The idea for PNW MedSpace grew from the experience of seeking mental health care during the COVID pandemic and the resultant trauma from working in the ICU. It also sprung from the experience of the negative toll that providing clinical care can have on chronic mental illness. The common thread amongst these experiences was isolation, shame and fear. There were feelings loneliness and isolation, the absence of colleagues to debrief with, the inability to share with family, consumption with thoughts of needing to be stronger for one’s team and fear that seeking treatment could have medical board and credentialing ramifications.
The hope is that through collaboratively sharing these experiences and resources, we can bring light to and break down the iron walls of stigma and fear. Taking our Hippocratic Oaths was never meant to mean we would be immune to suffering from mental health conditions nor prohibited from seeking treatment.
“A beginning; not the end”
About PNW MedSpace logo: The new diagnosis or exacerbation of mental health conditions for physicians and other patients can feel like an end. The end of medical privacy. The end of future training aspirations. The end of normalcy. A threatened end to being able to support your family and more.
A fellow colleague once said like a semi colon, living with mental illness is a beginning and not the end of your life. There will be adjustments, hard stretches, medications and therapies to complete, but you will emerge whole on the other side and a better provider for it. You will know what it is to suffer, but also know what it is to survive and recover. A semicolon is framed within the background of the cross symbol for medicine to remind us all that coping with these diagnoses in medicine is a beginning and hope still thrives.