3 sneaky ways the lucrative physician wellness industry injures doctors. Common tactics ALL health professionals must understand. PLEASE SHARE WIDELY.
1. Using victim-blaming terms like “burnout” to obscure systemic human rights violations.
“Burnout” blames the victim who is enduring human rights abuse on a daily basis. Work-life balance impossible to achieve. Benchmarks. Metrics. Inefficient. Unprofessional. Resilience is a frequently used word to blame doctors who are truly among the most resilient human beings on the planet and need no further training in how to be resilient; they simply need to be treated with respect for the incredible value they have to society. Read more words that blame doctors and words we should be using instead.
2. Offering “voluntary” and “confidential” help that is neither voluntary nor confidential.
Many institutional “wellness” programs entrap docs by deceptively claiming they are “voluntary” and “confidential.” Once roped in, you cannot leave if you want your license. Physician “Health” Programs (PHPs) repeat these words ad nauseam to lure gullible docs. The minute docs do not comply with non-standard therapies (including polygraphs!) they are reported to the board as “noncompliant” and lose their medical license. Programs are not “voluntary” and “confidential” when your employer and med board have access to your files and use your “protected health information” (PHI) to further retaliate against you. Even worse, your PHI can be published in print newspapers & online (even on the med board’s Facebook page!).
Physicians share:
“After the unexpected death of a patient, I sought counseling. By a stroke of (bad) luck, I picked the only one in town in charge of impaired physician monitoring. He told the board (though stable) I should be ‘monitored.’ I had to defend myself in front of the Florida board. They laughed in my face and then posted in the local newspapers that I was sentenced to 5 yrs of monitoring. I had mandatory Wednesday group therapy. Though I was an exemplary physician, my employers had to be told why I was unavailable for call every Wednesday. Each time I (re)credential with hospitals, I must explain the whole thing again. HIPAA for me does not exist. I have never missed a single day of work for mental health.”
“Do you know what really hurts? The fact that anyone can look me up on the Internet and read my dirty laundry. I’m publicly shamed [by my medical board], punished for being ill. I will only know peace when I am gone.”
3. Claiming physician “health” programs (PHPs) prevent doctor suicide when doctors are dying by suicide inside these so-called “health” programs.
I now know 27 docs who died by suicide inside PHPs. Survivors report:
“You will begin to question your sanity. Techniques are based on humiliation and shame . . . underlying philosophy is total emotional and psychological destruction. It took every ounce of strength not to leave here a broken human being. . . Physicians have taken their own lives after completing ‘treatment’ here.”
“My best friend there killed himself two days after I left,” another physician reported. “I saw the staff systematically break him down until he had no personality or emotion. He was a shell after the public humiliation.”
Here’s how one stellar doctor died under the care of a “health” program. Read his last words here.
If you’re thinking this cannot possibly be true, please watch these podcasts on how physicians are held against their will in out-of-state PHP “preferred” facilities that worsen their mental health and lead to new-onset suicidal thoughts and suicide.
PHPs: Complex Problems & Solutions
PHPs: A Cautionary Tale & Message of Hope!
FREE HELP: Weekly Peer Support Groups Sunday. To join, contact Dr. Wible.
