2017 Visionary Woman in Medicine: Alexandra Friedman →

Alexandra Friedman has been awarded $10,000 as the recipient of the 2017 Judith Wible, M.D., Scholarship for Visionary Women in Medicine. She is a first-year medical student at Touro Osteopathic Medical School in New York. 

 

In her own words . . .

Why do you want to become a physician? I have felt since I was a young child that being a physician was one of my life’s missions. Although it is not the easiest or most lucrative path, I have never been able to separate myself from the identity of being a physician, so I feel I am meant to practice medicine.

Describe your ideal practice: I’d like to have an integrative family medicine clinic, working alongside therapists, life coaches, acupuncturists, and other health professionals, all in the same building. We would refer to one another and have team meetings to optimize care for our patients. I’d help women feel empowered to experience natural childbirth (at home or in the hospital). I will offer culturally-sensitive programs for victims of sexual abuse and promote the benefits of integrative medicine (including osteopathic techniques) for trauma healing. 

List the top three reasons why you need this scholarship: (1) I’m interested in being the best physician I can be and I’d like to hear Dr. Wible’s thoughts on how to do that. (2) Med school is never easy, and for a non-traditional student with children it can be even more difficult, so I’d like inspiration from like-minded people which I would get by participating. (3) I have a family of nine and we are living on student loans meant for a single person plus my husband’s minimum-wage 36-hour/week night job, so I cannot afford to pay for med school on my own.

Wow. I’m blown away that anyone can feed nine people on student loans, follow an ultra-orthodox lifestyle, and excel in med school—so effortlessly!

When I notified Alexandra that she was a finalist, she wasted no time organizing her schedule, family responsibilities, and limited finances to fly out to Oregon and attend our medical student retreat on full scholarship.  She even brought her own kosher food. I’ve never been good at meal planning so I was especially impressed. (I could barely remember to put fresh water in my dog’s bowl during med school.) 

 

Alexandra Friedman Transcript

Then, in August 2016 (just a month into her first year at her second medical school) she organized a solidarity vigil for medical student and physician suicide awareness. Alexandra invited me to speak at this event and since I was already leading a vigil in DC, I took a train up to New York to talk with her classmates. 

Touro Suicide Vigil Pamela Wible

I met her husband and her youngest child when they picked me up from the train station and I got to witness firsthand how she has mastered the art of work-life balance as a devoted wife, mother, and future physician:

“I don’t study on Shabbos so that I can take 24 hours each week to focus on my spiritual well-being and connect with my family. Also I pray/meditate daily, I regularly read books, especially personal development and spiritual books, I eat vegan during the week, and always sugar-free to take care of my physical health. I eat dinner with my family every night and generally don’t study in the evenings in order to spend time with my family.”

Please join me in congratulating Alexandra Friedman—our 2017 Visionary Woman in Medicine.

Check out the cool thank you card from her kids!

Alexandra Friedman Card

Images courtesy Elnaz Mahbub, Alexandra Friedman and her children.


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7 secrets to live your dream in 2017 →

7 Secrets to live your dream in 2017

I’m a family doc living my dream life in my dream clinic in my dream town. Now I’m spreading my love. During the past 12 years, I’ve helped hundreds of medical students, doctors, and health professionals overcome their fears so they could live their dreams in medicine. Many were on the verge of dropping out; some were even suicidal when they reached out to me. Where you are now makes no difference. These 7 strategies are universal. You can do it too! I believe in you.

1. Know your dream.

What does your dream life look, feel, smell, taste, sound like? Map it out. In detail. Get hyper-focused. What’s your dream job, family, house, life? Be clear. If you have no idea what your dream is, it’s unlikely to come true. Go for exactly what you want. 

2. Declare your dream.

Share your dream with believers, not naysayers. The more people who know your dream and are cheering you on the better! Avoid folks who focus on all the reasons your dream can never happen. Listen to people who tell you all the ways to bring your dream to life—now.

3. Hang with inspiring mentors.

Don’t follow “gurus” and “experts” who speak theoretically about what’s possible—one day, some day. The best mentors are people who are living your dream right now. They’ve already done what it is you want to do. If you want a great marriage, don’t seek advice from a twice-divorced therapist with no history of a successful relationship. Want to be a happy doctor in your ideal clinic? Seek advice from other happy docs seeing real patients in their ideal clinics. Get it? Now go find one.

4. Reverse engineer the steps.

Take the easiest, quickest, and cheapest route from where you are now to where you want to be. Base your plan of action on real-world advice from really smart people who have already done what you plan to do. Chunk it down into steps (daily, weekly, monthly) and be sure to celebrate all your micro-successes on your path to the prize!

5. Be fearless.

Action leads to success. Remove all obstructions and excuses. Avoid paralysis by analysis. Drop perfectionism. Get moving. Right now. Give up all the reasons why you can’t do what you know were born to do on this planet and live your beautiful and amazing life. Go!

6. Go with love. 

The biggest human motivators are pain and pleasure. People are either running away from what they don’t want or running towards what they want. Believe me. It’s much better to go for what you really want in life than to constantly avoid what you don’t want. Doing what you love increases your passion, energy, and money. Try it. You’ll love it.

7. Ask for help. 

Trying to do everything yourself when you don’t know what the heck you are doing will take you a long, long time. Ask for help from the smart people who have already done what you want to do so you can save money, time, pain, and suffering. Plus you’ll have another friend and cheerleader. 

Bonus!

I’m looking for 17 people who are ready to live their dreams in 2017. If you’re a premed/medical student, physician or health professional with a dream, I’ll help you bring it to life for FREE. To grab an application, please contact me. (Hurry! Deadline is 1/15/17).

Pamela Wible, M.D., is founder of the Ideal Medical Care Movement and leads popular Live Your Dream Retreats for health professionals. Join us! 

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Doctors-in-training hit with knives, punched, left crying in hospitals →

So I started medical school in Germany. Germany has a very strange system. At that time it was relatively easy to get into medical school, but then they do everything to get you out of medical school. It’s the opposite of the United States. It has changed now. It’s very abusive from the get go. When I was a medical student, there was something wrong with the system that they over-calculated and there were 10,000 unemployed physicians in Germany. There were a lot of physician taxi drivers and so on. So the typical position you got at that time was a 3-month contract and usually a specialty that you didn’t want to be in. And it was highly abusive so your superiors could do anything with you: I mean hit you, I mean throw knives at you, and it was completely okay because you were happy you had a position as a doctor. And so I realized very quickly into medical school that that wasn’t really the thing that I wanted—being abused like that.  So I started orienting towards other possibilities. 

And then I got a scholarship to move to France, to medical school there for two years.  And it was the same thing. They had more of a physician shortage, but it was so highly abusive in medical school. I mean there was one surgical department where every single day all the professors had to say were mean things calling people words, yelling at students and residents in the OR. It was interesting.

Eventually I was invited to study in the states and I moved to California and it was a little bit similar there. I was only there for a short time and there was some protection from people there and it wasn’t that bad and then I got into residency in the States and there we go again. I mean I remember one ER doc he always hit me on the shoulder if I gave the wrong answer. There were 6 main faculty, 3 of which were completely burned out themselves, but they liked what they were doing but they couldn’t do it anymore . . . it seemed like they didn’t feel like they were doing a good job if the resident wasn’t crying . . . every day there was a resident crying, but we’re not talking about 3-year-old children not getting their chocolate. They were adult, mature people, very bright in the residency. They were all really bright people, but they were crying because they didn’t know the answer to some silly question. I don’t know what it was about or they missed something completely irrelevant. 

I realized how much abuse there was throughout. You had to be self-abusive in order to get your MCATs in order to get into medical school, go through medical school and get into residency, get a good residency, go through residency it is all abusive. You have to be completely self-neglectant and I realized I didn’t want that, yet I needed the board certification and it was only 3 years and I graduated from that and then around that time, at the end of residency, I met Pamela . . .

Dislike your job? Launch your own clinic—even without completing residency.

Have you been mistreated in your medical training? Contact Dr. Wible. 

Pamela Wible, M.D., reports on human rights violations in medicine. She helps health professionals heal from their trauma and open ideal clinics. Join our teleseminars and retreats. Stop suffering now.

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7 shaming words to stop saying now →

Shaming Words Pamela Wible

In medicine our motto is first do no harm. Words matter. Choose them wisely. Here are 7 words that shame, blame, and injure people who need our help.

1. Don’t say COMMITTED suicide. Committed implies a crime. Committed rape, burglary, murder. Suicide is not a crime; it’s a medical condition that has been taboo for too long. Let’s come out of the dark ages and use proper language to discuss the cause of death. It’s died OF pneumonia, heart attack, stroke, suicide. Say died OF suicide (or died BY suicide).

2. Don’t say she IS bipolar. People are people first. Some get physical and/or mental health conditions. The health condition is not their identity. She HAS pneumonia, heart disease, depression, not she IS pneumonia, heart disease, depression. Say she HAS bipolar disorder (or she is a person WITH bipolar disorder).

3. Don’t say he IS an addict. As in #2, people are people first. He is not a disease. He is not a behavior. Thus, he is not a substance abuser or an addict. He is a person who may have an addiction or a substance abuse disorder. Say he HAS an addiction.

4. Don’t say patient IS NON-COMPLIANT. Non-compliant blames the patient for not following a plan that she may have not understood or agreed to follow. Maybe she simply did not have money to buy the medication or the recommended treatment. Be precise and accurate with words, especially when placed in a permanent medical record. Don’t blame or shame. Be curious and engaging. Ask, “IS THE TREATMENT WORKING?” 

5. Don’t say PROVIDER. A provider is a person who provides something. How nebulous. In medicine, a provider is an economic term used to lump all the revenue-generators together into one pile (often to see how much more money can be squeezed out of them). It’s a dehumanizing word that lacks precision and, honestly, it’s offensive to the people who have spent so many years of their lives to achieve mastery in their chosen profession. Use proper terminology. Say NURSE PRACTITIONER, MIDWIFE, PHYSICIAN. If you must use a collective term, say HEALTH PROFESSIONALS. Sometimes, I say HEALERS.

6. Don’t say MIDLEVEL. What is that? Maybe it’s when an elevator gets stuck between two floors? Again (see #5) this is a word used by health care administrators to describe revenue generators who are somewhere halfway between a nurse and a doctor (I think). Use proper terminology. Say PHYSICIAN ASSISTANT or NURSE PRACTITIONER. 

7. Don’t say BURNOUT. Physician burnout is a term of oppression that blames the doctor for not keeping up with an inhumane schedule (30-hour shifts, 120-hour work weeks) in a toxic workplace that may include hazing, bullying, and no time to eat or take bathroom breaks. Even on their so-called time off, doctors may still be working on chart notes at home in bed on the weekends. Burnout blames the victim and deflects attention from the perpetrator. Speak the truth. Say HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION or HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE. Don’t say burnout, say ABUSE.

Know of any other shaming words that should be lost from our lexicon? Add your comment below.

Shaming Words To Stop Saying Now

Pamela Wible, M.D., is a practicing physician who reports on human rights violations in medicine. She is author of Physician Suicide Letters—Answered and leads popular retreats for health professionals. Come join us! Image: Shutterstock.


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“Burnout” ~ a smokescreen for human rights abuse →

Physician burnout is human rights abuse

“Burnout” is a smokescreen for rampant human rights violations in medicine. Am I losing anyone here? Let me break it down.

“Burnout” is a complete mental and physical collapse from overwork. Psychiatrists define it as a job-related dysphoria in an individual without major psychopathy. Which means—your job sucks. You’re normal

Smokescreen is an artificial cloud of smoke that hides the perpetrator’s true intentions. This cloud of smoke may take the form of a statement or word used to obscure the truth so victims don’t understand what the heck is really going on. For example, apply the victim-blaming term “burnout” to deflect attention from oppressors who are guilty of human rights violations.

Human rights violation is the violation of a basic right to which all humans are entitled, including the right to life, liberty, equality, a fair trial, freedom from slavery and torture, and freedom of thought and expression. Common human rights violations in medicine include: 1) Sleep deprivation (24+hour shifts, 80+hour work weeks) as described by this physician whistleblower who was forced to work 168-hour shifts.  2) Not being allowed to eat, poop, pee when one needs to 3) Bullying and hazing 4) Being terminated, harassed, or threatened rather than receiving accommodations under the ADA for mental or physical health issues as described by this physician whistleblower who nearly died when her hospital obstructed her medical care.

Physician whistleblower is a physician who reveals health care’s human rights violations to the public. If you’re a physician with a whistleblower story, contact me. Doctors must stop being complicit with abuse or they will become the perpetrators (see below). Physician whistleblowers protect themselves, other health professionals, and patients from continued abuse. Silence and secrets protect the perpetrators.

Victim is a person harmed, injured, or subjected to oppression or mistreatment (may include being sacrificed or killed due to an action/inaction). Those who don’t know they are victims are at high risk of becoming perpetrators.

Perpetrator is an individual (acting alone or within a system such as a medical school, residency or hospital) who harms, injures, or subjects another to oppression or mistreatment (may include sacrificing or killing someone else due to perpetrator’s action/inaction).

Burnout is a smokescreen for rampant human rights violations in medicine. One way to end a cycle of abuse is to stop blaming the victims. Tell the truth: it’s not burnout, it’s abuse. 

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Pamela Wible, M.D., is a physician who reports on human rights violations in medicine. Have you been abused in medical training or beyond? Contact Dr. Wible. 

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