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- Page navigation anchor for RE: Building a healthier medical cultureRE: Building a healthier medical culture
Dr. Jani Lamaree’s article “When your research project hurts” on suicidality in UBC family practice residents in the 2009-2010 cohort is both crucial and painful at the same time. It is crucial to be reminded of the prevalence of suicidality amongst residents within our programs and to try to identify ways to mitigate this. Dr. Lamaree’s personal connection to the resident who lost her life to suicide, her subsequent research on the prevalence of suicidality amongst her peers, and the resulting awareness of the immensity of suffering that residents are experiencing as they proceed through their training is intensely painful.
Suicide and suicidality in medical trainees and the medical profession has made headlines over recent years. Indeed, physicians have now surpassed the military in terms of suicide rates. At the time of entrance to medical school, students are mentally healthier that their age-matched peers. Yet within a matter of years, medical training has made such a negative impact that an estimated 24% of medical students experience suicidality.
The medical profession has huge stigma around suicide in trainees and physicians, and stigma kills. We applaud the publication of Dr. Lamaree’s excellent research in the Oct 2019 issue of Canadian Family Physician.
We are concerned that the commentary written by the Editor in the same issue may increase shame, blame, and guilt on the part of trainees and physicians alike who struggle with the moral in...
Show MoreCompeting Interests: None declared. - Page navigation anchor for RE: Resident suicideRE: Resident suicide
I'm trying to imagine what would happen if a survey of high school students found that 1 in 3 had contemplated suicide and 1 in 5 had actively planned it, and the principal of said school blithely advised parents to reflect on the 2/3 that *weren't* suicidal, followed by some boilerplate on being attentive to distress and so on. (What, no yoga classes?)
Family medicine, a specialty with a relatively tame residency, is seeing rates of suicidal thoughts worse than that in the United States army (JAMA Psychiatry. 2014;71(5):514-522). And the response is to look on the bright side? Or compare groups like a critical appraisal exercise for a drug trial?
At what point do the medical and academic "establishments" address the distress of trainees with the seriousness that it deserves? When do we rethink the ludicrous notion that an 80+ hour work week is an improvement, simply because outcomes are no worse than the Old Days when the work week was 100+ hours? Where are the programs and resources help struggling residents while insulating them from the threat to licensure that getting help often entails? What is the CFPC doing to make mental health crises and suicidality unacceptable? And let's not get started on the CMA, that has enough money to buy Prince Edward Island and turn it into a doctors-only resort.
Perhaps when the CFPC convenes next month to celebrate itself, and bask in the keynote speaker's admonitions on the scourge...
Show MoreCompeting Interests: None declared.