This book provides a reference and contextual basis for depression, burnout and suicide among oncology and other medical professionals. Oncology as a medical subspecialty is at a unique apex of this crisis. While the same pressures in medicine certainly apply to oncologists, oncology is particularly stressful as a changing field with diverse patient and societal expectations for outcomes. In addition to experiencing the stress of caring for patients that could succumb to their cancer diagnoses, these professionals are regularly confronted with an onslaught of new medical information and a landscape that is changing at a breakneck pace. These are just a few factors involved in the increasing rates of burnout among oncologists as well as other medcial professionals. By addressing a gap in identifying mental health problems among health care professionals, this book sheds light on mental health problems and suicide among physicians. Importantly, this book is a call to action of the professional and administrative organizations to work on improving mental health of physicians. Anxiety and depression affect not only the individual doctor but also patient care. Given the increasing attention to these issues along with limited yet applicable data regarding how to address these issues, the text aims to bring the latest data face to face with consensus opinion and can be used to ultimately enhance oncologic and psychiatric practices. Written by experts in the field, Depression, Burnout and Suicide in Physicians: Insights from Oncology and Other Medical Professions aims to significantly increase awareness and contribute to understanding the necessity of preventive measures on individual, family, and care givers levels.

Patient-centered, high-quality health care relies on the well-being, health, and safety of health care clinicians. However, alarmingly high rates of clinician burnout in the United States are detrimental to the quality of care being provided, harmful to individuals in the workforce, and costly. It is important to take a systemic approach to address burnout that focuses on the structure, organization, and culture of health care. Taking Action Against Clinician Burnout: A Systems Approach to Professional Well-Being builds upon two groundbreaking reports from the past twenty years, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System and Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, which both called attention to the issues around patient safety and quality of care. This report explores the extent, consequences, and contributing factors of clinician burnout and provides a framework for a systems approach to clinician burnout and professional well-being, a research agenda to advance clinician well-being, and recommendations for the field.

Physicians are known to be a group of professionals who are at risk of taking their own lives. In this easy-to-read book, Dr. Michael Myers, a psychiatrist and specialist in physician health, attempts to explain the mystery of why some doctors, despite their calling and the adoration of their families, patients, students and colleagues, perish by suicide. He combines the powerful and gripping insights of dozens of bereaved people whom he interviewed for this project with disguised stories from his decades long clinical practice to shed some light on this national tragedy. The stigma attached to mental illness in doctors is ubiquitous and pernicious - and, because untreated illness is one of the major drivers to suicide, Dr. Myers argues that stigma must be fought with urgency and might. He makes across-the-board recommendations in an effort to prevent suicide in physicians and concludes that everyone has a role to play in saving a doctor's life. This is a book about heartbreak, loss, prevailing, growth, passion and hope. It's a book for doctors themselves, their families, those who train them, those who treat them and those who care about them.

The book examines how the related disorders of burnout, anxiety, depression, and addiction, can lead to suicide and explores the influence of gender, culture, aging, and personal resilience on outcomes. In addition, it investigates ways to mitigate the impact of these factors to improve physician health and well-being.

This book is the first to dissect the factors contributing to burnout that impact women physicians and seeks to appropriately address these issues. The book begins by establishing the differences in epidemiology between female physicians and their male counterparts, including rates of burnout, depression and suicide, chosen fields, caregiving responsibilities at home, career tradeoffs in dual physician marriages, patient satisfaction and outcomes, academic rank, leadership positions, salary, and turnover. The second part of the book explores the drivers of physician burnout that disproportionately affect women, each chapter beginning with a case vignette. This section covers many issues that often go unrecognized including unconscious bias, sexual harassment, gender role conflicts, domestic responsibilities, depression, addiction, financial stress, and the impact related to reproductive health such as pregnancy and breastfeeding. The book concludes by focusing on strategies to prevent and/or mitigate burnout among individual women physicians across the career lifespan.This section also includes recommendations to change the culture of medicine and the systems that contribute to burnout. Burnout in Women Physicians is an excellent resource for physicians across all specialties who are concerned with physician wellness and burnout, including students, residents, fellows, and attending physicians.

Wherever people are working, there is some type of stress—and where there is stress, there is the risk of burnout. It is widespread, the subject of numerous studies in the U.S. and abroad. It is also costly, both to individuals in the form of sick days, lost wages, and emotional exhaustion, and to the workplace in terms of the bottom line. But as we are now beginning to understand, burnout is also preventable. Burnout for Experts brings multifaceted analysis to a multilayered problem, offering comprehensive discussion of contributing factors, classic and less widely perceived markers of burnout, coping strategies, and treatment methods. International perspectives consider phase models of burnout and differentiate between burnout and related physical and mental health conditions. By focusing on specific job and life variables including workplace culture and gender aspects, contributors give professionals ample means for recognizing burnout as well as its warning signs. Chapters on prevention and intervention detail effective programs that can be implemented at the individual and organizational levels. Included in the coverage: · History of burnout: a phenomenon. · Personal and external factors contributing to burnout. · Depression and burnout · Assessment tools and methods. · The role of communication in burnout prevention. · Active coping and other intervention strategies. Skillfully balancing scholarship and accessibility, Burnout for Experts is a go-to resource for health psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, and organizational, industrial, and clinical psychologists.

Edited by experts on burnout, five sections lay out the scope of the challenge and outline potential interventions. The introduction, which discusses the history and social context of burnout, provides psychiatrists who may be struggling with burnout with much-needed perspective. Subsequent sections discuss the potential effects of burnout on clinical care, contextual elements that may contribute to burnout, and, potential systemic and individual interventions.

"This volume is a collaboration by several psychiatrists and psychologists who posit a new culture, one that is supportive of the health and well-being of health care professionals and the patients and populations they serve. The individual and systemic barriers to professional well-being and the unique challenges faced by health care providers at different stages of professional and personal development are examined. Personal resilience and realistic strategies to improve well-being are discussed. Detailed case studies and vignettes and thought-provoking discussion questions and exercises are included"--

In Physician Suicide Letters-Answered, Dr. Wible exposes the pervasive and largely hidden medical culture of bullying, hazing, and abuse that claims the lives of countless medical students, doctors, and patients. Now-for the first time released to the public-here are private letters and last words from our doctors who could no longer bear the pain of an abusive medical system. What you don't know about medical training and culture can kill you. Dr. Wible takes you behind the white coat and into the mind, heart, and soul of our doctors-and provides answers.

This book explores the important topic of mental health and related problems among physicians, including trainees. The all-too-common human response of “suffering in silence” and refusing to seek help for professional and personal issues has ramifications for physicians who work in safety-sensitive positions, where clear-headed judgment and proper action can save lives. Problems covered include burnout, disruptive and unprofessional behaviors, impaired performance, traumatic stress, addiction, depression and other mood disorders, and suicide. The authors of this work include psychologists, psychiatrists, and other physicians who diagnose and treat a range of patients with stress-related syndromes. Among their patients are physicians who benefit greatly from education, support, coaching, and treatment. The book's content is organized into three parts with interconnecting themes. Part I focuses on symptoms and how physicians’ problems manifest at the workplace. Part II discusses the disorders underlying the manifesting symptoms. Part III focuses on interventions at both the individual and organizational levels. The major themes investigated throughout the book are developmental aspects; mental health and wellbeing as a continuum; and the multifactorial contributions of individual, interpersonal, organizational, and cultural elements to physician health. This book is intended for anyone who works with, provides support to, or professionally treats distressed physicians. It is also intended for healthcare leaders and organizations that are motivated to improve the experience of providing care and to change the culture of silence, such that seeking help and counsel become normal activities while minimizing stigma. By writing this book, the authors aim to outline effective pathways to well-being and a healthy work-life balance among physicians, so that they may provide optimal and safe care to their patients.