Pamela Wible pioneered the community-designed ideal medical clinic and blogs at Ideal Medical Care. She is the author of Physician Suicide Letters — Answered and Pet Goats and Pap Smears. Watch her TEDx talk, How to Get Naked with Your Doctor. She hosts the physician retreat, Live Your Dream, to help her colleagues heal from grief and reclaim their lives and careers.
Doctors spend their 20s and 30s studying while most of their friends are at parties and enjoying their youth.
Doctors may amass up to $500,000 in debt for the honor of one day caring for you and your family.
Doctors delay childbearing and starting their own families so they can care for your family.
Doctors miss their own kids’ ballet recitals and baseball games …
Your doctor has more control over your life than anyone — other than you.
Your doctor may be the first face you see as you’re born and the last one you see as you die. Doctors look deep inside you, in places nobody has been before. Doctors prescribe drugs that can kill you or save your life.
But how do you know if …
Johnny’s disabled. He can’t get to my office anymore. So I drive 100 miles up the Oregon coast to check in on him. I get lost, but finally discover his little white house on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
“Last …
This letter was received and edited for clarity by Pamela Wible, MD.
Dear Dr. Wible,
This will be my last email to you because I am giving up on my dream of being a doctor.
I’ve contacted so many colleges and medical schools hoping to find one that would help me become a doctor for my tribe. Today, I finally got a response from the …
An obstetrician is found dead in his bathtub. Gunshot wound to the head. An anesthesiologist dies of an overdose in a hospital closet. A family doctor is hit by a train. He’s decapitated. An internist at a medical conference jumps from his hotel balcony to his death. All true stories.
What are patients to do?
When they call for appointments, patients are …
Recently, a friend posted a story on my Facebook page: “How Being a Doctor Became the Most Miserable Profession,” Oh no. “Another article on miserable doctors,” I thought. I’m an expert on miserable doctors. I used to be one. Why should I read this? What could I possibly learn? I decided to ignore it.
The next day another friend posted it. Then another. Okay, now it was assigned reading. I steeled myself …
I’ve always been a people watcher. Now I get paid to spy on folks. I have to ask detailed, personal questions. Sometimes I even snoop around patients’ homes.
In the 1930s nearly half of all patient visits were house calls. Now most patients are rushed through ten-minute office visits. But if I need to know what’s going on with a patient, I …
I asked why physicians were dying by suicide. Here’s what they told me:
“I definitely graduated from med school with PTSD. It has changed me forever. My mom’s friend that I have known since I was born saw me for the first time since I went to med school and she [told my mom], “She has changed so much. Was it worth …
Fact: Doctors want to help people.
Fact: Some people take advantage of doctors.
A doctor in Oregon shares this case:
I had an old man with cancer. He kept complaining of pain as I was increasing his opiate pain medication, Oxycontin. I was at, I forget, about 40mg four times a day or some fairly substantial dose. I ran a urine drug test. Negative …
So you think your medicine is natural. Ever wonder what’s inside? A product can be labeled “natural” if the main ingredient is from an animal, plant, or mineral. Arsenic, horse urine, and cow brain are natural. But are they natural for you? Here are four drugs whose origins may surprise you.
Insulin was discovered in 1922. Until the 1980s, all insulin was …
Tom is diabetic, asthmatic, and broke. He’s back for a checkup.
“I take my metformin every morning with my grits,” he says, “but I don’t need no refill. I just got me some metformin XR.”
“How did you get extended release? They’re super expensive.”
“Well, my neighbor runs a tattoo shop. We live behind her store. Her doc switched her up to insulin, so …
As a doctor, it’s my job to figure out what patients really need. Some need antibiotics. Some need pain pills. But everyone needs love.
During medical school I cared for burned children. One of my patients was a 3-year-old with severe burns over most of his body. His roommate, an older boy, had just burned one arm. Yet the older child withered in the …
Rob got a cat bite. Then a swollen hand. He goes to the ER, gets antibiotics, then develops itching. So he calls me for advice.
A few days later, I get this email: “The itching from the antibiotics went away as you said it would. But what is NOT poised to go away is the $624 bill from the ER for talking …
I’ve been a doctor for twenty years. I’ve not lost a single patient to suicide.
I’ve lost only colleagues, friends, lovers — all male physicians — to suicide.
Why?
Here’s what I know:
A physician’s greatest joy is the patient relationship.
Assembly-line medicine undermines the patient-physician relationship.
Most doctors are burned out, overworked, or exhausted.
Many doctors spend little time with their families.
Workaholics are admired in medicine.
Medicine values …
Ever felt misjudged by a doctor? Or treated unfairly by a clinic or hospital? You may be a victim of patient profiling.
Patient profiling is the practice of regarding particular patients as more likely to have certain behaviors or illnesses based on their appearance, race, gender, financial status, or other observable characteristics. Profiling disproportionately impacts patients with chronic pain, mental illness, the …
A new patient calls for an appointment. I ask, “What would you like to come in for?”
“Depression. Two weeks ago my doctor put me on antidepressants.”
“Why don’t you see your current doctor?” I ask.
“I feel weird discussing my emotions with someone who doesn’t have any.”
When doctors are fully present, vulnerable — even emotional, patients are more likely to be honest, transparent, …
Meet Damien, my Facebook friend, photographer, and IT guy.
This morning, he messages me: “I would like to make an appointment.”
I reply: “For?”
“High blood pressure.”
I offer to see him, but he never comes in. Weeks later, he writes, “I got busy Pam. How are you? High blood pressure pills keep making me sick. I am doing the best I can. On bad …
I started kissing patients in med school. And I haven’t stopped.
During my third year pediatric rotation, I used to stay up late at night in the hospital, holding sick and dying children. I’d lift them from their cribs, kiss them, and sing to them, rocking them back and forth until they fell asleep. One day the head of the department pulled …
Last week a woman told me that she had a miscarriage in her bathroom. She was terrified. She didn’t know what to do. So she flushed it down the toilet.
A miscarriage is the spontaneous expulsion of a fetus from the womb before it is able to survive on its own. One in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage. Many women don’t know they are miscarrying. Those who know usually suffer grief …
A psychiatrist in Seattle had picked out the bridge. At 3 a.m. he would swerve across his lane and plunge into the water. Everyone would assume he fell asleep.
A surgeon in Oregon was lying on the floor of her office with a scalpel. Nobody would find her until it was too late.
An internal medicine resident in Atlanta heard an anesthesiologist joking about …
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