I delivered this presentation on August, 28, 2014, to medical students at the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific-Northwest and received my first standing ovation. Transcript and videos below.
Introduction: Pamela Wible, M.D., is a family physician born into a family of physicians.
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Attention all doctors: The first three are mine. The rest are from miserable colleagues. All true. And common. If you’re a doctor and you recognize anything on this list, please quit your job.
10. You feel nauseated when you see your clinic logo; you alter your commute to avoid streets with your clinic’s billboard.
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While I struggle to prevent physician suicide. I discover a man who didn’t seem to struggle at all. With no training in suicide prevention, no training in mental heath, and no medical background, one man saved hundreds of souls from suicide.
Meet Don Ritchie.
He lived beside a popular suicide spot.
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I’ve never been a small-talk doc. My therapist calls me “the Dr. Kevorkian of medical taboos.” I’m most comfortable discussing the uncomfortable—topics that scare most physicians. In my TED talk, I bust through three taboos: human sexuality, physician-patient intimacy, and doctor suicides.
Taboo #1: Sexuality. Americans are oversexualized and sexually repressed.
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Johnny’s disabled. He can’t get to my office anymore. So I drive 100 miles up the Oregon coast to check in on him. I get lost, but finally discover his little white house on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
“Last time a doctor come to my house,
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Edited version of article reprinted by the Washington Post July 14, 2014
An obstetrician is found dead in his bathtub. Gunshot wound to the head. An anesthesiologist dies of an overdose in a hospital closet. A family doctor is hit by a train. He’s decapitated.
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I asked why physicians were dying by suicide. Here’s what they told me:
“I definitely graduated from med school with PTSD. It has changed me forever. My mom’s friend that I have known since I was born saw me for the first time since I went to med school and she [told my mom],
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A psychiatrist in Seattle had picked out the bridge. At 3 a.m. he would swerve across his lane and plunge into the water. Everyone would assume he fell asleep.
A surgeon in Oregon was lying on the floor of her office with a scalpel. Nobody would find her until it was too late.
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Turn off your cell phone. Get off the grid. Take a deep breath and say, “Ah . . .” You are invited to Live Your Dream: Revolutionize Your Medical Practice, a healing retreat for physicians at Breitenbush Hot Springs.
Take refuge with like-minded colleagues who realize that healing health care begins within.
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Dear Gregg,
I’m thinking of you tonight. Five years ago your wife told me you died. You were at a medical conference. They found you in a hotel room with pain pills. You were just 44.
You gave your life to medicine. We all did. We just wanted to help people.
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I’ve been a doctor for twenty years. I’ve not lost a single patient to suicide. I’ve lost only colleagues, friends, lovers–ALL male physicians–to suicide. Why?
Here’s what I know:
A physician’s greatest joy is the patient relationship.
Assembly-line medicine undermines the patient-physician relationship.
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I live in a sweet little town in Oregon–with snow-capped mountains, farmers’ markets, and the friendliest people around.
But a few weeks ago, one of our beloved pediatricians shot himself in the head in a public park. Earlier this year, one of our surgeons was found dead in his car from carbon monoxide poisoning.
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Doctor revived after suicide. Here's what he says.
