THROWBACK TO THE FULL INFORMED CONSENT (Oct. 5, 2023): The Doctors Are Not Okay

Full informed consent is essential, especially for marginalized communities who often face unique risks in healthcare. It means understanding all aspects of a decision—benefits, risks, and alternatives—so choices can be made with confidence and care. That’s the heart of The Full Informed Consent, my blog-style newsletter where I unpack the often-overlooked dangers in child mental healthcare and psychiatry. Each post offers practical strategies and actionable tips to help families protect their children, minimize harm, and ensure mental healthcare is truly thoughtful and caring.

Read a bit below. Visit my website for the full article.

When I started medical school nearly 20 years ago, I expected my colleagues and training and to be compassionate, nurturing, and enriching. Becoming a doctor was about helping people, and healthcare is supposed to be caring. So, I assumed the training and the people would be, too. But I could not have been more wrong.

The doctors are not okay, and the medical profession is not well.

Their emotional health and wellbeing are poor at all stages of professionalization. Almost 30% of medical students and residents suffer from depression and 10% report having suicidal thoughts. Physicians’ suicide rates are significantly higher than the general population, particularly among female physicians. Physician burnout, a work-related syndrome characterised by emotional exhaustion, reduced personal accomplishment and negative attitudes towards patients, affects over 50% of providers across specialties and training stages. It is also associated with depression and suicide.

There are a variety of explanations for these findings, including workplace stress and demands. However, fewer explanatory frameworks point to the abuse and mistreatment endemic to medical training and professionalization–perhaps because that’s something that the professions do not want to talk about. According to a 2018 report, female medical students were 220% more likely than non-STEM students to have faced sexual harassment from faculty or staff. It concluded, “many features of the medical profession, including its historical male dominance, strong hierarchies, and culture that [tolerates] mistreatment [increase] the risk of sexual harassment in the workplace.” Medicine’s toxic power dynamics and steep professional training create an environment rife with abuse and discrimination, especially for women, people of color, and lesbian, gay, and bisexual medical students. Not surprisingly, a number of outstanding women of color physicians have left organized healthcare settings to forge their own paths free of this toxicity. Some have had no choice but to leave: Black doctors are forced out of training programs at far higher rates than white residents, sabotaging their careers before they have a chance to start. This expulsion is devastating after years of grueling training and a burden of debt that averages the hundreds of thousands of dollars range.

If the doctors are not okay, what does this mean for you or your child’s healthcare?

It means that the care is often uncaring.

Read more...