“You work here?!”
I nodded, a hint of a smile revealing my bemusement at his incredulity.
“Well … probably not after this.”
The other patients in the psych waiting area of the ER nodded in agreement. In my newly issued brown scrubs, stripped of my belongings, I was no longer a research coordinator at a top hospital, but rather one of them. And sadly, they believed being one of them meant you couldn’t …
For two years, I served as a representative to my medical school’s student affairs committee. My job was to convey medical student concerns and problems. As part of that role, I had a lot of time to think about how and why many medical students experience depression and stress. Two recent articles have led me to write about the issue now: “10 simple solutions to stop medical student suicide,” …
Medical school graduation: Time to celebrate our brand new doctors!
Except for the families who can’t celebrate their child’s graduation. Or their child’s marriage. Or their child’s birthday — ever again.
Like Michele and John Dietl.
They lost their son, Kevin (pictured above), just weeks before graduation. Now they cling to online condolences and family photos. And to the never-ending question: Why?
I’ve become a sideline specialist …
I noticed that my writing and conversations with others convey far less emotion than usual. My reserve for tolerating stress had reached maximum capacity, which I realized upon my first day back at work from vacation three weeks ago as exhaustion immediately erased any sense of relaxation from my trip. Perhaps I should have requested two weeks off instead of one? Either way, …
Being related to a famous person is somewhere between a cruel joke and a minor distraction. My father was immensely talented and worked very hard at his writing, but the degree of his success was a fantastically unlikely bit of luck. There are lots of talented, hard-working artists who don’t make it.
The important thing in overcoming mental illness, whether or not …
Kaitlyn Elkins was a medical student at the Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina and a member of the class of 2015. She excelled academically, named the valedictorian of her high school class and graduating summa cum laude from Campbell University. She wrote poetry in her free time. She had a cat, lovingly named Gatito. On April 11, 2013, just …
A disclaimer before I even get started on this post.
Some of you who know me or work with me will think that by writing this post I am talking about you or even attacking you. I am not. If you’re especially sensitive, don’t read any further.
I am simply writing something that has been kicking around in my head for a long …
I learned recently that the antipsychotic Abilify is the biggest selling prescription drug in the U.S. To be a top seller, a drug has to be expensive and also widely used. Abilify is both. It’s the 14th most prescribed brand-name medication, and it retails for about $30 a pill. Annual sales are over $7 billion, nearly a billion more than the next runner-up.
Yes, you read that right: $30 a pill. A little more …
No physician, however conscientious or careful, can tell what day or hour he may not be the object of some undeserved attack, malicious accusation, blackmail or suit for damages … “
– Assaults Upon Medical Men. Journal of the American Medical Association, 1892
It’s happened again: A well-liked doctor is killed by his patient. Last year’s horrific death of a physician in our community, a …
Every year 300 to 400 physicians commit suicide. More than 10 percent of doctors are thought to have depression, a frequent precursor to suicide. Rates of depression and suicide
What defines a competent psychiatrist? To staunch critics of the field, perhaps nothing. Some believe psychiatry has done far more harm than good, or has never helped anyone, rendering moot the question of competency. What defines a competent buffoon? A skillful brute? An adroit half-wit? Having just finished Robert Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, a reader might easily conclude that psychiatric competency is …
Dr. Kenneth Azar, a mentor of mine at the old Georgia Regional Psychiatric Hospital in Augusta, Georgia, told me something once that has always stuck with me.
He told me that in the early years of his practice, when he was living and working out in Idaho, that he was one of a very small handful of psychiatrists who served the whole state. If an adult with psychosis needed to be …
This article adapted from a lecture presented by Pamela Wible, MD, at the 2014 American Academy of Family Physicians Scientific Assembly in Washington DC.
Why did you go to medical school?
I’m a family physician born into a family of physicians. My parents warned me not to pursue medicine. So I went to medical school. Ten years later, I’m unhappy with the direction …
ADVERTISEMENT
Before the Internet age, people with excessive and irrational worries about their health (we called them “hypochondriacs”) went to their doctors for reassurance. Today these patients still schedule appointment — often with exasperating frequency — with their primary care physicians when they’re concerned about an unusual lump or vague symptom. But most likely they’ll have first consulted WebMD or the Mayo Clinic website and come up with a differential diagnosis of their …
Polypharmacy, or use of multiple psychiatric drugs, for treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is on the rise. A recent study compared treatment with basic therapy (stimulants plus parent training) with augmented therapy (those two plus risperidone, an atypical antipsychotic). The study concluded that treatment with risperidone was superior.
When children show dramatic improvements in behavior on risperidone, now being prescribed with increasing frequency for ADHD and a range …
This evening, I read a post written by a woman who finds herself feeling alone, depressed, desperate, and afraid of losing herself as she goes through medical school.
This post is my response to that woman.
Dear colleague and friend,
You are not alone.
You are far from home. You are far from your family. You are far from the desert, the open …
ADVERTISEMENT
Imagine you go to work one day and your boss says all employees will be evaluated based on the performance of a new set of job skills that require additional training and, perhaps, new computer hardware and software. The boss also announces that some employees will be reimbursed for the cost of acquiring these skills and tools. You aren’t among this privileged group.
In government, this is called an unfunded …
Sluggish cognitive tempo may possibly be the very dumbest and most dangerous diagnostic idea I have ever encountered.
And I have seen some beauts during my forty years of shooting down crazy new diagnostic dream lists. The wild suggestions are usually created by “experts” brim full with diagnostic exuberance — sometimes well meaning, sometimes influenced by extensive drug company affiliations — and always ungoverned by simple common sense, a respect for …
For more than a decade I’ve taught a seminar in dynamic psychotherapy to psychiatry residents. One tricky issue that arises every year is the apparent choice between conducting a “supportive” psychotherapy, versus an “analytic” or “insight-oriented” one. I developed a sailing analogy to clarify this issue, and to teach an important point about it.
Most patients appreciate emotionally comforting support. Many seek a therapist who will provide a listening ear, who …
ADVERTISEMENT
As a psychiatrist, I was trained to begin the mental status examination and overall assessment of my patient as soon as I greeted them in the waiting room. Even now, three decades after finishing medical school, I follow almost the same sequence of actions in my day-to-day interactions with my patients that I did as a resident in training. Granted, there are now electronic medical records and I rarely come …
Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.
