Doctor Suicide Dream Team (4 pm ET) ~ Intimate group of physicians sharing our suicide attempts and survival. We discuss (hidden) reasons docs die by suicide & effective ways to end physician suicide now. View our free training. (1 hour). Register here.
❤️ Confidential groups curated by Dr. Wible @ $97/mo. All healers welcome ❤️
Register now for your confidential Zoom link.
(Session nonrefundable once link shared)
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Boundary Enforcement for People Pleaser Empaths with Savior Complex
Are YOU a People Pleaser?
You have a strong desire to please others, even at your own expense. You are kind, helpful, agreeable, yet may have difficulty saying no or advocating for yourself.
Are YOU an Empath?
You are highly attuned to emotions and feel deeply the feelings of others around you.
Do YOU Have Savior Complex?
You feel compelled to help others, often at the expense of your own needs. You take on too much responsibility, then feel exhausted. You can’t stop because you believe helping others is your purpose.
If you have any of these conditions, this is for YOU.
Question: Do you ever feel people take advantage of your kindness (and weak boundaries)?
My friend Randy, a family doc, is now in prison after DEA agents posed as patients. Despite his resistance, Randy was manipulated into prescribing controlled substances. His compassion and weak boundaries have led to 15 years in prison!
If you are a people pleaser empath (PPE), you need PPE— personal protective equipment—STRONG BOUNDARIES!
On Sunday, October 6 @ 5 pm PT (8 pm ET) learn boundary enforcement for physicians. I’ll share 3 strategies to enforce boundaries—and the huge benefits to your mental and physical health.
Having boundaries even prevents doctor suicides.
Enforcing boundaries saves you time and money, brings joy and fulfillment.
Strong boundaries will keep you out of prison.
Don’t wait until your medical board mandates a boundary course with license repercussions or (even worse) a physician “health” program forces you into a 90-day partial hospitalization as a requirement to return to work as a doctor. I know 30 physicians who have died by suicide while getting “help” in these “health” programs. Punishment is not help.
If you have boundary issues—be proactive. Get confidential non-punitive help outside the medical regulatory complex that oversees your license to practice medicine.
One-hour session with Q & A is $100.
Register now for your Zoom link.
See you Sunday Oct 6 @ 5 pm PT (8 pm ET)
Dr. Wible is a medical writer/editor who advocates for physicians suffering rights violations by hospitals, residency programs, medical boards, and physician “health” programs. She helps physicians launch independent businesses (no medical license required). Need help? Contact Dr. Wible.
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This week I spoke with a doc who left the US to escape her violent husband, another crying about financial manipulation by her spouse, and a pediatrician who still struggles with anxiety after child abuse by his father.
Domestic violence is a pattern of coercive physical, emotional, sexual or financial abuse (using money to exert control).
I never thought of myself a DV survivor, but police were at my house as a kid after assaults between my physician parents.
Most don’t seek help—especially doctors. We screen patients for DV & offer resources, yet we often can’t reveal our pain without career repercussions by medical boards and punitive physician “health” programs.
I had a chaotic and scary childhood. I’ve healed from anxiety and PTSD. Here’s the one thing that helped me most. Talking.
Sunday I’m hosting a small confidential Zoom room for docs impacted by DV.
Register here to join us. CONFIDENTIAL.
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By Bob Peters, M.D.
Few surgeries are filmed. All are stored in our bodies as lived experiences.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could erase certain memories? Ones we most wish to forget may impact us
forever—our traumatic cases. Our saddest moments pop into our consciousness and seem to never
leave. But we can put cases in their proper places, learn from them, and ultimately become better
physicians. Nearing retirement, I wish to share what has helped me.
1. Feeling Grief. My most challenging first step was to fully and openly grieve patient experiences
stored in my library. To contemplatively sit with each tragedy; to see the patient as a person; to
remember them in context of their family—and do so non-judgmentally. I can think of no greater
shortcoming in modern medical training than our failure to give doctors the opportunity to feel sad.
Our fast-paced surgical training and machismo culture make it impossible to feel grief or gain
psychological tools to heal from inevitable trauma. Emotionally, we must fend for ourselves.
Grieving is rarely discussed among surgeons, so we assume denial or suppressing sadness is
effective. How wrong we are is confirmed by our high rates of substance abuse, depression, divorce,
cynicism—and suicide.
2. Learning Compassion. If we grieve well, one benefit is development of compassion for how hard
life is for all people. Self-compassion is essential for surgeons, especially if we blame ourselves for
bad outcomes, if we are stuck on repeat loop of “what if I had done such-and-such instead?” Our
videotape library can be a tyrant: harshly judgmental and full of uncaring accusations directed at our
own humanity. Of all people in our world, we have the hardest time extending grace and kindness to
ourselves. Surgical culture teaches us it’s weak and selfish to do so.
3. Asking Questions. Perhaps in time sad cases take their proper places and can make us more human. Since we cannot erase cases perhaps we should question how we categorize them in our library.
When did the sad part of our library start? How has our own family of origin or medical culture
contributed to tragedies in our library? What if sad memories are not our enemies? What if tragedy
has no intent to torment, judge, or criticize? What if our sad cases help us ask questions about how
we define medical care, how we categorize winning and losing? What if our sad category exists
because we do not see ourselves and our work accurately. As mutual sojourners with patients our
paths cross during medical crises. We do the best we can. As humans that’s all we can do.
4. Experiencing Joy. Embracing honesty while sorting through my own videotape library has given
me the gift of real joy. I cannot feel the joy of my amazing impact of my surgical career on the many,
if I unconsciously remain emotionally shut down in the sad outcomes of a few. Unhealthy tethering
to past tragedy leads to our negative distortion of our work and life’s purpose; it robs us of joy we’re
all meant to feel from our work—and appreciation our patients want us to feel. When a patient with
tears in their eyes thanks me for a successful surgery, I can never fully receive their love if I feel
unworthy of gratitude due to past tragedies infecting my mind. Being in denial or suppressing my
sadness only thwarts my experience of joy. As doctors, we desperately need joy—it’s our best
antidote to despair, cynicism, and suicide.
Dr. Peters has practiced pediatric & adult otology/neurotology for over 30 years at Dallas Ear Institute. Join him in our physician peer support group for a deeper discussion. Need help? Contact Dr. Wible.
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In 2023, I lost two dear physician friends. To overzealous DEA agents.
Michelle, a stellar emergency physician with well-treated depression/ADHD for 20 years couldn’t find anyone to continue her meds when her doc retired. Depressed, she shot herself Christmas Day.
Randy could have saved Michelle. But he was in prison for prescribing the meds Michelle needed to undercover DEA agents.
Physician entrapment is the act of tricking a doc into committing a crime to secure prosecution.
Thirty years ago, we were trained to treat all pain.
“In the mid 1990s, certain pharmaceutical companies funded non-profit organizations focused on pain management, which led to the belief that the medical community was undertreating chronic pain . . . the Federation of American Medical Boards urged medical societies to punish prescribers who undertreated pain.”
In 1999, my own Oregon Medical Board was first to discipline a doctor for not prescribing pain meds. Now docs are in prisdon for treating pain.
In 2015 Randy attended my launch your ideal clinic seminar. An internist who left big-box medicine to care for elders, Randy celebrated his new clinic at our May retreat.
Weeks prior, undercover DEA agents began visiting his clinic. Matthew Dixon and Craig Crawford saw Dr. Randy Lamartiniere for nine separate visits April to September 2015. See USA vs. Lamartiniere.
7 tips your patients may be undercover DEA agents
DEA agents often:
1) Use slang.
“I’ve gotten a ‘couple of roxies’ from my friend that made me feel good.” ~ DEA Agent Crawford
Doc Randy replied: “Do you have any history of drug abuse? Your symptoms are really not something that any doctor should prescribe a major narcotic for.”
2) Take friends’ meds.
“I took some of my coworker’s ‘addies’ to help me stay awake.” ~ DEA Agent Dixon
Doc Randy: “Taking Adderall for that purpose is illegal and using Adderall to stay awake is non-indication for adult ADD.”
3) Claim a doc prescribed med in past.
“But another doc gave me ADD meds when I had trouble focusing.” ~ DEA Agent Dixon
Randy sought other solutions before reluctantly prescribing Adderall 20 mg.
4) Fill meds out of state.
“I filled my prescription in Texas.” ~ DEA Agent Dixon
“I filled my prescription in Mississippi.” ~ DEA Agent Crawford
Randy: “Louisiana’s PMP shows no record of you filling my last prescription. I can only give you one more prescription unless you return with records confirming you filled your prescription . . . they’re using people like you to catch doctors like this, so that’s why I have to be careful. I also need you to get an MRI of your back.”
5) Say prescription was stolen.
“I need another prescription because a guy stole mine.” ~ DEA Agent Crawford
Randy: “The only way to get another prescription would be to have a police report, but it is hard to get police to write reports on stolen drugs because they know that some people will use that to get more medication.”
6) Run out of meds early.
“I haven’t taken the meds you prescribed in several weeks because I ran out.” ~ DEA Agent Dixon
Randy: “I’m going to drug test you in order to ensure prescriptions are not being diverted. Unfortunately they treat doctors like they’re supposed to be detectives these days. They can take licenses away.”
7) Beg for higher doses.
“Do you have anything stronger that would last longer?” ~ DEA Agent Crawford
Randy: “Problem is all these pain medicines are addictive and people develop a tolerance to them which is especially concerning for someone that’s not really in a lot of pain as you said. . . . You must sign a pain management agreement or I’m not be able to continue prescribing your meds.”
Despite his hesitation, Randy prescribed Percocet 10 mg #90.
Never prescribe controlled substances to DEA agents.
Randy hoped to see a mix of elder patients for $100/month in his clinic. [Note: his cheap flat monthly fee ensured he was not earning money per visit or per prescription]. Because boards were sanctioning docs prescribing controlled substances, Randy got an influx of discarded patients. Within a year, he had 250 patients, eighty percent abandoned by other docs.
Many docs now refuse “high-risk” patients. To avoid entrapment, a few choose not to renew DEA licensure.
One pain patient testified Randy was “one of the hardest pain doctors” from whom to obtain narcotics.
So was Randy running a pill mill? Or was he too kind to deceptive DEA agents?
Randy reminds me of my dad. Both old-school docs upholding their oath to soothe pain of all who suffer. Like Randy, Dad even “lent” patients bus money. Had DEA agents visited my dad, I’m sure he’d be in prison too.
Randy’s not a street-smart police officer. No doctor is. Yet people-pleaser docs must think like cops when caring for undercover DEA agents.
I just mailed Randy a letter. Want to check up on him? Here’s his address and inmate number:
Randy Lamartiniere, MD
Inmate Number 09020-095
FCI Seagoville
Federal Correction Institution
P.O. Box 9000
Seagoville, TX 75159
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Doctor revived after suicide. Here's what he says.
