students, and medical students.
Two of my recent teaching topics with medical students have been people taking medical advice from social media and the rise of “wild births,” where babies receive no medical care whatsoever. Then I opened one of my Facebook moms’ groups and saw a pregnant woman post that her baby’s genetic screening came back positive for Turner syndrome. Immediately, strangers in the comments started telling her to abort. Not physicians. Not …
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Social media told her to abort her Turner syndrome baby
As a practicing physician who has worked in the health care field in five different countries, I have a pretty solid idea of why health care in the U.S. is so problematic. In the U.S., many entities related to health care are owned by the same companies. This is a concept called vertical integration, where one business controls every stage of the supply chain. To understand this, imagine the car …
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The dangers of vertical integration in health care
There has been a recent surge in discussion about men’s fear to work alone with female colleagues in medicine. This reluctance puts both men and women at a disadvantage. Women are being excluded from career opportunities and men are missing out on the benefits of collaboration. As a victim of sexual misconduct during my own medical training, I find the recent increase of acceptance of reporting to be a step …
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How to ease men’s fear of mentoring in medicine
Sleep deprivation and medical errors are not the only issues that arise from long shifts. Aside from being dangerous, working 28 hours straight can teach new doctors that their health and even their life is not a priority. With extremely high rates of depression and suicide in this field, increasing work hours is not the step we should be taking. When I was interviewed by Public …
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A different consequence of 28-hour shifts
