Kelly AlhooiePelviBiz, Pelvibiz · Healthcare Business Strategy Assistant

Burnout to breakthrough

26 Sept 2025 · 2 min

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1:56

Kelly Alhooie recounts a personal burnout-to-breakthrough story explaining why she left clinical work to start a business focused on better patient care. Key triggers she describes here: her father’s diagnosis with metastatic cancer (after prior prostate and testicular cancer), being denied leave to go home for Christmas as the newest team member, administrative pressures to complete progress notes and limits on direct patient care (tasks shifted to aides), and severe personal health decline (exhaustion making it take over an hour to get out of bed). After roughly nine to ten years as a clinician and moving across five states seeking systemic change, she concluded the healthcare system remained unchanged and chose to found a business, saying she would rather be poor but happy ("live in a tent and be happy") than continue in work that made her miserable.

Chapters

I can't do that. And I was just like, it's just not on my radar. The reality came when I couldn't take off because my dad got diagnosed with metastatic cancer after having prostate and testicular cancer. And they said, nope, you can't go home for Christmas because you're the newest person on the team. Also, they said you need to be getting your notes done and the progress notes and all that stuff. And by the way, you can't take care of the patient as much as you want to because they have to be then be pushed back to an aide. And I was like, this just doesn't sit well with me. I want to provide the best freaking care. I, I have high standards and I want to provide the best freaking care. And then the third thing that was like, the kicker was my health was going down the drain. And it took me over, like, an hour to get out of bed because I was just so freaking tired and I was just so miserable and, and being in a place I didn't like, and then on top of it, just at a place I just didn't like working. And so I was like, something has to change. I, I, I said I would rather live in a tent and be happy and have no money than trying to make money doing the same thing I was doing every single day. And this year. And by the way, at this point, I was probably nine, ten years into my journey at this point of as a working clinician, it was, I moved to five different states thinking the system was going to change. The system did not change, just so you know. And so no matter what state you live in, no matter what town you live in, guys, it's all the same. I promise you. The only reason why I started my business was because those past three things that I said, and I truly, deeply wanted to help people. And I just knew that to truly help people, I was going to have to do it in a different way.