07/01/2019
RESPONSES/COMMENTS (NON-CLINICAL) - PART 1
RE: Preventing Suicides of Podiatric Residents
From: Patrick DeHeer, DPM
According to a recent study, “In the United States, approximately one physician dies by suicide every day. Training physicians are at particularly high risk, with suicidal ideation increasing more than 4-fold during the first 3 months of an internship year. Despite this increase, to our knowledge, very few efforts have been made to prevent the escalation of suicidal thoughts among training physicians. This study demonstrates that a free, easily accessible, brief [web-based cognitive behavioral therapy (wCBT)] program is associated with reduced likelihood of suicidal ideation among medical interns. Prevention programs with these characteristics could be easily disseminated to medical training programs across the country."
We created a survey based on the survey used by the St. Vincent internal medicine and family practice residencies to examine their residents' well-being. I believe the updated study is critically important. The podiatric profession can either continue to stick our heads in the sand on this topic or examine how it is affecting our future by helping to disseminate this survey.
APMA has agreed to help get the survey out to podiatric residents, and I hope your various organizations will join APMA's efforts to examine our own profession. I will be using my bully pulpit to get the word out. I hope we can help to disseminate our survey to the podiatric residency community. We plan to collect the data and present it to key stakeholders to hopefully develop a podiatric-specific wBCT.
Patrick DeHeer, DPM, Indianapolis, IN
RESPONSES/COMMENTS (NON-CLINICAL) - PART 1
RE: Preventing Suicides of Podiatric Residents
From: Patrick DeHeer, DPM
According to a recent study, “In the United States, approximately one physician dies by suicide every day. Training physicians are at particularly high risk, with suicidal ideation increasing more than 4-fold during the first 3 months of an internship year. Despite this increase, to our knowledge, very few efforts have been made to prevent the escalation of suicidal thoughts among training physicians. This study demonstrates that a free, easily accessible, brief [web-based cognitive behavioral therapy (wCBT)] program is associated with reduced likelihood of suicidal ideation among medical interns. Prevention programs with these characteristics could be easily disseminated to medical training programs across the country."
We created a survey based on the survey used by the St. Vincent internal medicine and family practice residencies to examine their residents' well-being. I believe the updated study is critically important. The podiatric profession can either continue to stick our heads in the sand on this topic or examine how it is affecting our future by helping to disseminate this survey.
APMA has agreed to help get the survey out to podiatric residents, and I hope your various organizations will join APMA's efforts to examine our own profession. I will be using my bully pulpit to get the word out. I hope we can help to disseminate our survey to the podiatric residency community. We plan to collect the data and present it to key stakeholders to hopefully develop a podiatric-specific wBCT.
Patrick DeHeer, DPM, Indianapolis, IN