doc
Spring 2015 • Kentucky
The Profile of the Physician at Suicidal
Risk (Kaufmann, Ontario Medicine
Review, 2000, 67:20-22).
• Male or female
• Male 50+, female 45+
• Caucasian
• Married, single, divorced or with partner
discord
• Depressed, substance abuse/dependence, workaholic, excessive risk-taker
• Change in status, threat to status, financial instability, increased work demands,
loss of spouse or partner, loss of or threat
to medical license
• Severe symptoms of loss, sadness, anxiety, pain or immobilization
What Can We Do?
As a profession, we must strike a balance
between licensure regulation and protection
of the public’s interests. Most persons knowledgeable in the field of
physician suicide see
a nexus between the
intrusive nature of the
inquiry language of
the recurring regulatory processes and the
reluctance of physicians
to disclose their health
status or seek treatment
for fear of risk to their
careers. There must
be absolute nondiscrimination in medical
regulation, licensure,
policies and practices.
Misconduct, malpractice, or impaired ability
must be disclosed but
not a physician’s medical or psychiatric diagnosis. State physician
health programs should
be “put in a silo” with
independent leadership
and in no way be crosslinked to state medical
licensure functions or physicians will not
trust them and will not use them for voluntary treatment or advice.
We must examine our physician culture and
in particular the “boot camp” mentality of
training medical students, residents and fellows, for it is here that the harmful tendencies
of physicians to ignore seeking personal help
when needed is born. We are training medical
caregivers not marines. We must teach prospective physicians that they can’t effectively
care for others if they do not also care for
themselves. We must teach how to support
our medical colleagues in the same fashion
that we are taught how to provide compassionate care to our patients. For the suicide
rate to decline in physicians, we must provide
this same care and compassion to our fellow
doctors as we provide to our patients and
also encourage doctor-centered changes to
the regulatory procedures of physicians with
mental illness and substance dependence.
Andrew, L.B. 2014. Physician suicide.
Medscape, July 17 (site accessed 12/02/14).
Altchuler, S.I. 2009. Commentary: Granting
medical licensure, honoring the Americans
with Disabilities Act, and protecting the
public: can we do all three? Academy of
Medicine, 84: 689-91.
West, C.P. et al. 2009. Association of resident fatigue and distress with perceived
medial error. Journal of the American
Medical Association, 302: 1294-300.
Medscape: C. Peckham, January 26, 2015
ITS TIME, NOW!
www.medicalbariatrics.com
References
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