Before heading into the lab each day, San Antonio pathologist Julia Choi, MD, can be found running in the early hours of the morning, an activity she calls her “antidote” to burnout – one that, for the first time last year, she paired with medical advocacy.
In May 2025, Dr. Choi completed the 2025 Spa Girl Tri, an all-women’s triathlon held at the JW Marriott Resort and Spa in San Antonio every year on Mother’s Day weekend. This was her third time competing, but her first time doing so before attending the Texas Medical Association’s annual policymaking conference, TexMed, held there on the same day.
Although TexMed is hosted in a new location every year, it has traditionally taken place in Austin, Houston, and the Dallas-Fort Worth areas. TMA shifted the conference to San Antonio in 2025 as part of the association’s evolving event strategy – a change for which Dr. Choi says she’s particularly thankful. In 2026, TexMed will dock in Corpus Christi.
“When I found out TMA was going to be at the same resort, I thought: ‘This is actually perfect,’” Dr. Choi told Texas Medicine. “I can dip my toes into all TMA has to offer, and I don’t even have to miss my race.”
Dr. Choi swam 400 yards, biked 10 miles, and ran 2 miles – all before attending TexMed’s House of Delegates (HOD) meeting that same morning. She even joined the event still in her pink and blue hydrodynamic tri-suit and with a new gold medal swinging from her neck – which, she admitted with a laugh, almost got her kicked out.
“They thought I was crashing the party,” she explained. “But I just didn’t have time to change!”
Dr. Choi says although she’s used to trading scrubs for sneakers, she’s new to policymaking. She attended TexMed for the first time after her colleagues at Oculus Pathology encouraged her to do so, if only to get a feel for how TMA implements policy fundamentals for its state and federal advocacy efforts.
While fitness is Dr. Choi’s self-prescribed treatment for burnout, she says participating in the association’s HOD was her way of finding a treatment plan for medicine’s most pressing issues.
“It was really nice to do something fun and good for myself and still have time to do the work of participating in organized medicine,” Dr. Choi said. “I saw it as caring for myself and the profession of medicine at the same time.”
For Dr. Choi, endurance sports are a cure for long workdays, mounting administrative burdens, and other challenges unique to medicine that at one point led her to experience symptoms of burnout, she says.
To manage her daily pressures, Dr. Choi turned to an old habit she shelved as her medical career progressed: running. What began as the occasional jog around her neighborhood evolved into a daily ritual, one that now includes swimming and biking, even on Mother’s Day weekend.
“My family realizes this is what Mom does. She’s stubborn and she’s probably crazy, but this is what she needs to do to get through her next stint at the lab,” Dr. Choi said.
While burnout among physicians has decreased since the COVID-19 pandemic, clinicians continue to be at higher risk of experiencing it than the general U.S. working population, according to an April 2025 Mayo Clinic study. The Mayo Clinic’s most recent findings indicate 42.2% of physicians continue to experience warning signs of burnout, including emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and depression.
To combat this statistic, TexMed 2025 featured multiple CME offerings focused on wellness, many originating from TMA’s Committee on Physician Health and Wellness. These included “Beyond the Stethoscope: Supporting the Mental Well-being of Physicians,” available now with other courses in TMA’s Education Center.
Other resources at members’ fingertips: downloadable brochures on stress and substance use disorders, self-assessments, county medical society wellness programs, and more listed on TMA’s Wellness First resource page.
Dr. Choi says she was glad to see TMA offer practical solutions to burnout but says there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
“Physicians really do have to find something to keep us going. For a lot of us, work is 24/7, 365 days a year,” she said. “For some, running a triathlon might be the answer. But for others, it might just be to take some time for themselves.”
Alisa Pierce
Reporter, Division of Communications and Marketing
(512) 370-1469