A euphemism is a vague and indirect expression substituted for a fact to avoid something unpleasant or embarrassing.
Each year more than one million Americans lose their doctors to suicide. Across the country, our doctors are jumping from hospital rooftops, overdosing in call rooms, found hanging in hospital chapels. It’s medicine’s dirty secret. And it’s covered up by our hospitals, clinics, and medical schools—often with euphemisms.
That’s not science. It’s deception.
Though suicides may be investigated, we rarely learn the truth. No follow-up articles. Autopsy reports never revealed. So how can we solve a medical condition that’s actively hidden by our own medical institutions? We can’t.
To date, I’ve compiled 265 cases of physician and medical student suicides. Here’s how some suicides are actually reported by medicine and the media to the public:
Euphemisms to cover up doctor suicides
Doctor passed awayunexpectedly in his sleep.
Doctor found dead in hospital. Declared non-suspicious.
Doctor’s death an inconvenience for patients.
His light went out too soon.
Medical student passed into eternity.
Doctor found dead on interstate. No foul play.
Doctor died by “accidental overdose.” (unlikely—doctors dose drugs for a living)
Doctor died suddenly.
She passed away peacefully at home.
He went to be with the Lord.
Words matter. When we hide the truth, we prevent the collection of data and the implementation of strategies to prevent suicides. Hiding behind misleading phrases that obscure diagnoses will never prevent suicide. So what can we all do now?
Here’s an idea—Let’s tell the truth.
Pamela Wible, M.D., is a family physician, truth seeker, and activist in physician suicide prevention.
So I asked to be in the new satellite clinic as there would be 3 exam rooms and an office. I was told I could. My first day there I was told I couldn’t. They put me in the basement of this old building. I never would have accepted the job if I had to work there. It’s crowded and I have only one exam room. I need to bring patients to me and sit with them while completing electronic chart. I hate it. I have no phone (only my cell phone).
Two weeks now and I realize they are telling patients I am the new diabetes and stroke expert. I am not! I did not sign up for that! I have never handled complicated diabetes on insulin or pump!
Nobody is helping me. LACK OF STAFF! They tell me that it will get better.
Last week a patient waited an hour for discharge instruction after surgical procedure and was then told by a nurse practitioner to go home without them. Now a complicated wound infection.
They dumped a sick child in my exam room and left. I had to find someone to get vital signs. She came but didn’t do her job. No heart rate. No respiratory rate or oxygen sats were measured. I have no medical assistant helping me.
I am being asked to do allergy testing interpretation and management without proper training
The EMR is awful!! Still trying to learn it. Nobody seems to want to help. Notes in EMR are awful there is NEVER AN ASSESSMENT/PLAN from other providers. I am writing it on my PLAN page.
So have no clue what is going on really with patients.
Specialist notes are not up to date.
Immunizations are not recorded in EMR.
I am thinking of quitting after 2 weeks. I can’t stand this!
Meet Dr. Svetlana Kleyman, a powerhouse chief surgery resident with a heart of gold, who works 16-hour days and runs marathons in her free time. Just 18 months before she was to graduate from SUNY Downstate, she developed a spinal infection that left her paralyzed from the waist down. After months of rehab, she was cleared by her doctors to resume work (with proper accommodations surgeons continue to operate successfully). Svetlana was ready to return to the operating room. Her surgery residency told her not to come back.
Her story was published in the New York Post. I shared her plight on Facebook. The response: Outrage.
“This goes against the Americans with Disability Act. Completely unethical and I feel goes against the oath that all doctors must take to first do no harm!” ~ Renea Turner Clark
“The obvious, nauseating irony is that teaching hospitals, of all institutions, should take an exemplary approach and lead the way in cases like Dr. Kleyman’s.” ~ Bradford Harriman
“And she was probably exposed while on shift as chief resident. What a shame. It’s going to be an expensive payout by SUNY.” ~ Daniel Ojala
“Wow—isn’t that illegal?” ~ Shanthi Madireddi
“I don’t see why the ACLU can’t help her get an immediate judicial injunction to mandate her immediate re-instatement as she pursues what should be a multi-million dollar lawsuit with an additional 100 million in punitive damages. The medical training establishment needs to be taught a memorable lesson. As a state university, Governor Cuomo’s office should be contacted to alert him to the multi-million dollar liability this has exposed his state to. Since she has already filed a lawsuit, I would imagine something like this has already be pursued. But it needs national exposure on morning news shows. Under ADA, an employer is required to make ‘reasonable accommodations’ just like physicians’ offices and hospitals are required to make reasonable accommodations for the disabled what with wheelchair access and roomy bathrooms with rails and whatnot. Where is the ACLU on this, or is all their time taken up with transgendered issues?’’ ~ Lawrence M. Slocki
“This is straight up bull.” ~ Carolyn Smith
“If this is in the U.S. I don’t think they will get away with it. I’m paralyzed also and that’s ridiculous.” ~ Darby
It is ridiculous. Our hospitals. In the USA. Breaking the Americans with Disabilities Act. Shameful.
Want to help Dr. Kleyman be the amazing surgeon she was born to be? Please sign this petition and then call Dr. Lisa Dresner (program director) via Natasha Sagal (program coordinator) at 718-270-3302 and Dr. Antonio Alfonso (department chair) at 718-270-1421. Demand that Dr. Kleyman be reinstated in her residency program. Afterwards feel free to contact the ACLU, Governor Cuomo, and the TV networks.
Petition to end medical student and physician suicide
Dear AAMC and ACGME,
This week we lost another bright, young soul to suicide. Sean Petro was in his third year at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and is the third tragedy at his school in the last two years.
Medical student and physician suicide is an epidemic. It is estimated that 400 doctors die by suicide in the United States each year. That’s the equivalent of an entire medical school gone! The second leading cause of death among medical students is suicide—a well-known occupational hazard in medicine. Yet no medical organization is tracking these suicides. So how can we solve a problem that’s hidden?
The AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) and ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education) claim to improve the health care of all through serving the academic medicine community and advancing the quality of physician education. How can this be achieved when so many of us are contemplating or completing suicide?
The fact is we enter medicine with our mental health on par with or better than our peers. Medical education too often involves years of public humiliation, bullying, and sleep deprivation. Those who seek help risk punishment. Mental health remains stigmatized within the medical profession to the detriment of all.
As physicians who are dedicated to caring for the physical and mental health of others, we’re appalled at the level of inaction among our own organizations when it comes to caring for us. We urge the AAMC and ACGME to track medical student and physician suicides, to end the highly abusive culture of medical training, and to offer routine and confidential on-the-job psychological support to all medical students and physicians.
Inaction and ignorance are no longer an option. Lives are on the line. This is a public health crisis that impacts us all.
Sincerely,
Ashley Maltz, M.D., M.P.H., and Pamela Wible, M.D.
(Attention physicians: please support this letter with a blog comment and add your name to the petition.)
This is an urgent message for doctors and all health professionals. It may also apply to you.
“If you are standing at the corner working on your charts or sitting in your bed working on your charts or you have a million things to do and you have chest pain and you can’t breathe, then I want you to stop and understand that there is a different way to do this.” ~ JZ M.D.
“Get off your slave ship underneath the abusive masters that are ruling your life right now and declare your emancipation and freedom as a true healer in your ideal type of practice.” ~ Kat Lopez, M.D.
“Really and truly you do not have to stay chained up.” ~ Patti Little, M.D.
“It’s an extremely simple equation where the revenue that you are generating for these enormous slave ship corporate bodies is being siphoned away from you to the tune of 70-90%.” ~ Kat Lopez, M.D.
“You don’t have to be oppressed by your group that is trying to take your money from you.” ~ Patti Little, M.D.
“I urge you to keep the money that you are generating from your extremely hard work and create your own ideal model of how best to live your passion as a doctor and a healer. It’s so simple that Joe and Mary down the street have created their own small businesses with their own passion be it a beauty salon to a dry cleaners. We have a whole network of people who can support you in doing this and there is not a moment to lose as you continue to feed the system with the money you are generating, and the system continues to enslave your colleagues and basically suck the soul out of medicine. You know it! Patients aren’t happy. Doctors aren’t happy. Guess who’s happy? These bloated bureaucratic corporatocracies that are sucking the lifeblood and wringing every bit of efficiency out of your soul as they possibly can preventing you from doing what you really want to do with your life. Not a moment to spare!” ~ Kat Lopez, M.D.
“Colleagues, patients, you’ve been dominated too long. Your board of medicine, your professional assistance program, your insurance companies, the pharmacist that refuses to fill your prescriptions. Let’s just end this domination right now. Is anyone interested in getting the monkey off their back? Okay. Let’s just be free.” ~ Mark Ibsen, M.D.
“We’re in an abusive profession. The sickest profession on the planet is actually health care.” ~ Delicia Haynes, M.D.
“We’ve been in a sick profession for so long that it has just literally contaminated our soul and we need to break free.” ~ Karen Chase, M.D.
“It left me sad. It left me on medication. And it almost caused me to lose my life.” ~ H.F.
“I need us not to kill ourselves. I need us not to go insane. I need us not to leave the profession.” ~ Erica Rotondo, D.O.
“Four hundred suicides a year in physicians. There’s a reason this is happening. My colleagues are desperate. I’ve been desperate. It’s time for us to take our profession back—our sacred honorable profession.” ~ Mark Ibsen, M.D.
“You can come back to who you are. You can be an effective physician outside this horrendous fucking system.” ~ H.F.
“I’m begging you. Come from under that pile of charts and paperwork and come experience life.” ~ Avril Campbell, M.D.
“I’m talking to you if you don’t see your spouse, if you don’t see your children, if you haven’t take a vacation or you just avoid vacations because it is too much of a pain in the ass to catch up on all your shit when you come back, I’m talking to you. If you think I would never tell my kids to go into medicine because I absolutely can’t stand what I have to do everyday now all the bureaucracy and the coding and the billing . . .” ~ JZ MD
“I need you to refuse to let your job, your work continue to suck the life out of you.” ~ Avril Campbell, M.D.
“We’re getting our life sucked out of us. All we’re doing is being slaves to EMRs and pay for performance and CMS and paperwork.” ~ Roberta Nieto M.D.
“To all you stoics and suck-it-uppers out there, those who had dreams in medical school and residency of being the best doctor in the world, but now you find yourself stuck in a trap.” ~ Ron Sautter, M.D.
“Why did you go to medical school? Why did you get involved in medicine? What were your original reasons? Does that idealism seem kind of silly now? Does it seem like you don’t practice the way you had intended to and your life has become something completely unrecognizable?” ~ Neil Golan, M.D.
“Have you been wounded and hurt by the profession that you wanted to do your whole life?” ~ Christina Grucella, M.D.
“You in the middle of your training find yourself depressed, anxious, overworked, overwhelmed, having suicidal thoughts or thoughts of quitting medicine all together, and your self-trust and self-respect are gone, please know you are not alone.” ~ Katya Hurst, M.D.
“Are you miserable at your job? Frustrated? Angry? Feel like you’re on a hamster wheel? Don’t worry. You’re not alone.” ~ Jennifer Nelson, D.O.
“You are not alone. There is hope. There is help. Please stay where you are and reach one of us. Reach Dr. Pamela Wible. Come to Breitenbush. Trust me. There is a whole new world out there that we never knew existed. Please don’t suffer alone. There is nothing wrong with you.” ~ Katya Hurst, M.D.
“I’m a compassionate, loving, kind person and all I want to do is be a healer. But in this journey, in this process, I have been abused. No one should be experiencing what I have experienced. No one should deserve to go through what I have gone through. So I call to everyone, all of you, doctors, medical students, residents, if you are feeling sad, if you are feeling depressed, suicidal, and you don’t know where to go, I urge you to seek help, to call Dr. Pamela Wible. Come to her retreat at Breitenbush. It will save your life. You will be liberated. I have been liberated.” ~ Kaying Xiong, M.D.
“You nurses, you doctors, you medical students, you MAs, nurse practitioners, PAs, we are the team. But we are also the sickest patients in the hospital right now taking care of those we deem sicker than us. We need to take care of ourselves and realize what is happening.” ~ Lisa Buenger, M.D.
“It’s ironic, but we’re the ones who actually need to heal. So take the time as physicians to actually heal yourselves so you can be of better service to your patients.” ~ Delicia Haynes, M.D.
“We ourselves have chosen to stay in environments that have allowed us to believe that it is only worse if we choose to do something different, that it’s only worse if we say no we are going to be persecuted, that it’s our fault that we can’t keep up. We have chosen to stay in this environment.” ~ Lisa Buenger, M.D.
“I’ve worked for a number of difficult groups where I was the lone voice or one of the lone voices that spoke out against the injustice, the injustice that was served on us as anesthesiologists, or pain doctors, which then carried down the injustice of not being able to give the standard of care that I wanted to give to my patients and I want you to know that I now know that I am free. I do not need to enslave myself to any of those people.” ~ Patti Little, M.D.
“No one can tell you how to do your job. You don’t need to have someone take a cut of your paycheck. You don’t need to have someone to do contracts with insurance companies for you. You don’t need anyone to manage your life and tell you what boxes to check and how often your patients should have certain things done or whatever. You know that. You are an excellent physician and an excellent person. That’s why you went into this profession.” ~ JZ MD
“People act like you have to have some administrator or someone to help you to take care of your patients. All they need is you. So stop letting them tell you what you can’t do. You’re smart. You can do this. You are enough.” ~ Delicia Haynes, M.D.
“You can open up your own clinic. You can do it. It’s easy. You make money. You can take care of patients the way you know they need to be taken care of. There are patients out there that are looking for you specifically right now. I want you to go out and do this because patients need you and you need the patients.” ~ JZ M.D.
“Here’s a novel idea: start your own clinic. Uh, ya know, that sounds like something new age but, ya know, there’s doctors all over the nation doing it right now. You can do it too. I’m going to do it. So let’s take that leap of faith together. Jump out there. Open a new door. Open a window. Whatever you got to do to get out of where you’re at.” ~ Jennifer Nelson, D.O.
“Quit your fucking job. Okay. If it sucks that bad, quit! Please. Today. Because there are patients out there that want to see you as you as your authentic self and you have it in you to be you. Please quit and go do something amazing and be happy. It’s totally possible. There’s hundreds of us that have done it. Call us. Email us. Ask us. We will help you. QUIT!” ~ JZ M.D.
“I just want to implore you to make the best investment you can possibly make which is in yourself.” ~ Delicia Haynes, M.D.
“I encourage you to come save yourself. Save your fucking soul.” ~ H.F.
“My life now doesn’t look anything like it did one year ago. I came to Breitenbush. I transformed my clinic. I put my patients and myself first. And I made sure that that doctor-patient relationship is all that matters. It’s simple!” ~ Delicia Haynes, M.D.
“I am celebrating my 30th year in medicine and my daughter is starting medical school this year. I want you to know that you can be happy in medicine like I have learned to become. You do not need to feel numb anymore. You do not need to feel dead anymore. You do not have to have fatigue and, in fact, you can go through your work day and actually feel like you have more energy at the end of the day than you started with. You can enjoy patients again. You can listen to patients again. You can have beautiful sex again. Your life can be really, really, really good if you start listening to your internal voice and practicing medicine the way you were meant to practice medicine. So if you’re working for a slavedriver company, get out of that. Call one of us. Come to Breitenbush. Get in touch with Pamela Wible and learn to be happy again. You can love music again. You can watch movies. You can go to happy hour. You can have time to go to church. You can be a human being again and still take incredible care of patients. In fact, you will probably take better care of patients. So get rid of that BS. Say no to it. Get your buns over here and start living again as a doctor and as a human being.” ~ Ann Cordum, M.D.
“There are pioneers and revolutionaries in our midst who are charting a path back to sanity, back to true healing.” ~ James T. Fields, M.D.
“You have been placed on this earth to heal people. Don’t let anyone take that away from you. You don’t need to let them. So in the manner of speaking of one great man of many in our past, ‘I am free at last. Thank God almighty. I am free at last.’” ~ Patti Little, M.D.
“Stay alive!” ~ Mark Ibsen, M.D.
Okay so let’s recap. Here’s a two-minute summary.
Leave the abusers that are ruling your life right now. You’ve been dominated too long. You do not need to feel numb anymore. You do not need to feel dead anymore. You do not have to stay chained up. We’re in an abusive profession. The sickest profession on the planet is actually health care. We’ve been in a sick profession. I need us not to kill ourselves. I need us not to go insane. I need you to refuse to let your job, your work continue to suck the life out of you. We’re getting our life sucked out of us. Have you been wounded and hurt depressed, anxious, overworked, overwhelmed, having suicidal thoughts or thoughts of quitting medicine all together, and your self-trust and self-respect are gone, please know you are not alone. Don’t worry. You’re not alone. All I want to do is be a healer. But in this journey, in this process, I have been abused. Please don’t suffer alone. There is nothing wrong with you. Open a new door. Open a window. Whatever you got to do to get out of where you’re at. Quit your fucking job. Okay. If it sucks that bad, quit! Please. Today. Save yourself. Save your fucking soul. Get rid of that BS. Say no to it. QUIT! If you’re working for a slavedriver company, get out of that. Let’s just end this domination right now. Is anyone interested in getting the monkey off their back? There are pioneers and revolutionaries in our midst who are charting a path back to sanity, back to true healing. You have been placed on this earth to heal people. Don’t let anyone take that away from you. Let’s just be free. Break free! I am free! I have been liberated. I do not need to enslave myself to any of those people. Declare your emancipation and freedom as a true healer. I am free at last. Thank God almighty. I am free at last. Not a moment to spare!
