What Can Be Done to Support the Physician Community and Restore the Health in Healthcare?

I’ve witnessed and experienced unimaginable suffering, both personally and professionally during my 25 year physician career.

It's a privilege to hold space for the challenges and traumas that people face when they are ill and unwell. It's sacred work. Healing work.

Having been blessed to work with hundreds of medical students, trainees and colleagues, I can say that most physicians enter the professional as a calling with a desire to facilitate healing and make a positive difference in the health and well-being of others.

A Facebook post in a physician only group reminded me that this profession is one that is now threatening the lives of those who were called to serve.

The focus of the post was on the plight of the current day physician, especially those in primary care.

There have been several articles published in the last 2 years highlighting the accelerated rate of departure of women physicians from clinical practice. And while this is true, our male colleagues have also been significantly impacted.

May is mental health awareness month and yet there still isn’t the needed awareness about the growing rates of physician suicide. We’ve lost so many physicians colleagues and there are many more who are suffering in silence.

My response to the original poster is shared below. It has been edited for readability. My hope is that it may initiate a dialogue on what we can do collectively to support our physician community and address the current healthcare system in the US. And if these issues are impacting physicians in other nations, I want to hear about it.

To the original poster who serves as a primary care physician: First and foremost, thank you for what you do and for who you are. It is clear from your post how much you care about the work that you do.

Second, know that you are not alone. So many physicians have been suffering for decades, but the intensity and frequency has been accelerated recently with many docs suffering alone in silence and thinking something is wrong with them.

I left clinical practice 5 years ago after almost 21 years in pediatrics at an academic medical center.

My wake up call came when I ended up in the ER for a rule out MI (myocardial infarction, more commonly known as a heart attack) after experiencing chest pain in clinic.

Fortunately it wasn’t an MI, but the scariest part for me was realizing that I had let work become my important than my life (was willing to keep seeing patients in clinic and figure out the chest pain later; thank God for my Internal Medicine colleague who convinced me to leave clinic and go to the ER).

I made the decision to put my health and well-being first...to be around to see my grandson grow up and be that grandma who is present and available like my grandma was for me. I’m now thriving in my nonclinical career and feel valued and appreciated for the work that I do...grateful to still have an impact on child health. And I know that leaving clinical practice is not the answer for everyone...

The habits we develop in medical training to work past the point of exhaustion and ignore our own health and well-being comes at a cost and follows us into whatever we choose next...

And for most of us, entering medicine was a calling so how do we facilitate healing and make an impact on the health of people in the current environment with the state of the healthcare system being what it is?

I’m genuinely curious about what we can do to make a difference. This post has inspired my blog article for today. Thank you for initiating the dialogue. 🙏🏽❤️