Psychiatrists on the PRMS Blog

A few days ago, an Asiana Airlines 777 crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport.  The comments from the talking heads on TV as well as the general public were predictable: “How could an accident like this happen?” and “It’s a miracle that only two people out of the more than 300 aboard were killed” and “I’ll never feel safe flying again.”  Relatively few noted that i ...

Just recently, the Illinois legislature set aside a psychologist prescribing bill after initially supporting it.  (The Illinois Psychiatric Society’s president, Eldon Trame, MD, gives a nice summary of the whole process here.) What led me to explore what happened in Illinois was an article in the most recent issue of Psychiatric Times, “Why Psychiatrists Are Physicians First,” ...

Doctors in every specialty today are wrestling with a key question: What is the price of independent practice, and is the price worth it? Increasingly, their answer is “The price is too high; I’m ready to sell.” A recent article in Medical Economics (free registration required) highlighted the issue: Independent Physician: 6 steps you can take to remain independent – for now (A ...

As Martin pointed out in his blog last week, suicide is one of the two most common events leading to litigation against psychiatrists, the other being related to psychopharmacology.  PRMS has since 1986, handled thousands of events, claims, and lawsuits involving a patient suicide or suicide attempt.  From all of those cases, there are many lessons learned, including the follow ...

Trying to predict the future is probably not the most productive use of anyone’s time, but it’s fun sometimes to think about what the world will be like in 10, or 20, or 30 years. When you speculate about the future, it’s a good idea to keep in mind Bill Gates’ comment about human predictions: “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underest ...

Several months ago, I read the widely reported case of the French psychiatrist who received a suspended one-year prison sentence after one of her patients had committed murder.  In the popular press, few details beyond that were included. Since we focus on psychiatry in the US, I didn’t make a point to follow up on the case. I do remember thinking, however, that despite the Tar ...

It always pays to be skeptical of anything you read with a publication date of April 1. Most newspapers, and even a few scholarly journals, try to slip an April Fool’s article past their readers. Thus, I was leery of a Medscape Medical News article, datelined April 1, 2013, entitled “Psychiatrist Burnout Less Than Most Other Physicians’.” My skepticism, however, was misplaced – ...

You probably already knew that, but now there’s new confirmation. I’m referring to the Medscape 2013 Ethics Report, Ethics in Medicine – What Makes Psychiatrists Unique? (free site registration required), published March 13, 2013. Of the 24,000 physicians who participated in the survey, 1600 were psychiatrists. The report notes that the psychiatrists’ answers to eight questions ...

Right after Labor Day each year, “meeting season” starts. From early September through mid-November, it seems every psychiatric organization holds a meeting; our goal is to attend as many of them as possible. In the past nine weeks, PRMS staff attended more than 50 meetings throughout the country.  These included APA district branch meetings, US Psychiatric Congress, Northern C ...

No one is more pleasantly surprised than I am to see that a number of you have become regular readers of this blog. Up to this point, we at PRMS have chosen the topic of each post, based largely on what we think you may be interested in reading about.  We would, however, like to hear from you. What do you want us to write about?   Please send us your questions.  You can email m ...