What? Physician Suicide?

WHAT? PHYSICIAN SUICIDE?

I watched many friends become drug addicts, alcoholics, and mentally unstable during my years of medical practice. The most difficult for me, personally, was a beautiful young woman who was assigned to be my mentor as I entered the Physician Assistant Program at USC…  And, as is common in these cases, she continued to act professionally so as not to leak any signs [of] tears, hesitancy or depression…

On one hot Los Angeles summer day, she had just left the USC County Hospital where her rotation had been. She drove down the street toward the freeway entrance. At the stoplight just before the entrance, she stopped for the red light. She had enough time to pull the gun out that she had sitting on the passenger seat, and shot herself in the head.

There was a USC physician behind her and saw the whole thing. He tried valiantly to save her, but it was not to be. This amazingly smart, and gorgeous twenty-eight year old, with the world at her fingertips was gone in a blink of an eye. This happens too many times in the medical field. We deserve mental care as much as our patients do. It should not cost us our career.

Dr. Wible had this interview on “BOLD” the other day. Please listen. If you find it interesting, please share. We need to make the world aware.

http://www.getboldtoday.com/143-pamela-wible-physician-suicide/