BoulderSoWhat

BoulderSoWhat

Student
Aug 29, 2024
154
Interesting read. My coworker the other day was cutting out pills from a wrongly packaged card. I'm a pharmacy tech. I randomly asked, "do you think surgery can be relaxing work?" Of course this turned into a hilarious conversation lol, but my curiosity wasn't well worded haha. I was more interested about how surgeons try to achieve a state of flow and resilience besides the obvious stakes. Well after work I wanted to explore my curiosity and found bits and pieces of articles that are interesting and relevant. Thought I would share if anyone is interested:


"For those outside the medical profession, it took a global pandemic to finally understand how pervasive distress and suicide are among medical professionals, particularly surgeons.

For James Harrop, MD, it was made real years earlier by a colleague he'd trained alongside and worked with for decades — "one of the best surgeons I've ever seen" who, one day, just wasn't there.

...Weinstein recovered and later gave grand rounds at Thomas Jefferson University, where he is an associate professor of surgery in the Acute Care Surgery Division. But the story stuck with Harrop.

"I said to Mike afterward, I've known you for 20 years and, retrospectively, going back, I never saw a single sign that you were depressed, sad, or had any issues, and he said to me 'that's because I did everything I could to make sure no one knew I had a problem,'" Harrop said during a talk on physician suicide on May 4 at the recent American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) 2024 Annual Meeting.

"And that scared me because we need to help these people, we need to identify who they are."

Quoted from first link, other interesting links provided.




Best :)
 
Last edited:
  • Informative
  • Like
Reactions: binturong, iloveyouihateyou, Forever Sleep and 2 others
an alien

an alien

out of this world
Oct 27, 2024
18
Dentist and Veterinarians also have pretty high suicide rates too. It's honestly heart wrenching how many people out there feel so called to help others that they spend years and years of their life training to help the unwell only for the intense stress and emotional burden of that passion to be the thing that ultimately does them in.
 
  • Like
  • Informative
Reactions: binturong, Forever Sleep, astr4 and 1 other person
mango-meridian

mango-meridian

Student
Apr 5, 2024
101
I always thought about this with surgeons. How do they deal with the fact that a single minor mistake can ruin someone's life forever or even kill them?

Putting the guilt and stress of that aside, I read/heard they can also be sued for bad surgeries. Of course someone needs to be held to account when this happens, but maybe it shouldn't be individual surgeons, but rather the medical facilities they're a part of. People in most jobs don't get sued for having one bad day. It's only after a pattern emerges that they get fired.

I'm no expert but it seems like after doing this every day for decades on end, you would eventually make a mistake. Especially because some surgeries are very unique so you don't have a great way to "practice". Sigh. I hope we find better solutions eventually. I've heard that some surgeons are now able to practice surgeries via VR but I doubt that's a complete solution.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BoulderSoWhat, NoPoint2Life and astr4
KuriGohan&Kamehameha

KuriGohan&Kamehameha

想死不能 - 想活不能
Nov 23, 2020
1,692
It's a fictional story, but you might like Naomi Urasawa's Monster. It's about a surgeon who saves a young boy from the brink of death with an operation, only for the boy to grow up and become a serial killer.

1000032213
 
  • Like
  • Informative
Reactions: ConfusedClouds, iloveyouihateyou and BoulderSoWhat