Disconnected

A Surgeon’s Search for Healing in a Broken System

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE PEOPLE SAVING YOUR LIFE ARE DYING INSIDE?

After seventeen years of training to become a vascular surgeon, Dr. Lily Johnston had everything she worked for: prestigious degrees, a respected title, the dream job. There was just one little problem.

She was miserable.

In Disconnected: A Surgeon’s Search for Healing in a Broken System, Johnston speaks from the eye of the storm. From Ivy League labs to the operating room, she charts her journey through a profession that demanded everything—and gave back exhaustion, isolation, and a gnawing sense of dread. Her personal crisis unveiled a deeper truth: Medicine rewards efficiency, punishes vulnerability, and measures success in billing codes instead of lives truly healed.

The fallout is catastrophic. Burnout and suicide rates among doctors are alarmingly high. Patients are unhappy and unwell. And the culture of silence keeps everyone pretending as if it’s normal.

Johnston refuses to pretend any longer. With wit, irreverence, and a dose of necessary bite, Disconnected is a raw, incisive autopsy of a broken system. But this book is not a eulogy; it’s a rebellion. Johnston brings us full circle with a powerful rally cry for reconnection—to ourselves, to each other, and to the healing purpose at the heart of medicine.

If you’re a clinician who has swallowed your frustration in silence, this book gives you a voice. If you’re a patient who has felt rushed or unheard, this explains why—and how it can be different. If you’re a leader in the system, this is your wake-up call.

Fierce, funny, and unflinchingly honest, Disconnected is an urgent diagnosis of a culture on the brink, and a bold prescription for how to pull ourselves back.