The purpose of this website is to be a candid resource for Ob/Gyns to understand the behind-the-scenes forces that are making our field so miserable right now and to take back our financial, political, and medical power as a field. I want to help new grads avoid predatory jobs. I want to help young doctors make meaningful change. I want to make payments to all of us more sustainable so that our practices can survive, and we can continue to take great care of our patients.

I am not anonymous. I am just myself, Dr. Karla Solheim, MD, FACOG, a plain old Ob/Gyn living in a small city in Iowa. I do not represent anybody, not an employer, an academic institution, or ACOG. I am a big fan of (some might say apologist for) ACOG as an institution and have served ACOG in various minor volunteer capacities, but all these opinions are just my own and do NOT represent official ACOG policy positions!

I am married to a woman. I have three kids. I have suffered through one horribly difficult practice situation after another and somehow came out the other end after nine years ready to downshift. I have heard the stories of my fellow Ob/Gyns, some much worse than my own, and my heart goes out to them. I did not see a space for us to share the practical learnings of our practice experiences and try to pave the way for others. ACOG is great, but they have to toe the line of political correctness, and in this website, I am going to try to spell out the lay of the land in plain language.

I also have a background in public policy – I have a Master’s degree in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and I worked in the spectacularly dysfunctional planning department & transportation authority of San Francisco once upon a time before med school, which I think helps me to understand the economic and political landscape that we all operate in.

This website is not monetized. I find that once you try to monetize things, you lose credibility. I don’t need more money. I’m just very annoyed at the sad state of our specialty and am trying to change things for the better. I don’t even need donations, but if you would like to write a helpful article, I would love to hear from you!

To give credit where credit is due, this website is very much inspired by The White Coat Investor, created by Dr. Jim Dahle, when he noticed that there was a void of actually helpful (and not predatory) financial advice for physicians in general. He has done us all a great service in the creation of his website, and I hope to do the same on a smaller scale.

To give some perspective on my own experiences, I started med school at an older age, 29, after studying & working in my 20s in urban policy. I graduated from residency in 2015. Your mileage may vary.