The silence of struggling healthcare workers is deafening. When will we start listening?
"For every attempt I made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed." -Audre Lorde
1 in 10. One in 10 doctors have had suicidal thoughts, and you will never know who they are. As one of the many who work in healthcare, our struggles are never to be shared. Our silence is purported to be our strength.
The recent study from the 2023 Medscape Physician Suicide Report, is likely just scratching the surface. For context, 4% of the general adult population living in the US have reported suicidal thoughts.
Even more worrisome has been results from other surveys revealing that 93% of healthcare workers were experiencing stress, 86% reported experiencing anxiety, 77% reported frustration, 76% reported exhaustion and burnout, and 75% said they were overwhelmed.
In 2022, I decided to stop practicing. I was an amazing pediatrician, working in a total of 12 countries over 2 decades. I am humble about many things, but not about how well I have practiced my craft of pediatrics, which I dedicated my life to since I was 16.
However, everything changed after experiencing extreme anxiety from my workload in 2018, being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2019; and seeing how protecting the immunocompromised state of my body was not a priority for my workplace in 2020.
In 2021, I finally acknowledged that my passion for patient care had shifted because I could no longer continue to try to put band-aids on the gaping wounds of healthcare.
I realized my patients did not need that version of me, trying to make things work in a broken system. My community needed me to repair a broken system. Rather than continuing my pattern of breaking myself into pieces to do both, continuing my role as clinician and leader, I decided to choose.
Sacrificing my career of practicing medicine was a no-brainer. It meant the opportunity to grow & lead a new health practice where we change the practice of medicine. This didn't just shift my life; it saved it.
I would not be silent. I would not change my vision for just & equitable healthcare, just my venue.
I now see so much more as I have stepped off the dance floor and moved behind the scenes where decisions are being made on how the dance floor should look and who gets to be on it.
Only now, after building practices where both our providers and our patients can thrive, I see how critical reimagining & recreating healthcare is.
It is only now, after helping dozens of BIPOC clinician-founders who courageously choose to start & scale healthcare spaces on their terms, that I see how powerful this work is for their communities.
It is only now, after leaving the system that trained me to revile my need for rest & choose martyrdom as a badge of honor, that I was able to begin the journey of finding myself and my mission in medicine.
As a physician, now an entrepreneur, I always have acknowledged the privileges that now allow me to move differently in this world than many. As a Black woman physician, I never allowed myself to be; it was too dangerous. The safest thing was to do.
I don't choose to accept the term burnout, as if something is innately wrong with me because my body and mind were no longer willing to stay in the traditional spaces of this healthcare system. We as healthcare providers, particularly those of color, find ourselves in spaces of extreme isolation unable to share our pain with anyone.