Physician Impairment: Social Origins of a Medical Concern

Abstract

Physicians, for at least most of the 20th century, appear to have been especially vulnerable to suicide, depression, substance abuse, and marital discord. Yet concern with so‐called “physician impairment,” as revealed by the extent to which such problems have been discussed openly in the medical literature, has dramatically increased in the last 20 years. This growing concern about problems among physicians has been depicted by some within the medical profession as the result of increased compassion for colleagues and concern for the quality of patient care. But it also reflects major structural and ideological shifts in American society, including post‐Vietnam war anomie and the 1960s “drug scene,” the human potential movement of the 1970s, and the dramatic social transformation of American medicine in the 1980s.