Doctor Suicide In Samuel Shem's The House Of God

Doctor suicide is a difficult topic to discuss, how can a savior of lives end up dead like the ones he or she was trying to save? Doctors killing themselves is a real problem in today’s society. From novels such as Samuel Shem’s The House of God, to major news outlets, all discuss in countless articles on the tragic topic. Lots of doctors and psychiatrists have attempted to answer the question. Pamela Wible’s article What I’ve Learned from my Tally of 757 Doctor Suicides and Pranay Sinha’s Why Do Doctors Commit Suicide, provides two reasons for the plague of doctor suicide. These three sources have a common backing: stress. Stress comes a variety of fashions, but two common ones are: stress comes either from the patients, or stress comes from

Problems not just specific to the world of medicine, even a problem in their personal lives can cause stress. In Samuel Shem’s novel, titled The House of God, a good friend of Roy Basch, the leading protagonist, kills himself. The death is attributed to how he gave a patient yellow fever by giving the patient the wrong medicine. All of Potts’ friends, the doctor who killed himself, though, attribute his suicide to Potts never telling any of them he messed up. This the poses a question, how come hospitals do not actively encourage doctors to discuss their worries with each other? The House of God is a work of fiction, but hospitals not encouraging discussion about doctor shortcomings is common in writings about doctor suicides. As mentioned in both Dr. Pamela Wible’s What I’ve Learned from my Tally of 757 Doctor Suicides on the Washington Post, and Dr. Pranay Sinha’s Why Do Doctors Commit Suicide on the New York Times, the ability for doctors to have a safe environment to talk about their feelings with peers is highly valuable. It can cause a doctor feel like he or she is not alone in the tug-of-war with