Self-Paced Course · CME-Eligible

Medical training taught you to care for everyone else. Now learn to care for yourself.

For physicians who are tired of looking out the window in the middle of clinic. Tired of cramming life into a weekend. Tired of telling patients to exercise when you can't remember the last time you went to the gym yourself. And ready to think clearly about what you want to do next, before you decide it.

Enroll in the course — $475 See how it works

Modules + bonus

Bite-sized lessons

∞

Lifetime access

CME

Credit-eligible

The Reality

Most physicians can't point to a single moment.
They point to the morning they didn't recognize themselves in the mirror.

You stayed late on a Tuesday and missed dinner again. You answered an inbox message during your kid's recital. You sat through a meeting where someone called you a high performer and cut your pay in the same sentence — and walked out unsure which part was the lie.

The story has different shapes. You were just promoted, and the promotion looks a lot like a third job. Or you asked to move two patients so you could pick up your kids one night a month, and people who have never met you said no. Or you got paged about a scheduling question during a real emergency, snapped, and sent the message you swore you'd never send.

None of it is a personal failure. You keep saying yes because you mean it — and that is not the part that needs fixing. You are still the doctor people are lucky to get. What is missing is the structure that lets you stay that way for the next twenty years, without shrinking the rest of your life to do it.

You don't have a productivity problem. You have a life that has been measured by RVUs and gotten smaller.

Medicine is still worth doing. The trick is doing it without disappearing.

Who this is for

Built for physicians making a decision they don't want to get wrong.

This is for you if…

You are being asked to produce more, take more call, lead more, publish more — and you suspect another decade of pure grind isn't going to land you somewhere you want to be.
You want to be the physician who says yes to one more patient — and the parent who is home for bedtime. You believe both are part of being a good doctor, and you are tired of being told they are in conflict.
You snapped at a colleague, sent a message you regret, said something out loud the version of you who started medical school wouldn't recognize. You'd like to understand it and not repeat it.
You are weighing a real change — a job, a leadership role, a step back, a step out — and you know it's the kind of decision that deserves more than a tired Tuesday night to make.
You want to do this work quietly. Privately. Without explaining yourself to a group, a chair, or the badge.

This is probably not for you if…

You want a productivity hack, a time-blocking system, or a way to feel better about your schedule without changing anything underneath it.
You want someone to tell you whether to leave medicine. This course will not. It will help you see clearly enough to make that decision — or any other — on purpose.
You're already in a structured group with peer support, weekly accountability, and a clear next step. The cohort may suit you better.
You're not ready to put anything in writing about your own life. The work here is concrete and reflective. It asks for honest words, not slogans.

By the end of the course, you'll have built a thirty-page personal document — not a worksheet, not notes from a video, but a blueprint for the next chapter of your career. You'll write it section by section as you move through the modules. You'll come back to it quarterly. You'll keep it for the rest of your career.

The moment or pattern that brought you here, written clearly enough that you can come back to it
An honest audit of what your training over-developed and what it under-developed
Your top five values, ranked, with one decision you're currently making that conflicts with them
Your VIA signature strengths and the work that energizes versus drains you, even when you do it well
Your DISC communication style and two specific conversations you're going to handle differently in the next thirty days
The career direction you're choosing — forward, backward, lateral, or outside — and why
Three SMART goals and three intentions for the next twelve months
A one-sentence commitment, signed and dated, that you carry forward

The Curriculum

Four phases. Seven modules. One coherent arc.

The seven modules are grouped into the four phases of the career architecture method. You move through them in order. Each lesson is under ten minutes. Each module ends with a section of the workbook you'll have written by the time you're done.

Phase I

Identify

See what is true about where you are.

Module 0 · The Problem

Stop blaming yourself for thinking like a doctor.

Name the four specific reflexes your training built into you on purpose — perfectionism, working through anything, hiding flaws, suppressing emotion — and learn three concrete techniques for interrupting the inner voice that's been running you since med school. By the end you'll have stopped reading your own exhaustion as a personal failure.

Module 1 · Burnout vs. Job Satisfaction

Tell the difference between a hard week and the slow leak you've been ignoring.

Pinpoint which specific drivers of physician burnout are operating in your life right now — not generally, specifically. Walk away with concrete practices for refilling the physical, emotional, and spiritual reserves the work has been quietly draining, plus a thirty-second between-patient reset you can start using tomorrow.

Phase II

Align

Connect what is true to how you are uniquely built.

Module 2 · Work to Your Strengths

Find the part of your work that energizes you — and lean into it on purpose.

Identify your top five character strengths and see exactly how they show up in your practice today. Figure out which signature strength you've been underusing — the one that goes flat under stress — and walk away with one specific way to use it differently this month.

Module 3 · Values

Stop making decisions that feel wrong even when they look right on paper.

Name the five values that guide your best decisions — including the ones nobody told you to value. Identify the one decision you're making right now that conflicts with them. Write a mission statement you'll come back to the next time something hard needs deciding.

Module 4 · Communication Skills

Walk into the conversation you've been dreading without rehearsing it for a week first.

Understand why certain colleagues feel impossible to talk to — not because they're difficult, but because they're wired differently — and learn how to flex without giving up your spine. Pick two specific relationships in your life that need handling differently. Leave with a concrete plan for both.

Module 5 · Building Community

Lead the team through the hardest day instead of being the person they manage around.

Build the four capacities that separate physicians people follow in a code from physicians people work around: self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, relationship management. Includes a self-debrief framework you'll use after the next high-pressure case to learn from it instead of replaying it at 2am.

Phase III

Develop

Build the plan that turns clarity into action.

Module 6 · Doing Work That Matters

Name what you want — not what you've been told to want — and put it in writing.

Define the one word you want people to remember you for. Turn it into a five-year intention statement — short enough to say out loud when someone asks what you're working toward. Translate it into three goals you'll keep — specific enough to measure, small enough to start tomorrow. End with the practice that lets you stay on the path when a hard week tries to pull you off it.

Phase IV

Sustain

Build the practices that keep this alive.

Bonus Module · Career Paths

Stop letting your career happen to you.

Walk through every direction a physician career can move — clinical on your terms, hybrid, non-clinical, or fully outside medicine — without anyone telling you which one to pick. Leave with a clear sense of which direction is calling, and what the real trade-offs of that choice would look like in practice.

How the course works

Designed for the schedule you have. Not the one you wish you had.

01 · Format

Video lessons under ten minutes each

Thirty-six recorded lessons, deliberately short. Watch one between patients, on a commute, or in the half-hour after the kids go to bed. Every lesson finishes a thought.

02 · Workbook

The Career Architecture Document, downloaded once

A printable, fillable PDF. Build it section by section as you move through the modules. By the end, you have a thirty-page personal document you keep for the rest of your career.

03 · Pace and Privacy

Self-paced, private, no enrollment windows

No cohort dates, no group threads, no shared screens, no announcements anyone else can see. Start the day you enroll. Finish in a weekend or stretch it across six months. Lifetime access means you come back when something changes — a promotion, a hard quarter, a question you didn't have when you started.

04 · CME

CME-eligible — claim credit for the same hours

Pursuing accreditation through a joint providership. Once approved, the course will be eligible for AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™, claimable against most employer CME budgets.

If you're choosing between this and the cohort

The course and the cohort do the same work. They do it differently.

Same workbook. Same four-phase method. Same founder. The difference is whether you do it alone, on your own time, or in a small group of physicians with weekly live sessions and personal feedback. Both paths arrive at the same place. Choose the one that matches where you are right now.

	Self-Paced Course	Cohort
Investment	$475 One-time	From $997 One-time
Format	Recorded video lessons + workbook	Live small-group sessions + workbook
Pace	Yours. Start anytime, finish whenever.	Six weeks, structured cadence.
Community	Solo work.	Eight to twelve physicians, hand-selected.
Personal feedback	Not included.	Yes — weekly, from Dr. Reinking.
CME credits	Up to 12 (enduring)	Up to 23 (live + enduring)
Best for	Physicians who want to do the work first, alone, before deciding anything else.	Physicians ready for guided structure, peer accountability, and feedback in real time.

You can always start with the course and join a cohort later. Many physicians do exactly that — they want to see the work first, in their own handwriting, before sitting down at a table with seven others.

I'm Dr. Ben Reinking. I built this course because I needed it.

I'm a board-certified pediatrician and pediatric cardiologist. I run a clinical division inside an academic medical center. I sit on faculty at the University of Iowa. I trained the way you trained.

And the message I got from day one of medical school was the one you got too — that being a good doctor and being a whole person were two things you had to choose between. The first time I called in sick during residency, covered in hives, the chief resident asked if I knew how busy clinic was. That sentence shaped me. I suspect a version of it shaped you.

I tried meditation, medication, therapy, time blocking, taking weekends off. None of it touched the underlying problem. What finally did was coaching — a method, a framework, and a written document I built with someone else's help. That document is the same one you'll build here. I rebuilt it into a course for physicians who want to do this work quietly, in the hours they can find, before deciding whether to do anything else with it.

I'm still in clinic. I still lead a division. I do this work because it's the work I needed and couldn't find.

— Ben

The Credentials

The reason this work has weight is who's teaching it.

A practicing physician with active leadership and faculty appointments — who also holds a specialized coaching credential. Not a coach who left medicine. A doctor who stayed and learned the second discipline because the first one wasn't enough.

Lead credential

MCPDC· Master Certified Physician Development Coach

A specialized credential earned by physician-coaches who complete advanced training in physician-specific development work. Distinct from generic life or executive coaching.

Clinical

Board Certified Pediatrician and Pediatric Cardiologist · Active practice

Leadership

Division Director · Active leadership inside an academic medical center

Faculty

Faculty, University of Iowa · Former member, Faculty Promotions Advisory Committee

Assessments

DISC Certified · EIQ Certified · ICF Member

Enrollment

One enrollment. Lifetime access.

No subscriptions. No upsells inside the course. You buy it once, you have it for as long as the platform exists, and you come back to it whenever the document needs revising.

Self-Paced Course

$475

One-time payment · Lifetime access

All seven modules and the bonus career-paths module — thirty-six lessons in total
The Career Architecture Document workbook — downloadable, fillable, yours to keep
Your VIA character strengths, DISC, and EIQ assessments — included in your enrollment, no separate purchase required
Every supporting worksheet and exercise referenced in the lessons
CME credit (up to 12 hours, enduring) — pending accreditation
Lifetime access, including any future updates or added lessons
A 14-day refund window — if the work isn't for you, write us, full refund, no questions

Enroll now — $475

The cost of getting your life back. Once.

When you're ready for the room

The cohort exists for the same work, with seven others at the table.

Some physicians want to do this alone first. Some want to do it with peers from the start. Some do the course, sit with it for a quarter, and then join a cohort to take it further. The Physician Career Architect cohort runs twice a year. Hand-selected. Eight to twelve physicians. Six weeks of live sessions and personal feedback from Ben.

See the cohort

Questions

Things physicians ask before enrolling.

How much time does the course take?

Plan on about twelve hours of work, total — combining the video lessons and the workbook reflection. Lessons are deliberately short, most under ten minutes, so you can finish one between patients or after the kids are down. The workbook is where the real work happens — written reflection, the assessments, the document you'll keep. Most physicians spread the twelve hours across four to eight weeks. Some compress it into a long weekend. The work doesn't expire, so the speed is yours to set.

Will this give me CME credit?

The course is currently being submitted for accreditation through a joint providership. Once approved, it will be eligible for up to 12 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™ as an enduring activity, claimable against most employer CME budgets. We'll update this page and notify enrolled physicians the moment formal credit designation comes back.

What's the difference between this and the cohort?

The course is self-paced, solo, and $475. The cohort is six weeks of live small-group sessions with weekly personal feedback from Dr. Reinking, capped at eight to twelve physicians, and starts at $997. Both produce the same Career Architecture Document. The cohort produces it faster, with peers, and with more accountability. The course produces it on your time, alone, and at a fraction of the cost. See the comparison table above.

Can I really do this work without a coach or a group?

Yes — most of it. The reflective work, the assessments, the workbook, the goal-setting, the framework: all of it is designed to be done alone. What a coach or cohort adds is real-time pushback, the experience of saying things out loud to people who understand the practice, and the accountability of a calendar. If those are essential for you, choose the cohort. If you want to do the work first and decide later, this is the right starting point.

What if I'm not currently burned out?

Good. The course is most useful done preventively — before the accumulation gets to a point where leaving feels like the only option. Physicians who do this work early treat it as career maintenance: a quarterly return to the document, the way you'd return to your retirement plan or your physical exam. The earlier you start, the more useful it is.

What if I'm thinking about leaving medicine?

The course doesn't tell you whether to leave. It helps you see clearly enough that whatever you decide is a decision you made on purpose, not a decision that medicine made for you. The bonus module covers the four directions a physician career can move — including outside — without prescribing any one of them.

Is there a refund policy?

Fourteen days. If you've started the course and decided it isn't the right fit for you, write to us within fourteen days of enrollment for a full refund. No questions, no friction. We'd rather you do work that helps you than feel stuck in something that doesn't.

Will I have access to Dr. Reinking?

Not directly within the self-paced course. Personal feedback and live access to Ben are part of what the cohort and the 1:1 program provide. If you want that access, the cohort is the right place — see the comparison above. The course provides Ben's voice through the lessons and the workbook design, but not real-time interaction.

Who built this?

Dr. Ben Reinking — a practicing pediatric cardiologist, division director, and Master Certified Physician Development Coach. The course is built from the same coaching method Ben uses with private clients and cohorts. The full credentials are in the Founder section above.

You don't have to choose between being a great doctor and being a whole person.

But you do have to make the choice. This course is what you do before the next big decision — the job, the leadership role, the step back, the step out, the conversation you've been rehearsing for a month.

Enroll now — $475

Some decisions are too big to make tired.

Inside the workbook

What the work actually looks like.

The workbook isn't a list of journaling prompts. It's a sequence of structured instruments — one per lesson — each designed to be printed, completed in pen, and carried into the next one. A few pages, from across the modules.

The Four Drivers leverage map — worksheet 1.2 preview

Module 1 · Worksheet 1.2

Plot the four drivers of your current depletion against cost and personal leverage. The top-right quadrant is where the work starts.

Your Top Five at Work — worksheet 2.2 preview

Module 2 · Worksheet 2.2

Your VIA strengths in two columns. The first you can fill in your sleep. The second is the column most physicians have never been asked to write.

Identifying Your Core Values — worksheet 3.1 preview

Module 3 · Worksheet 3.1

Five to ten values, defined in your own words. The word is the easy part. Your definition is the part that has to hold up.

Mapping Your Team — worksheet 4.3 preview

Module 4 · Worksheet 4.3

Four to six colleagues, mapped on the same axes as you. The asymmetry is where most of your communication friction comes from.

Defining Your Legacy — worksheet 6.2 preview

Module 6 · Worksheet 6.2

One question, asked four times through four different lenses. The retirement speech is the first.

The Sustainable Practice — quarterly review preview

After the course · The Sustainable Practice

One value out of alignment. One strength to lean into. One conversation to have. Forty-five minutes every three months for the rest of your career.

Most physicians can't point to a single moment.They point to the morning they didn't recognize themselves in the mirror.