Back in April a colleague and friend of mine took their final specialty exam and then went missing. No one had seen or heard from them, although their car and phone were located. After 4 distressing weeks of ifs, buts, and maybes, their body was found.
As a group of trainees, this is beyond devastating. Someone who we have sat with in lectures on how to look for danger signs of burnout, low mood, and suicide prevention is now possibly one of those statistics. The sense of individual collective responsibility is horrendous. How did we not see? How did we not act? Aren’t we being trained to try to protect those in our care from this?
The disconnect starts in medical school. Success is everything and failure is a dirty word. We …