Encountering Patient Suicide: A Requirement of the Residency Program Curriculum

Abstract

The article entitled “Encountering Patient Suicide: A Resident’s Experience” (1) is an interesting description of the personal toll that the suicide of a patient may take on an early career resident. The authors review the limited data on the curriculum of residency training programs that specifically address educational programs designed to help residents after a patient suicide. The authors recommend additional formal supports within psychiatry training programs. We wholeheartedly concur with these recommendations and feel they are long overdue. We would add that similar supports should be implemented in medicine and surgery residency programs. Residents in these programs also encounter the unexpected death of a patient but have limited resources available to assist them in processing this loss. Many of the recommendations made in this article should be used to design effective programs for medical and surgical residents. Psychiatry and psychology training programs can, and should, take the lead in developing these programs. The authors report that the experience of a patient suicide is not uncommon (a wide range of incidence of patient