Dr. Darria Long Gillespie, MD, MBA, FACEP

We’re burned out. We’re exhausted – and the only solutions seem to be to grit down more, “self-care” mental health soundbites, and Quiet Quitting. Those aren’t solutions. Dr. Darria Long founded The Burnout Study in Women, the first post-pandemic large-scale academic study specifically to understand the drivers of burnout – and most importantly, to find data-driven answers.

Dr. Darria is a Yale-trained emergency physician and former Harvard Medical School faculty member, national bestselling author, national TV health expert, and speaker of the TEDx “An ER Doctor on Ending the Crazy Busy”. From the ER to the TV studio, she has trained to thrive amidst chaos and stress.

In this talk, Dr. Darria combines rich and behind-the-scenes stories of balancing her role as an ER doctor, national TV health expert, and motherhood, while also suddenly managing a mysterious and life-threatening heart condition. She also shares action-oriented and fascinating data from the Burnout Study in Women and other sources.

Dr. Darria will share key concepts developed from her research:

• How to become “Un-Overwhelmable”
• The system ER doctors use to function amidst chaos without internalizing it – and how you can incorporate this in your own life (no ER residency required!)
• The “Do it All Discrepancy” framework
• “Choose YOUR All”

With a combination of both tactical steps and mindset shifts, this talk lets audiences laugh, have ah-ha moments, and leave empowered by steps they can take today.

*This speech is available for general audiences or it can be tailored to women audiences

How do you move forward – and grow – when your life gets turned upside down? At times of upheaval – whether it’s health, persona, or career crises – when you want to ask, “Why me?” or “I don’t think I can handle this,” how do you move forward?

Dr. Darria Long is a Harvard and Yale-trained ER doctor, national bestselling author, national TV health expert, and founder of The National Burnout Study in Women – and had two small children when her own life was thrown upside down. She discovered that she had a massive, mysterious and life-threatening heart condition, and over 18 months, nearly went into cardiac arrest multiple times.

As an ER doctor and on-air TV personality, she had spent her life thriving in moments of uncertainty, unpredictability, and incomplete information, and yet she still wasn’t prepared for this. Overnight, life changed.

In this motivating address, Dr. Darria curates data-driven solutions and guidance, along with her experience in the ER, and stories from her journey from grim diagnosis to building life back, better.

Audiences will leave with a combination of tools and mindset shifts to not be able to just tolerate uncertainty, but to lean into it, thrive, perform at your best – and actually turn it into your advantage.

Key takeaways include a combination of both tactics and mindset shifts to help you stay calm, thrive, and make good decisions, no matter what the conditions:

• How to turn challenging moments into moments of growth
• How ER doctors maintain presence of mind, despite the uncertainty and concern around them
• How to become unstuck, when uncertainty and overwhelm paralyze you
• How to focus on what matters, and not be distracted by uncertainty

Every day, we’re bombarded with “health hacks” – but what really works?

Dr. Darria is author of the actual book on this, Mom Hacks, and shares the best, most high-yield steps and decisions you can make in your life to improve your productivity, overall health, and just feel better every day, both physically and mentally.

In a world where “more self-care” actually can feel like a chore, what actually WORKS?

• The impact of chronic stress – both physically and mentally
• Mindset shifts that impact our overall health
• Physical activities that have the greatest impact

Constant requests, time-crunch, endless to-do’s… stress and burnout take on a different tone (and urgency) when health and lives are at stake. Yet, given changing regulations and economic landscape, doing what physicians need to do is getting even harder and at times leaving us to question WHY we are doing this at all.

In this audience-specific speech, Dr. Darria gives an evidence-based perspective on burnout from the POV of the physician.

As a Harvard and Yale-trained ER doctor, national TV health regular expert, national bestselling author, TEDx speaker, and mom to two kiddos, Dr. Darria’s life was right where she had dreamed. Then, one day when she was home alone with her young children, she nearly went into cardiac arrest in her basement, and was able to call for emergency help just in time. Instead of the year she had expected to include TV and speaking and exciting projects, she spent the next 16 months in a maze of uncertainty, fear, and SO many questions.

Interestingly, right when this began, her pastor initiated a plan that year for the church as a whole to read through the Bible. Dr. Darria shares how God can use life’s unexpected turns to direct us onto a path that we’d never expect, never know to strive toward, and that can be better than we even dreamed.