Another indication that health care is sick—doctors are being told to stop asking patients open-ended questions like:
“How are you feeling?”
“What worries you?”
“What’s on your mind?”
Today a physician just e-mailed me:
“I am really,
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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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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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