Pamela Wible, M.D. named 2015 Women Leader in Medicine (acceptance speech) →

On February, 26, 2015, Pamela Wible, M.D., was named the 2015 Women Leader in Medicine by the American Medical Student Association in Washington D.C. Dr. Wible was nominated by American premedical and medical students as one of the most inspiring women educators in medicine today. Her acceptance speech is filmed and fully transcribed below.

INTRODUCTION: Pamela Wible, M.D., is a family physician born into a family of physicians. In 2004, fed up with assembly-line medicine, Dr. Wible held town hall meetings where she invited citizens to design their very own ideal clinic. Open since 2005, Wible’s innovative model has sparked a populist movement that has inspired Americans to create ideal clinics and hospitals nationwide.

Pamela Wible’s model is now taught in medical schools and undergraduate medical humanities courses and is featured in the Harvard School of Public Health’s newest edition of Renegotiating Health Care: Resolving Conflict to Build Collaboration, a textbook examining major trends with the potential to change the dynamics of health care. Dr. Wible is also the author of Amazon’s top-rated Pet Goats & Pap Smears: 101 Medical Adventures to Open Your Heart & Mind—a book that I had the pleasure of reading and being inspired by a year ago.

When not treating patients in her community clinic, Dr. Wible devotes her time to medical student and physician suicide prevention. Dr. Wible’s work in this area was a huge component of why I nominated her for this award. I truly believe that the conversation that Dr. Wible is beginning about suicide prevention is turning the light toward medical students to reexamine their own wellness as well as the wellness that we provide our peers.

A graduate of Wellesley College, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, and the University of Arizona Department of Family & Community Medicine, Dr. Wible is now called to help students and  physicians deliver ideal care to their communities. It is such an honor to introduce Dr. Pamela Wible, an inspiring leader and educator of the next generation of physicians as the 2015 Women Leaders in Medicine Award winner.

*   *   *

Well, I like to start with my favorite quote. A zen poet once said, “A person who is a master in the art of living makes little distinction between their work and their play, their labor and their leisure, their mind and their body, their education and their recreation,  their love and their religion. They hardly know which is which and simply pursue their vision of excellence and grace, whatever they do, leaving others to decide whether they are working or playing. To them, they are always doing both.”

Medicine is an apprenticeship profession. We learn to be doctors—by studying doctors. And patients learn by studying us. The word doctor means teacher. But what are we teaching? If doctors are victims, patients (and medical students) learn to be victims. If doctors are discouraged, patients (and medical students) learn to be discouraged.  If we want happy, healthy patients, we must fill our clinics & hospitals with happy, healthy doctors. 

But when I look around, I really don’t see many happy doctors. So my mentors are—medical students. I love your youthful joy and exuberance and I’m inspired by your endless curiosity and conviction and compassion. I want to grow up to be just like YOU.

I want to be like Becky, she’s a medical student in Oklahoma. She has a dream of providing care to the poorest of the poor of Oklahoma City. And I want to be like Julia, a med student I met in New Jersey. She wants to open her clinic on an organic farm. And I want to be like Sasha, a premedical student from Pennsylvania who wants to “cry with and love on” her patients. I am inspired to be the best version of myself when I think of these people and when I think of medical students and the joy and love that they have and the desire that they have to serve people when they enter medical school. And so I want to keep that joy alive for the rest of your medical career. And I want to bring that joy back to my colleagues who have lost this.

I’m a family physician in Oregon and I love my patients. I hug them and kiss them, and I do housecalls. And they all have my home phone number. I’m on call 24/7. That would seem like a hardship, but it’s not. I never really feel like I’m working. I think that’s because I’m self-employed—which is how most doctors worked until very recently. For centuries physicians have been self-employed.

One reason why I like being self-employed is that I haven’t had to set an alarm clock in 10 years for work. Because I work afternoons and evenings 3 half-days per week and it’s AWESOME! I highly recommend it. And I like being self-employed because I’ve never turned anyone away for lack of money. Because I’m the boss and I can do that. And I like the boss. Being self-employed I have a lot of fun. I can break the rules that don’t make sense because I’m self-employed. And here are 3 rules that don’t make sense and I would encourage you all not to follow these 3 “rules” in our profession:

1)  I refuse to practice professional distance. Because what patients really want is professional closeness.

2)  I refuse to practice cookbook medicine. Because patients aren’t chocolate chip cookies. I’m not a cookie cutter doctor—and neither are you.

3)  I refuse to practice assembly-line medicine. Because I didn’t go to medical school for all these years to be a turned into a factory worker—and neither did you. Patients aren’t looking for a factory worker or a zombie robot. They are looking for a real human being so I would encourage you to stay real during your training. You’re going to be a lot happier that way.

The other thing about breaking away from assembly-line medicine as was discussed during my introduction is that I was able to create a new model with the help of my community. I basically had a town hall meeting where I told everyone that my job sucked and that I was suicidal and that if they didn’t come up with a better way [for me to practice medicine] I was just going to be a waitress or something. I just could not see continuing practicing medicine in this insane corporate assembly-line 7-minute-visit practice style so I collected 100 pages of written testimony. I pretty much told them I would do whatever they wanted as long as it was basically legal. So if you could just tell me what’s your dream. Write my job description for me if you wouldn’t mind because it’s not really working for administrators to write my job description. I’d rather work for the people themselves. And I got 100 pages of testimony and was able to adopt 90% of what patients needed in my town and we were open one month later! It’s not rocket science. You don’t really need to wait for the government to do this for you.

Buckminster Fuller has a quote I really like. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model [ideal medical care] that makes the existing model [assembly-line medicine] obsolete.” I hope you’ll join the movement for ideal medical care and that YOU will be the change you want to see in medicine.

“A dysfunctional medical system can only exist on the backs of a disempowered physician population—the precursor of which is an abused medical student population.”   

So I hope during medical school you will break the rules when need be and that you won’t be too well-behaved. And that you will stand up against intimidation, bullying, and abuse because it doesn’t get better. You might as well stand up at the beginning.

We need to take our profession back. And if you need any help feel free to Facebook me, be my friend, email me, call me anytime. My home phone number is 541-345-2437. Put it on speed dial in case you are bullied or abused. I am accessible. In case you want to know sooner than later what to do, come to my talk on Saturday. I’m giving a talk on some strategies that you can use to confront unethical behavior in medical school with grace and success.

“The truth is: it’s impossible to be a victim and a healer at the same time. So I hope you’ll choose being a healer rather than a victim.”                                

And I thought I’d read this most beautiful chapter that came out of a series of interviews with doctors called The Raw Truth. This is the reason why I became a doctor and I think it is why many of us became doctors.

I often wonder: Why am I a doctor?

I want to live in the real world, a world without pretense, a world where people can’t hide behind money or status. Illness uncovers our authenticity. Doctoring satiates my need to be witnessed and to witness the raw, uncensored human experience. I crave intensity.

Like an emotional bungee jumper, I live to inhale the last words of a dying man, to hear the first cry of a newborn baby, to feel the slippery soft skin in my hands, to cut the cord and watch a drop of blood fall on my shoe, to wipe a new mother’s tears, to introduce a father to his son, to hold a daughter’s hand as she kisses her father good-bye one last time.

I am a doctor because I refuse to be numb. I want to live on the precipice of the underworld, the afterworld, to look into patients’ eyes, to free-fall into an abyss of love, despair, death and then wake up tomorrow and do it all again.

Maybe doctoring fills a hole, a void. I doctor for connection, to be needed—to be loved.

Chapter 90, The Raw Truth, Pet Goats & Pap Smears. 

And in summary, at its core, doctoring is intimacy and intimacy means “in-to-me-see.” It’s when we see so deeply into another, that we find our own reflections and discover ourselves. So I’d like to ask you to be a healer and not a factory worker.  And I’d like to ask you to take your eyes off your computer and look into your patients. Because it’s there [in your patients’ eyes] that you will find the truth and discover yourself and your path in medicine. Thank you.

*   *   *

Dr. Wible’s Q & A went on for 2 hours after her acceptance speech. Here are some of the medical students and physicians who hung out with her until nearly midnight:

IMG_0024

Need a speaker at your next event? Contact Dr. Pamela Wible to speak at your grand rounds, medical conferences, and medical school commencement ceremonies.

Tags: , ,
5 Comments

***

A physician quits assembly-line medicine. Here’s what happens next . . . →

A few months ago a physician friend Facebooks me:

I only have 7 days of clinic left. Just finished two weekends back to back so it will be something like 20 days in a row that I worked before I get a chance to breathe. One weekend was “punishment” for my subpar production due to attending your retreat. Just have call on Christmas and I’ll be done. I’m already getting calls for the new clinic, so things are looking up!

She writes back today:

Man, there is so much I wanna tell you! So much has happened! First it seemed like nothing was happening and then everything happened at once. We opened our doors last Friday and have seen 22 patients so far. We are trying to start slow, but our phone is blowing up!

I thought I would maybe be seeing one patient a day, but it’s been 4 to 6 AND I AM NOT EVEN TRYING! We haven’t even told people we are open! I haven’t even said anything on Facebook. It is fucking surreal! And get this—we had a 100% show rate, everyone arrived early, and they all paid without me asking for money. We paid our monthly overhead within the first few days.

So first day of clinic last Friday, we decided to do a “soft open.” We basically only scheduled 2 patients—both who have seen me for over 2 years and wouldn’t mind any hiccups. The visits are amazing. I don’t feel like I’m a doctor at all. It feels like hanging out with friends. It’s comfortable—like coming home and being able to just be yourself, but I am helping people and it feels—like me—like the me that I knew before I got lost in the insanity of assembly-line medicine. It feels like destiny—like I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing at this very minute—what I was born to do! Everything goes smoothly, and both my husband and I are beaming.

I had told him that morning I hadn’t felt so hot, but I chocked it up to excitement and nerves. I’m trying to finish my charts up when it hits me. First diarrhea. Then vomiting. Ugh.

So here I am trying to knock out this last chart while puking into the trash can and making furious diarrhea runs to the bathroom (no pun intended). And I start laughing—laughing so hard I am crying and can’t breathe. He thought I’d lost my mind. To answer his quizzical look, I said between gasps:

“I just realized that working in our own clinic—even though I am simultaneously puking and trying not to shit my pants—trumps the best day I ever had in assembly-line medicine.”

And that’s no lie!

Pamela:

YAY!!!!! TOLD YOU SOOOOO!!!!!!!! I’d love to talk to ya this weekend after you are done puking and PLEASE send me your website so I can promote you (not sure you even need more patients). Are you doing cash only or insurance or a mix? Let’s talk soon.

She explains:

Doing all cash. I seriously can’t believe that people pay cash to see me! It kinda blows my mind. Puking is over. So yeah, let me know when is good for you!

Website—not up yet and I’m kind of glad for now. Will wait until I feel like we can handle more people—it was a little overwhelming when we were getting all these calls and unable to see people. I will let you know when we get one though!

Pamela:

You TOTALLY have the market cornered because you are the ONLY ideal psychiatrist in the state I would bet!!!!! SO PROUD OF YOU!! SEEE!!! I TOLD YOU SOO!!!!!!!!!

PamVDClinic

She replies:

Annnnnnd, you’ll love my fortune cookie from tonight!

FC

Pamela Wible, M.D., pioneered the first ideal clinic designed entirely by patients. Now she hosts physician retreats to help her colleagues off the assembly line and into their ideal clinics. 

Tags: , ,
7 Comments

***

Assisted Physician Suicide: Are Doctors Killing Doctors? →

_GVE8468

Standing on the edge of his hotel balcony, a doctor describes the rolling hills. He tells me, “It’s a beautiful place to die.” Ten minutes later, he agrees not to injure himself—for now.

I’m not running a physician suicide hotline. But doctors keep calling me.

It’s midnight and I’m speaking to a psychiatry intern. Bullied by residents and her attending, she cries, “I’ve lost my self-confidence. I’m depressed. On psych meds now. But I don’t feel better.”

Then a fourth-year medical student shares a similar story. “I was normal before med school. Now I’m so afraid. I can’t go on,” she sobs.

I counsel each woman for nearly an hour: “You are not defective, the system is defective. We enter medicine with our mental health on par with or better than our peers. Depression and suicide are occupational hazards of our profession.” Thankfully neither are actively suicidal. Both women just needed to talk—to cry—and to hear the truth.

The truth is doctors are suffering. Surrounded by sickness and death, we watch families wail, shriek, cry while we stand silently—sacred witness to their sorrow—until we’re called to the next room for a heart attack, a gunshot wound, a stillborn. Week by week. Year by year. And when do we grieve? Never.

Doctors are not allowed to grieve.

Today a physician tells me she’s been cited for unprofessional conduct. Why?  She was seen crying. Her boss told her, “Unless you are dying, crying is unprofessional behavior and not to be tolerated.”

Then a retired doc tears up as she tells me about a miscarriage she witnessed 30 years ago. She thanks me. Why? She hasn’t been able to cry in 5 years.

Doctors are not allowed to cry.

So what do we do with our sadness? We injure ourselves—and each other.

When I speak to victims of physician bullying, I explain, “Your instructors are suffering from unprocessed grief—probably victims of bullying themselves. Medicine is an apprenticeship profession. Trained by wounded doctors, they’re now wounding you. Your bright eyes, your enthusiasm, your idealism remind them of their loss. Rather than feel their own grief, they lash out at you.”

Individual psychiatric therapy can’t solve institutional trauma. Collective wounds demand collective healing. Doctors are not defective. Our profession is.

And hiding our pain ain’t working. Recently the janitor at a medical conference asked, “What’s with all the grim faces and sad eyes?” To the average person, medical conventions look like funerals. Maybe that’s because doctors are dying by suicide at twice the rate of their patients.

Both men I dated in med school died by suicide. Brilliant physicians. One overdosed at a medical conference. The other overdosed after work. In just over a year, we lost 3 physicians in my town to suicide. Gunshot wounds mostly. One local doc lost 7 colleagues to suicide—so far.

Too often physicians turn to alcohol, drugs, firearms. But why don’t doctors seek professional help? Some do.

Some doctors drive hundreds of miles out of town for therapy. They pay cash for visits with no paper trail. They use fake names. Physicians who seek mental health care know they may face board investigation and license restriction—and those with licensing issues have even higher rates of suicide.

If we want real health care, we must first do no harm to our healers. Imagine if we allowed doctors to grieve.

I once attended an African grief ritual. Villagers wail around a fire for 3 days in a highly emotive ceremony. Attendance is mandatory. Why? Those who don’t grieve become the village troublemakers next year.

Physician bullies are medicine’s troublemakers. And they need our help—and compassion. Not threats. Not license restrictions. Not public shaming. They need psychological support. And so do the rest of us.

Anna, a retired surgeon, still carries the wounds from her medical school professor:

I was happy, secure, and mostly unafraid until the age of thirty. Until med school. I do not know what happened precisely, but I do recall in vivid detail that on the first (orientation) day of med school the MD who was our anatomy professor, and therefore largely controlled our lives for the next many months, stood before an auditorium filled with 125 eager, nervous, idealistic would-be healers and said these words: ‘If you decide to commit suicide, do it right so you do not become just a burden to society.’ He then described in anatomical detail how to commit suicide.

Anna’s experience is not unique. Physicians-in-training are given explicit instructions from their instructors in proper techniques for overdosing on lethal medications too.

Anna concludes:

Through the many years of training and through what would appear to the observer a successful career in a surgical subspecialty and now into retirement, I have carried the anxiety, and the depression, and the fear. . . . I still remember how to successfully commit suicide because someone who had power over me at a vulnerable time described the details. And we wonder why . . .

Pamela Wible, M.D., was once a suicidal physician. An expert in medical student and physician suicide prevention, She hosts physician retreats to help her colleagues heal from grief and reclaim their careers. Photo by GeVe.

Tags: , , , , ,
19 Comments

***

Are you receiving health care or abuse? →

Abuse ScheduleA physician in Texas posts this photo on Facebook. Caption: “My schedule one morning in January 2014. Never again . . .”

Yay! Another physician breaks free from assembly-line medicine.

High-overhead, high-volume offices sacrifice the sacred physicians-patient relationship and perpetuate a disease-billing management system. This is NOT health care. It’s abuse.

Patients: avoid clinics with 10-minute slots. Go for docs who offer 30-60 minute appointments. Physicians: stop following the same old practice management advice. Follow you Facebook friends. They offer the best support and business tips:

This is so sad!!!!

I can’t believe people practice like this! Every 10 minutes??? We’re doctors, not robots!

And this is what people have to spend their hard earned money on insurance for. Pretty sad, but mostly sad for the exhausted doctor who can’t possible be making a difference in someone’s life with 10 minutes.

Throw in a cumbersome EMR and that’s a recipe for surefire burnout by 10 am!

I was a medical assistant back in the day for a physician who kept a schedule like this. This is an impossible schedule to maintain and just sets up a system where the individuals involved with providing care constantly feel like they are failing. Very demoralizing. Very depressing. Definitely not a practical approach for the patient or the physician (and his/her minions). I used to get chastised for taking “too long” to collect a patient history (even five minutes was considered “too long”) and the physician told me I had to “stop talking to the patients so much.” I told the physician that there was no way to get an accurate history without talking to the patients for more than five minutes… the physician told me I would “eventually grow out of my need to talk to people.” Ha. Wrong.

This makes me want to cry.

This has been normal for the state NHS GPs here in the UK for over a decade! Only now are they burning out as the state wants them to do surveys, audits, med reviews, etc as well as consult with the pt in the same 10 mins!

Obscene.

This is crazy, not only does this burnout the physician but how on earth can any true healing happen with type of schedule, no time to even talk to them no wonder the country’s health sucks and we spend so much money because there is no healing in the business of medicine.

Welcome to my world. Friday, like too many days, I did not get to pee or have a sip of water…eating almost never happens and a “lunch” doesn’t exist… I felt like I was in solitary confinement. Thank God I still love what I do and love my patients—these are the only two things that keep me going.

That’s nuts!

Yes, and the amount of documentation required to be reimbursed adequately for that 10-15 min visit takes about 25 mins each patient unless you can stomach being a fraud (which I cannot) so then you’re perpetually behind on that, so…the cycle is very dissatisfying and makes a lot of us wish we had chosen another career option, but then we realize that our medical school debt is so deep that there is no other option for us, so we carry on…  🙁

When did this great country become a country of wimps and sickly people?

Dear physicians, NPs & PAs: PLEASE rebel when the bean counters try to do this to you.

We write our own stories through the choices we make.

You have the power to say NO!

Pamela Wible, M.D., is the founder of the ideal medical care movement. She teaches physician retreats where she helps physicians reclaim their lives and their careers—so patients can finally get the care they deserve.

Tags: , ,
15 Comments

***

The #1 thing patients want from doctors →

Ever wonder what patients really want from doctors?

Is it the fancy buildings with marble fountains?

Is it the board certifications and diplomas on the wall?

Is it the expert medical jargon and starched white coats?

Nope. None of the above.

Listen up, docs: Patients just want the real you. Ya know—YOU. The competent and caring you who really listens with compassion. The real you that talks like a real person and answers people with the honest truth in words they understand. The you that treats patients like family.

Does it matter if you’ve got glitter on your eyelids? Or if you come in after hours in sweatpants? Or if your kid tags along with you to work? Actually patients think those things are kinda cool.

So how do I know what patients want? I ask them. And what they want more than anything else is a doctor who is courageous enough to be real.

Doctors don’t seem to know this.

I’ve attended lots of medical meetings and sat around conference tables with physicians trying to figure out how to gain market share, how to get great patient satisfaction scores, how to bring in more revenue.

At one such meeting I sat with 12 physicians and a frazzled secretary frantically taking notes. The docs decided that we should all take a special test so we could become “experts” in diabetes and put our diabetes certificates on the wall to impress patients. As I raised my hand, all eyes turned to me and I shared, “Patients don’t really care how many certificates you have on your walls. What people want is 5 more minutes of your time. They really just want you.”

The room went silent. Blank stares. The secretary even put down her pen. Then the conversation picked up right where they left off in pursuit of their special diabetes certificates.

Meanwhile I had recently opened a clinic designed entirely by patients. I was making more money. And working less. Plus I was in such high demand that I had a waiting list—a really, really long waiting list.

My waiting list quickly exceeded the number of patients in my care. Folks even tried to bribe me to get to the top of my list. I told one gal it would probably take 5 years before I could see her. She said, “No problem. I’m not moving. I want YOU to be my doctor. Put me on the list!”

I have no diplomas on my walls.

No special certificates.

No white coat.

Just jeans,

glitter

and

a

smile.

The magic formula is YOU.

pAM_star_WEB_CROP

Pamela Wible, M.D., is a family physician and pioneer of the ideal medical care movement. Attend her physician retreat and learn how you can have an ideal clinic too. Medical students are welcomed.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
61 Comments

***

ARCHIVES

WIBLE’S NPR AWARD

The doctor who saves doctors

Copyright © 2011-2024 Pamela Wible MD   ❦   All rights reserved worldwide   ❦   site design by Pamela Wible MD and afinerweb.com