The Joyful Doctor

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Global Medics has partnered with The Joyful Doctor for more than three years to offer practical and accessible wellbeing support for healthcare professionals. Together, we provide tools, guidance and simple ways to help our clinicians look after themselves and feel more supported in their day‑to‑day work.

Doctor standing outdoors with arms open against a bright blue sky, symbolising wellbeing, freedom and positive energy for doctors in Ireland.

Supporting the Doctors
Who Support Everyone Else.

Recognise early signs of burnout before they escalate
Build resilience in high pressure environments
Create healthier boundaries between work and personal life
Prioritise recovery and self-care as part of a sustainable career
Looking after the people who deliver care is just as important as the care itself.

This is not about stepping away from healthcare. It is about continuing the career you have worked so hard for in a way that works for you. Whether through locum roles, insourcing projects, or flexible working patterns, we help you build a career that supports your goals and your wellbeing.

Global Medics & The Joyful Doctor.

This year, Global Medics is joining with The Joyful Doctor to offer a wellbeing series created with real clinical life in mind. Across five practical sessions, we will explore how to reconnect with joy, ease the pressure of busy working days, understand and support neurodiversity, spot early signs of overwhelm and burnout, and make more room for the moments that keep you well.

Each webinar is designed to feel supportive, accessible and genuinely useful, helping you shape a working life that feels healthier and more sustainable for you.

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CAROLINE WALKER

Caroline Walker is a psychiatrist and coach who helps doctors move from burnout back to joy. Through The Joyful Doctor, she supports clinicians to look after themselves, feel energised, and build careers that truly make them feel fulfilled.

The Joyful Doctor - 2026 Agenda

Here’s what’s coming up. Use this agenda to get ready and give yourself a little space before each session begins.

Webinar 1: Bringing the Joy Back

Date: 10 June 2026, 19.00-20.30

In this webinar, we will explore how healthcare professionals can reconnect with the things that genuinely bring them joy and fulfilment — beyond the pressures of work, expectations, and the constant demands of caring for others. Together, we’ll discuss how to rediscover your authentic passions, create realistic opportunities for enjoying them within a busy life, and use simple psychological strategies to reconnect with positive emotions, even during stressful periods at work.

Top Tips

Give yourself permission to enjoy what YOU genuinely love. It can be easy to lose sight of our own preferences when we are surrounded by expectations, comparisons, and the pressure to be productive. Remember that joy is deeply personal — whether it’s hiking mountains or quietly reading in the garden, what matters is that it feels meaningful and restorative to you, not whether it looks impressive to anyone else.
Start small and make it achievable. One of the biggest barriers to positive change is setting goals that are too ambitious too quickly. Instead of putting pressure on yourself to make major lifestyle changes, begin with small, realistic moments of enjoyment that can fit into everyday life — whether that’s ten minutes listening to music, dancing around the kitchen, or taking a short walk outside. Small, consistent steps are far more sustainable and effective over time.
Harness the power of positive memories. Even when time and energy are limited, reconnecting with joyful memories can have a powerful effect on emotional wellbeing. Taking a few moments to vividly remember a happy experience can help trigger positive emotional responses and reconnect you with feelings of calm, connection, and joy. This can be particularly valuable during stressful moments at work, offering a quick and accessible way to reset emotionally. List your Top 3 Joyful memories and carry them with you wherever you go!

Webinar 2: Taking the Pressure Off

Date: 29 July 2026, 19.00-20.30

In this webinar, we’ll explore practical ways to create more breathing space within busy and demanding lives. Together, we’ll look at how to pause before reacting, set boundaries with confidence and kindness, slow ourselves down in stressful situations, and let go of some of the pressure we place on ourselves. This session will focus on simple, realistic strategies that healthcare professionals can use in everyday life.
Top Tips

Top Tips

Press ‘pause’ before responding. In stressful moments, it’s easy to react automatically and say yes, rush decisions, or become overwhelmed. Giving yourself permission to pause — even for a few seconds — can make a significant difference to how calm and in control you feel. Simple strategies such as silently counting to five, taking a slow sip of tea, or keeping a visual “pause” reminder on your desk can help interrupt the stress response. When the body slows down, the mind often follows.
Develop a few gentle “stalling phrases”. Many people find it difficult to say no in the moment, particularly in caring professions where we are used to helping others. Preparing and rehearsing a few simple phrases in advance can make boundary-setting feel much easier and more natural. For example: “Thank you so much for thinking of me, but I have a little too much on my plate at the moment,” or “Could I come back to you on that?” Having a few phrases ready to hand allows you to respond thoughtfully rather than automatically agreeing under pressure.
Use physical props to create thinking space. Never underestimate the power of using simple physical actions to slow the pace of a conversation and give yourself time to think. Taking a sip of water, picking up a notebook, writing something down, or pausing to make a cup of tea can all create valuable moments of reflection before responding. Combining these actions with “staling phrases” as mentioned above, such as, “That’s a really interesting point — let me just think about that for a moment,” can help you feel even calmer, more grounded, and less pressured to answer in the moment.

Webinar 3: Understanding Neurodiversity

Date: 9th Sept 2026, 19.00-20.30

In this webinar, we’ll be exploring why it seems that everyone is suddenly talking about neurodiversity, how to spot possible neurodivergence in yourself and your colleagues, and how to take a neuro-affirmative approach to problem-solving as a healthcare professional. We’ll look at how to take a simple, individualised, and meaningful approach to neurodiversity in any setting, regardless of role or specialty.

Top Tips

Caroline will be introducing her own simple neuro-affirmative framework: the CAT-NAPTM approach — a Curious, Accommodating and Tools-Based Neuro-affirmative APproach — designed to help people move away from judgement and towards practical understanding and support.

Be Curious. Get specific about what it is that’s difficult for you in any given moment. The more practical and detailed you can be, the more useful this becomes. Ask yourself questions like: Is it too loud, bright, busy, or overwhelming? Are there too many tabs, tasks, or competing demands? Is information being delivered in a way that doesn’t suit me? Rather than seeing yourself as “bad at coping”, try to become a detective about what’s happening underneath the stress response.
Be Accommodating. Once you’ve identified the problem, ask yourself: What might help here? What could make this easier, clearer, or more manageable? What could be adapted, simplified, delayed, or done differently? Small accommodations often make a surprisingly big difference — and support doesn’t have to be complicated to be meaningful.
Build Your Toolbox. Develop your own personalised toolbox of strategies for situations you commonly find difficult. For example, strategies for taking breaks from meetings or social situations. Ways to regulate sensory overload. Scripts or prompts for difficult conversations. Systems for prioritising and reducing overwhelm. Recovery strategies after periods of high cognitive load. Having your own personal set of reliable tools ready for more challenging times can make those unexpected moments in life feel more manageable.

Webinar 4: Managing Overwhelm and Avoiding Burnout

Date: 26th Oct 2026, 19.00-20.30

In this webinar, we’ll explore how to navigate the many competing demands of working in healthcare, make better use of the resources and support available to you, and recognise the early warning signs of burnout in yourself and your colleagues — so you can take action early, before things reach crisis point.

Top Tips

Reduce Your Demands. One of the biggest drivers of overwhelm in healthcare is the pressure we place on ourselves. Healthcare professionals frequently expect themselves to achieve far too much in far too little time, creating a constant sense of falling behind. A simple but powerful strategy is to – “halve it or double it!” – simply halve what you expect yourself to get done or double the time you allow yourself to do it. Reducing pressure in this way often improves focus, productivity, and sustainability far more than pushing harder ever does.
Increase Your Resources. Healthcare professionals are often very good at supporting everyone except themselves. When overwhelm builds, it can help to pause and ask: what could make this easier, who could help me, and what support, adjustment, tool, or shortcut might be available? Rather than assuming nothing can change, taking a practical, solutions-focused approach often reveals more options and resources than we initially realise.
Work to Time, Not Task. Instead of measuring success by whether you’ve finished a task, try working to a set amount of time instead. Decide, for example, that you’re going to focus on something for 30 minutes, rather than pressuring yourself to finish it. At the end of that time, acknowledge what you have achieved rather than focusing on what’s left undone. This simple shift reduces pressure, improves motivation, and helps create a healthier and more sustainable relationship with work — especially in professions where the work is never truly finished.

Webinar 5: Joyful Time Management: Making Time for What You Love

Date: 9th December 2026, 19.00-20.30

In this webinar, we’ll explore some of the core principles of joyful time management — how to stop urgent demands crowding out the things that matter most to you, how to make more intentional use of your time and energy, and why healthcare professionals so often forget to prioritise themselves whilst they‘re busy caring for everyone else.

Top Tips

Time-Block the Important Stuff. The things that matter most to us are often the very things that quietly drift to the bottom of the to-do list. Whether it’s creative projects, exercise, rest, relationships, life admin, or career development — if it matters to you, it usually needs protecting in your diary. Deliberately schedule time for important tasks in the same way you would for a meeting or clinic appointment. It sounds simple, but it’s amazing how few people actually do this - and how effective it is once you start.
Use “Tag Booking”. Whenever you finish one important thing, book the next one in before you move on. For example, if you meet a friend, book the next catch-up in before you leave. If you finally do your appraisal paperwork, schedule the next session to do some more there and then. If you’re coming to the end of a holiday, book your next time off before life fills in the space.
Tag-booking works especially well for self-care tasks that are easy to neglect — things like dentist appointments, exercise, supervision, holidays, and downtime. It removes the burden of having to remember later and helps good habits continue automatically.
Don’t Wait to Start Living. One of the biggest mistakes people make is waiting. Waiting for the holidays. Waiting for the next job. Waiting for retirement. Waiting for things to calm down. But often, that moment never quite arrives.
The things we love — creativity, joy, connection, rest, hobbies, adventure. — are not rewards we have to earn – they are part of what keeps us well in the first place. Sometimes we need permission to stop postponing our lives and start making room for the things that matter now.

You deserve to feel joy.

You deserve to feel joy. Not because you have “earned it” after hours of heavy work, but simply because you are human and deserve to be happy and gentle with yourself. Healthcare is demanding, and the emotional load can be huge. Joy helps you to stay connected to the parts of yourself that exist beyond your role: the parts that make you feel whole and alive as a human being.

And because you give so much to others, you deserve support too. At Global Medics, we are committed to supporting your wellbeing – not only at work but across your whole life.

We Take Care of Your Career!

Learn more about Us

The Joyful Doctor

Supporting the Doctors
Who Support Everyone Else.

Global Medics & The Joyful Doctor.

The Joyful Doctor - 2026 Agenda