Wiring Your Brain for Performance Under Pressure | ER Physician, Dr. Dan Dworkis

Daniel Dworkis (0:00)

I practice running through skill sets in my mind about intubating people, about dropping chest tubes in people, about doing these skills. I practice it when I'm out of breath so that I can walk in that room and have every single thing ready to bear. And I come with the weight of everything that humanity has ever invented about medicine, all behind me, every other person whose shoulders I stand on.

I run in that room and I do everything that I can to make that person better. And where that confidence comes from is me knowing that I have trained and continue to train to be able to bring all that humanity has to bear to that patient.

Michael Gervais (0:42)

Hey, welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais, and by trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist, fortunate to work with some of the most extraordinary thinkers and doers across the planet. And the whole idea behind these conversations behind this podcast is to learn from the extraordinaries, to pull back the curtain, to explore how they have committed to mastering both their craft and their minds.

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Now, this week's conversation is with Dr. Dan Dworkis. He's an attending emergency physician and professor at USC's Keck School of Medicine where he works at the Los Angeles County and USC Medical Center. This is one of the largest and busiest emergency departments in the country. Before that, he did his training with the Brigham and Williams Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard-affiliated emergency medicine residency. Be our doctor or not, we all face emergencies in our lives, times when we are called on to make a decision, to act or to not act, and to be able to meet the demands of the moment with skill, whether that's an environment of uncertainty or pressure or even intimacy.