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Pamela Wible | |
|---|---|
| Born | Pennsylvania, United States |
| Education | Wellesley College (1989) UTMB/Galveston (1993) MD |
| Occupations | Family Physician Doctor Suicide Prevention |
| Website | www |
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 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]
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]
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] [14] Wible's work on doctor suicide prevention is featured in the documentary film Do No Harm: Exposing the Hippocratic Hoax, by filmmaker Robyn Symon. [15] In 2015, she spoke at TEDMED about the problem of suicide in the medical profession. [16] 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. [15]
Wible has also been critical of medical animal testing. [17]
In February 2023, three United States senators sent a letter to the Department of Justice [18] which cited a study by Wible [19] in a call to investigate state medical boards which discriminate against physicians on the basis of disabilities, including mental health issues.
