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Boundary Rituals: How to Keep Work from Following You Home

Aug 25, 2025

In this engaging discussion, Mohamed Hagahmed, Clinical Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, shares his journey from a Sudanese refugee to a vital medical professional. He dives into the importance of boundary rituals—deliberate actions to leave work stress behind. Listeners learn about the impact of emotional residue in medicine and practical strategies for self-compassion, including gratitude and reflection. Dr. Hagahmed emphasizes how these practices not only reduce burnout but also enrich personal relationships.

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ADVICE

Use Simple Rituals To Leave Work At Work

Use simple, repeatable boundary rituals to mark the end of work and prevent mental residue from following you home.
Regular rituals improve presence at home, sleep quality, and reduce burnout risk.

ANECDOTE

From Refugee Roots To NFL Europe And Medicine

Mohamed migrated from Sudan, lived in the UAE, and used football to get to the U.S. and later Germany.
That pathway led him to unexpected roles, including sideline physician work for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

INSIGHT

Systemic Problems Create Lingering Moral Residue

Emergency medicine exposes systemic problems you cannot fix during a single shift, creating moral residue.
That persistent inability to fix root causes fuels stress and moral injury for clinicians.

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Ever walk out of a shift and feel like the hospital came home with you? In medicine, the mental residue can cling long after the work day is done. One way to address this is boundary rituals, deliberate actions designed to process the day and allow you to leave work at work, be more present when you get home, and possibly even sleep better. As a bonus, the ability to disengage from work is one of the strongest predictors of reduced burnout.

In this episode, Mohamed Hagahmed, MD, shares how he creates this boundary—through small rituals of gratitude, stillness, and reflection. From growing up as a refugee to serving as a sideline physician for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Dr. Hagahmed’s path has been shaped by resilience, culture, and care. He explains how he learned to stop carrying unfixable wounds home, why kindness is clinical armor, and how tiny acts of self-compassion can protect meaning in medicine.

Guest Bio: Mohamed Hagahmed, MD a Clinical Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, Associate Medical Director at the Center for Emergency Medicine, and EMS Medical Director for several systems in Western Pennsylvania. On top of that, he works in high-acuity emergency departments across the region. He’s a graduate of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, passionate about resuscitation, critical care, and toxicology education. And he’s the creator and host of EMERGE in EM, a podcast focused on emergency medicine education and global health empowerment.

We Discuss:

Growing up as a refugee and finding purpose in emergency medicine
The toll of moral injury and why staying closed and rigid nearly broke him
Small rituals that help shed the emotional residue of a shift
Using gratitude and stillness as tools for resilience
How changing clothes, music, and even snacks can protect emotional health
Turning frustration into advocacy for immigrant health and systemic change
Advice for new attendings on protecting the threshold between work and home

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