According to russian media, on 9 december, researchers found that doctors were much more likely to suffer from depression than those in other professions. The russian newspaper published an article on the impact of a doctor's mental state on patients ' health。
The cost of medical failure is enormous: in better cases, medical errors cause patients to undergo weeks of “excessive” treatment and to bear the additional cost of medication for them, and in the worst cases, medical errors cause death. As a result, such professional responsibility affects doctors psychologically, making their work more stressful and unstable。
A few months ago, the american journal of preventive medicine published an article in which the author analysed the statistics on suicide in the united states for the period 2003-2010 and learned what professions people were more likely to commit suicide. The study found that doctors, firefighters, soldiers, rescue workers and security personnel were three times more at risk of suicide than other professions. Experts cited the high levels of work stress and chronic anxiety as contributing factors to the high rates of suicide in these occupations。
As a result, a research team, co-chaired by professors from the university of michigan and the haft school of medicine in the united states, decided to study the impact of psychological stress on the psychological state of doctors. The experts analysed data from 54 studies, including those carried out between january 1963 and september 2015, and those published in scientific journals. Data on the psychological status of a total of 17,560 doctors, from interns to senior specialists, are included in these studies。
Research results indicate that about 28. 8 per cent of doctors are depressed (who data show that some 350 million people worldwide are currently suffering from depression, representing 5 per cent of the world's population). At the same time, intern doctors and experienced doctors do not find significant differences in depression levels. In the course of these studies, data error ranges between 21 and 46 per cent. In addition, analysis shows that the proportion of doctors suffering from depression has been rising over 50 years。
According to research experts, doctors usually suffer from depression during the first year of their period of study, which is just after university graduation. Work during this period was characterized by working late hours,** with a high volume of information available as soon as possible and a low profile among the medical team。
And doctors are not only experiencing tremendous psychological stress at the early stages of their careers. The findings of another research team led by colin west, an expert at the meo clinic (one of the private medical centres in** the world), indicate that doctors in depression are more likely to make mistakes in treating patients。
The results were published in jama magazine. The scholars conducted a survey among young intern doctors about the number of medical errors they had made in recent months and the impact of those medical errors on their psychological state. The results show that mistakes in the early stages of working alone tend to panic young doctors and lead them to doubt their expertise and professional skills. As a result, they began to shorten their rest periods, their working hours were redundant and additional books in the medical category were being read. All of this will lead to psychological depression, and the number of failures will not decrease, but will increase, and experts estimate that it will double. In such cases, their attitude towards patients changes, and they begin to view patients as a group that should be treated as a problem and a source of psychological stress。
According to colin west, “appropriate stress can be a positive force for people, but once pressure becomes too high, it begins to have a negative impact on work. At the beginning of the work, no doctor was able to avoid errors. And i believe that under no circumstances does an intern wish to be able to provide help to the patient, even if it does nothing. However, the state of the attending physician is of great importance to the patient, who will soon be aware of it once the doctor is depressed or exhausted.”
Colin west also pointed out that attention should be paid to the problem and that professional counselling was provided to doctors who needed help in that regard, so that greater medical accidents could be avoided。
