What happens when you do everything “right” in medical school and still don’t match into residency?

On this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei Hardin, MD, sits down with Dr. Sijia Zhang, a PGY-2 psychiatry resident at UCSF, to talk about one of the most painful and stigmatized experiences in medical training: going unmatched.

Sijia entered the Match with strong clinical grades, extensive research experience, and reassurance from advisors that the question was not whether she would match, but where. Then Match Week arrived, and she received the email telling her she had not matched into any position.

She shares what happened next, from the shame and shock of Match Day to navigating SOAP, institutional pressure to secure any available residency position, and the mentor who gave her a completely different piece of advice: if she had been selective about college and medical school, why should she suddenly stop being selective about residency?

Instead, Sijia took additional time, rebuilt her application around psychiatry, pursued research and away rotations, found mentors who believed in her, and gradually rebuilt the confidence she thought she had lost forever. She ultimately matched into psychiatry at UCSF.

Frances Mei also shares her own experience of not matching and SOAPing into ENT, and together they discuss failure, shame, mentorship, the hidden curriculum of medicine, and why a professional setback does not necessarily mean what we immediately assume it means about us.

In this episode:

• What it feels like to go unmatched in residency

• Why strong medical students still sometimes do not match

• The emotional aftermath of Match Day

• How SOAP works and why medical schools may encourage it

• Deciding not to SOAP into a program just to move forward

• Rebuilding a residency application after going unmatched

• Changing specialties from dermatology to psychiatry

• The importance of mentors after professional failure

• How to increase your “surface area for luck”

• Being highly productive while privately struggling

• Why failure can fundamentally change your relationship with risk

• Rebuilding confidence after rejection

• Matching at UCSF after an unsuccessful first cycle

• Sijia’s future in women’s mental health and consultation-liaison psychiatry

A conversation for anyone who has ever received an email, score, rejection, or result that made them wonder whether the future they imagined for themselves had disappeared.

It hadn’t.

Host: Frances Mei Hardin, MD

Guest: Sijia Zhang, MD

Connect with Sijia: @sijialater

Presented by: The Hippocratic Collective

Follow Frances Mei on Instagram & Tiktok @francesmeimd

And subscribe to ⁨@HippocraticCollective⁩ on Youtube for all of the other shows the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.

What happens after you leave the path you spent your entire life building toward?

On this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei Hardin, MD, is joined by Colin for a reflective birthday episode after officially turning 35.

Frances Mei talks about what it has felt like to step off medicine’s conveyor belt and build a career without a clear blueprint, including the uncertainty, fear, and freedom that come with losing sight of the shore for a while. She shares one of the questions that has become central to this season of life: is it really a risk if what you are risking is a life you do not want?

They also talk about the criticism Frances Mei still gets for leaving surgical practice, why “you could have just done locums” misses the point, and why working harder now feels completely different from working hard at a job she did not want.

The conversation moves into entrepreneurship, ambition, birthdays, gratitude, and the tradeoffs involved in building work that actually matters to you. Frances Mei reflects on why she no longer expects a perfect separation between work and life, and why meaningful work can feel life affirming even when it is demanding.

And yes, Stardew Valley makes an appearance. Frances Mei realizes that even in a video game, she loses interest once the farm is fully optimized and profitable, raising a bigger question about whether the real reward is sometimes the act of building itself.

In this episode:

• Turning 35 after leaving surgical practice

• Getting off medicine’s conveyor belt

• Becoming more comfortable with uncertainty

• Why leaving surgery was not about working less

• The criticism physicians face when they change careers

• Building a portfolio career without a blueprint

• Risk, ambition, and trusting yourself

• Why meaningful work feels different from burnout

• Entrepreneurship and the “love of the game”

• Gratitude without suppressing frustration

• What Stardew Valley can teach us about ambition

• Why how your life feels matters more than how it looks

Frances Mei ends with the mantra that may best summarize this new chapter:

“How my life feels is a lot more important than how my life looks.”

Host: Frances Mei Hardin, MD

Presented by: The Hippocratic Collective

Following Frances Mei on Instagram & Tiktok @francesmeimd

And subscribe to ⁨@HippocraticCollective⁩ on Youtube for all of the other shows the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.

What happens when a successful surgeon starts having panic attacks in the operating room?

On this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei Hardin, MD, sits down with fellowship-trained rhinologist, Hippocratic Collective co-founder, surgeon coach, and author Mel Thacker, MD, to talk about her debut memoir, Scrubbing In, out October 6, 2026.

Mel shares the story behind the book, from growing up with housing instability and becoming financially independent as a teenager to building a successful career in ENT. For years, medicine represented an escape and an arrival point. Becoming a physician, she thought, would mean she had finally made it.

But seven years into a successful surgical practice, Mel began experiencing panic attacks in the operating room. She talks candidly about the shame, fear, and uncertainty that followed, including the worry that patients or hospital leadership might see her differently if they knew.

Rather than hiding that experience, Mel chose to write about it.

Together, Mel and Frances Mei discuss why surgeons are so often expected to perform as if they are immune to normal human experiences, why silence can be more dangerous than vulnerability, and what it means to stay in surgery while redesigning the profession around a life you actually want to live.

They also talk about the craft of memoir, learning to see yourself as a character rather than always the hero of your own story, and why storytelling may be one of the most important skills physicians never learn.

In this episode:

• Mel’s childhood and path into medicine

• Why becoming a doctor felt like an escape

• The arrival fallacy in medicine

• Learning to write a memoir as a surgeon

• Panic attacks in the operating room

• Shame and vulnerability in surgical culture

• Why talking about struggle can improve patient safety

• Redesigning a surgical career instead of leaving it

• Moving from private practice to locums and part-time surgery

• Storytelling as a leadership skill for physicians

• Why surgeons need permission to be human

• Who Mel wrote Scrubbing In for

Mel ultimately wrote Scrubbing In for the surgeon who feels too sensitive, too different, or too far outside the traditional mold of what a surgeon is supposed to look and act like.

Host: Frances Mei Hardin, MD

Guest: Mel Thacker, MD

Connect with Mel: https://www.hippocratic-collective.com/members/mel-thacker-md

Scrubbing In available now: https://a.co/d/03CPHRRm

Presented by: The Hippocratic Collective

Follow Frances Mei on Instagram & Tiktok @francesmeimd

And subscribe to ⁨@HippocraticCollective⁩ on Youtube for all of the other shows the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.