Editor’s Note: Dr Pamela Buchanan is a board certified emergency medicine physician, a TEDx speaker and expert on burnout and stress physiology.
She has granted me permission to post one of her recent poignant essays. We all can learn from her words.
Her name was Dr. Nakita Mortimer.
Today, September 17, is National Physician Suicide Awareness Day.
So today I want you to know her name.
Dr. Nakita Mortimer.
She was a young Black woman physician.
A daughter of Haitian immigrants.
An anesthesiology resident at Montefiore Medical Center.
And she was fighting for doctors before we lost her.
Dr. Mortimer didn’t quietly accept the way medicine treated residents.
She advocated for better working conditions.
She helped organize resident physicians.
She spoke about long hours, enormous student debt, inadequate compensation, and a medical culture that expects residents to endure almost anything in the name of becoming a physician
Then, in May 2023, Dr. Nakita Mortimer died by suicide.
She was 30 years old.
I want to be careful here.
We cannot say that residency caused her suicide.
Suicide is complicated, and none of us knows all that she was carrying.
But we can listen to what she told us when she was alive.
She told us the system needed to change.
After her death, the Association of Black Women Physicians said: “The culture of medicine must shift.”
They called for:
Realistic work hours and responsibilities
Confidential Mental Health Services
A commitment to physician wellness
Inclusive non-toxic workplaces
Three years later, we are still having this conversation.
An estimated 300-400 physicians die by suicide every year in the United States.
Approximately one doctor every single day.
Think about that.
We spend our careers keeping everyone else alive while some of us are quietly trying to figure out how to stay alive ourselves.
I understand that more personally than I wish I did.
And medicine does not make asking for help easy.
We learn early:
Keep working
Keep rounding
See the next patient
Don’t complain
Be resilient
Be strong
And as Black women?
Sometimes it feels like we get an additional prescription:
Be twice as strong
No:
A physician asking for help is still a physician
A physician taking medicine is still a physician
A physician going to therapy is still a physician
And a physician saying, “I am not okay” should not have to become a tragedy before
someone listens
Dr. Nakita Mortimer was more than the way she died.
She was a physician:
A leader
An advocate
A Black woman trying to make medicine better for the physicians coming behind her
Say her name: Dr. Nakita Mortimer
And then let’s build a medical system where fewer names need to be said this way.
We cannot afford to lose one more.
If you are struggling, call or text 988.
Physicians can also call the Physician Support Line: 1-888-409-0141
