Pamela Wible

Pamela Wible is an American physician and activist who promotes community-designed medical clinics; she also maintains a suicide prevention hotline for medical doctors and medical students. Wible is based in Eugene, Oregon.

Pamela Wible
Born
Pennsylvania, United States
NationalityAmerican
EducationWellesley College (1989)
UTMB/Galveston (1993) MD
OccupationFamily Physician
Doctor Suicide Prevention
Websitewww.idealmedicalcare.org

Biography

Early life

Pamela Laine Wible was born in 1967 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania[1] to physician parents: her mother is a psychiatrist and her father was a pathologist.[2] She spent time growing up both in Philadelphia as well as in rural Texas.[2] She would accompany her father in his work in the morgue, and she spent time visiting state mental hospitals with her mother.[2]

Education

Pamela Wible attended Wellesley College (in Wellesley, Massachusetts) as an undergraduate[3][4] and then received her MD degree in 1993 from the medical school of the University of Texas Medical Branch (in Galveston, Texas).[5] In 1996 she completed her training in Family Medicine at the University of Arizona Department of Family and Community Medicine.[6]

Medical career

Upon completing her medical training, Wible worked for several years in a variety of medical settings, including hospital-based clinics and community health centers.[7] Wible began to experience suicidal ideation due to depression and pressures related to her job[8][9] when she became increasingly frustrated with short patient-appointments and other restrictions, and so she stopped her work in the year 2004, and then in 2005 she held a series of "town hall" meetings where she invited community members to write out what they felt would be the features of an "ideal clinic."[7] In the same year Wible opened up a new clinic in the city of Eugene, Oregon which was based on the recommendations from the community.[7] She has also helped do a similar town-hall feedback session with a hospital in Chippewa Valley in 2010.[10]

Wible's clinic includes same-day appointments, appointments that start on time and a smaller practice size.[11] She also emphasizes "patient-focused medicine."[8] The change in her practice helped her enjoy her work as a physician again.[9]

Wible has set up an anonymous suicide prevention hotline to help doctors and medical students who are contemplating suicide.[12] She also collects stories of doctor suicides as a way of raising awareness of the problem.[13] Wible's work on doctor suicide prevention is featured in the documentary film Do No Harm: Exposing the Hippocratic Hoax, by filmmaker Robyn Symon.[14] In 2015, she spoke at TEDMED about the problem of suicide in the medical profession.[15] Wible also has a blog called Ideal Medical Care which shares physician's stories of their treatment while being trained and also stories of suicides by physicians and trainees.[14]

Wible has also been critical of medical animal testing.[16]

Published works
  • Pet Goats & Pap Smears: 101 Medical Adventures to Open Your Heart & Mind (2012). ISBN 978-0985710309
  • Physician Suicide Letters Answered, (2016). ISBN 978-0985710323
  • Human Rights Violations in Medicine: A-to-Z Action Guide, (2019). ISBN 978-0985710330

See also

References
  1. Marohn, Stephanie, ed. (2010). Goddess Shift: Women Leading for a Change.
  2. "HEALTHCARE HEROES - Pamela Wible, M.D." The Register-Guard. 19 June 2019. Retrieved 2019-09-16.
  3. "FreelanceMD". Retrieved 16 July 2019.
  4. "Wellesley Magazine". Retrieved 16 July 2019.
  5. "USNews & World Report". Retrieved 1 July 2019.
  6. "Family & Community Medicine: Arizona". Retrieved 1 July 2019.
  7. Denniston, Dave (27 July 2015). "3 Strategies to Break out of 'Assembly-Line Medicine'". MD Magazine. Retrieved 16 September 2019.
  8. "A doctor's quest to understand why so many physicians die by suicide". CBC. 22 February 2019. Archived from the original on 11 April 2019. Retrieved 16 September 2019.
  9. Nelson, Eric (2 February 2016). "With New Clinic, 'Physician on a Mission' Keeps Compassion in Fashion". Visalia Times-Delta. Retrieved 16 September 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. Vetter, Chris (27 October 2010). "Hospital Patients' Wish? Treat Us Like Real People". Leader-Telegram. Retrieved 16 September 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. McNulty, Eric J. (30 September 2013). "Reimagining Primary Care: When Small Is Beautiful". Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
  12. Farmer, Blake (6 August 2018). "Doctors Grapple with High Suicide Rates in Their Ranks". Scientific American. Retrieved 17 July 2019.
  13. Farmer, Blake (31 July 2018). "When Doctors Struggle With Suicide, Their Profession Often Fails Them". National Public Radio. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
  14. Chou, Shinnyi (2017). "Do No Harm: The Story of the Epidemic of Physician and Trainee Suicides". American Journal of Psychiatry Residents' Journal. 12 (4): 10. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp-rj.2017.120406. ISSN 2474-4662.
  15. Newkirk, Barrett (19 November 2015). "TEDMED 2015 Get Started in La Quinta". The Desert Sun. Retrieved 16 September 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. McClain, Carla (30 April 1995). "Critics Cringe at Parkinston's Tests Using Monkeys". News-Press. Retrieved 16 September 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
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