It's Suicide Awareness Month, and suicide rates for doctors are among the highest in the country.
"Even before COVID-19, physician health was deteriorating across the country as well as in Nevada," said Dr. Richard Bryan, Chief Medical Officer of Saint Mary's Regional Medical Center in Reno. The COVID situation just elevated it and made it worse. There are unique challenges that we face every day as physicians, particularly related to our current situation. We're working hard to rectify those challenges, but they do exist."
Especially in Nevada, where there's been a physician shortage for years.
"The State of Nevada is 50th in terms of physicians," Bryan said. "That puts added pressure on us, and then if you lose someone to retirement or something worse, it makes the program worse, not better."
Doctors formed the nonprofit, Nevada Physician Wellness Coalition, so there's a safe place to go for help. It's all anonymous - there's an confidential resource line for mental health services, and a series of speakers scheduled for this month.
"Not only do we want to reduce physician suicide, but we want to reduce physician burnout," said Bryan, who also serves on the board. "Suicide is the ultimate step in the process, but we want to start early on so physicians aren't even close to that point."
Hospitals across the region are showing their support.
"We've partnered with the Nevada Physician Wellness Coalition not only to get the helpline number out there for resources that are anonymous for our physicians, but we've also partnered with them to make sure we can put programming into place," said Tiffany Coury, CEO of Saint Mary's Health Network. "Some of that programming is specific to certain groups amongst our team, some is more broad-based for all of our physicians. There's a silver lining in every sort of unfortunate situation, and this may be one of ours, that physicians are willing to take a step back and realize they have to take care of themselves before they can take care of someone else."
The nonprofit is collecting messages from the community - those that want to thank the doctors that give so much. Those words of gratitude will be posted to the nonprofit's website.
