Handle With Care
“We need to be better at helping each other.” Physician colleague who came within minutes of committing suicide
This week I had the privilege of connecting with a physician colleague who 4 years ago came within minutes of choosing to take her life through suicide. Over the years since she has shared details of that painful time in her life and the healing journey she has taken since, including the difficult decision to leave direct patient care.
This conversation, however, was different. She is now far enough away from that intensely dark and emotionally raw time to have gained deeper insight. A few of things she shared speak directly to why it is so essential to have a buddy (or buddies) who understand what it is like to travel this professional journey called healthcare. “As we all tend to be, I was off in my own isolated world,” she reflected. “I’m not the kind of person who would ever consider something like suicide – so I thought. But I broke, and the level of emotional pain I was feeling is difficult to describe. It had to be quite obvious to others that something was wrong. I believe they wanted to help, but none of them seemed comfortable in reaching out to me and when they did, it was easy to push them away. I wish there had been a better way for them to help.” With some of her emotions still quite tender, she tearfully added, “ The only thing that stopped me from doing it was the realization that my husband and children were not better off without me. I didn’t want to hurt them.” And then concluded, “We need to be better at helping each other.”
This past Friday was National Physician Suicide Awareness Day (NPSA) as part of September’s National Suicide Awareness month. NPSA Day was initiated by our Emergency Medicine colleagues in 2018 (https://www.cordem.org/npsa) along with the motto, “Shine a Light. Speak its name.” The vision for this initiative, called Vision Zero, is that this day will serve as a call to action for individuals, residency programs, medical practices, health care organizations and national groups to make a commitment to break down stigma, increase awareness, open the conversation, decrease the fear of consequences, recognize warning signs and learn to approach our colleagues who may be at risk for suicide … or who are professionally failing to thrive in a myriad of other ways.
Of course, it is a tragedy to think that we even need a day to raise awareness of physician suicide, but the statistics indicate that on average, one of our physician colleagues choses to take their life every day, and these statistics do not account for our NP, PA, PhD, PharmD, Allied health, and nursing teammates, all of whom, as we know, are struggling mightily as well.
The entire purpose of the PeerRxMed process is to ensure that “no one cares alone.” It is vital that every one of us has someone we are certain we can reach out to in good times and bad and we know they will be there for us. This is a person who knows us well enough that they would recognize when were weren’t doing well and would feel very comfortable and even insistent on helping to be sure we received the help we needed. The stakes are too high to do otherwise. Let’s all commit to becoming better at helping each other. The life that we save could be our own.