Surgeon describes mental health crisis in medicine after Brisbane doctor's suicide
A 13-year surgical veteran breaks silence on depression, burnout, and systemic pressures driving physician mental illness.
What to know
- A 13-year surgeon describes systematic physician burnout driven by extreme on-call schedules, loss of daily autonomy, and administrative burden—not individual mental illness.
- The essay was catalyzed by Dr. Andrew Bryant's suicide, signaling that mental health crises among physicians are tied to workplace systems rather than personal failings.
- The piece highlights a structural problem: inadequate hospital staffing forces individual doctors to accept unsustainable duty schedules to prevent patient care gaps.
- Administrative policies designed to reduce costs and increase output, often written by non-clinicians, compound workload and loss of control.
Anonymous surgeon (Dr. Eric Levi) Surgeon, 13-year practitionerDr. Andrew Bryant Brisbane gastroenterologist
How it unfolded 1 development · click the chart to see its coverage articlesposts
-
background
Surgeon's essay gains traction on Hacker News — The essay reached Hacker News frontpage with significant engagement (63 points, 25 comments in the earliest tracked version), surfacing broader conversation about physician mental health and systemic workplace pressures in medicine.
-
1
“Work is often the critical exacerbating and perpetuating factor in those dark times. Because as a surgeon I spend the vast majority of my lifetime at work, what happens there influences all other aspects of my life.”
— Anonymous surgeon -
(speaking from US): The reality is we need more doctors. A lot more.There's no solution other than training a lot, lot, lot, lot more doctors.Their salaries need to be lower, training needs to be cheaper and faster, and we need a lot more of them.
2 more of the top 3 · 4 posts in this stretch
-
I remember some friends working in intensive care during the pandemic, I'll never forget their facial expressions after these 24hr shifts... I really wish someone would come up with a better way to do this
-
Healthcare is the last industry that should be privatized. It should be for the public good rather than for the profit of few.
-
-
background
Dr. Andrew Bryant, Brisbane gastroenterologist, dies by suicide — Dr. Andrew Bryant, a gastroenterologist in Brisbane, died by suicide. His wife subsequently wrote a public letter about his death.
Also covered reported alongside — the timeline has no entry for these yet
-
2 outlets The darker side of being a doctor
first by HN Best, 16h ago · also HN Frontpage
What people are saying 22 voices from 2 sites · best of 32 · verbatim
- Today
-
It's definitely not OK for warehouse workers either. Because we can't retain workers or hire new ones that leave every week, our baseline pay was raised $1.65 to a whole $20/hr while the competition pays more still. We had a suicide hotline poster at the security building exit that's no longer there. We have a propped up emotional well-being…
-
Reading that letter of the wife I have a hard time to realize how you can be a person without a history of depression, with a wife, a son - and then all of a sudden you commit suicide in your office. Sure circumstances can be devasting and there is a lot of shit going on in the medical system.
-
D
Be aware, there is some rough stuff in this one, including open discussion of suicide. The darker side of being a doctor https:// drericlevi.pages.dev/the-darke r-side-of-being-a-doctor/?utm_source=DamnInteresting
-
"You might ask, why can’t you work less? It’s not as easy as that. If I decide to work less, who is going to cover the hospital? If the hospital aren’t employing other doctors, we can’t allow patients to go uncovered. I accept the fact that I have a duty of care to be on call. The intensity and personal damage of these on call periods are often…
-
> The debt, crazy years of minimum income, all to let an insurance company admin dictate your every move and while more and more physicians become a labor pool for PE healthcare tracked with metrics fit for warehouse workers (edit: and that’s not OK in a warehouse either). All to earn a decent income but no longer the top of the market. A decent…
-
What I think your underlying point is: it's no longer seen as the most straightforward pipeline path to high salary, career stability, social status, and dating prospects. I'm not convinced it's true (or not true) that this is fading, but I think that's the core of the matter you bring up. I also suspect that this varies significantly from country…
-
It's even worse than that.I used to enjoy this blog:https://web.archive.org/web/20101218031844/http://www.medsch...This dude hated US medical school and it shows. I can't blame him, either.> the powers that be between the AMAAMA is working to keep salaries high. That's the only reason why this profession is still attractive. Probably unwise to…
-
If this was true competition for med school spots would be a lot lower. On the contrary it's getting harder: you now basically need a 4.0 to get in.Some of the best and brightest definitely are getting discouraged, I too have similar personal anecdotes from my daughter's peers. But anecdote does not necessarily correspond to data. Competition for…
-
> Everyday, there’s a new form, a new guideline, a new protocol, a new health software, a new policy all dictating, restricting and modifying clinician activities.I felt this one... Takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.The entire loss of support section is way too real. I'd almost forgotten what this sort of institutional…
-
I still cannot understand why a profession like medical doctor does not have better working conditions + a guild or union to enforce that, like actuaries have. Doctor is a profession that few can do, few want to do, it's very hard, many barriers to entry etc. so all that would seem like it should result in doctors getting great pay and benefits…
-
I'm not here to defend the AMA but they have very little power over the lives of working physicians. While they do define the CPT code system used on most insurance claims they don't control which procedures are authorized or how much anyone gets paid. The real abrasion has come from health system administrators imposing additional rules and…
-
Something like 17 out of the best 20 jobs by median pay in the U.S. are physicians, just various subspecialties. I guarantee you that people in medicine are incredibly driven and bright. You're just not exposed to them and the training they go through.
-
"nearly all said if given a Time Machine they wouldn’t do it all over again. That was a real wake up call."And do they have experience working any other job as a comparables? The question you ask is the equivalent of saying do you think there are better jobs out there? Being a doctor is about the lowest risk job you can get if you are smart and…
-
> Doctors are caught in a web of business, no longer a noble vocation. The altruism of young doctors have been replaced by the shackles of efficiency, productivity and key performance indicators.And later> To some hospitals and their business, I’m not a Surgeon. I’m just an employee. Overworked, burned out, replaceable. The noble call to Medicine…
-
"decent mid-level developer or tech executive makes more than nearly all physicians"That's no where near true for a mid level developer or most tech execs or most senior developers. If you exclude faangs a top developer doesn't make as much as a doctor.
-
>Interestingly, the above physical and emotional stressors are reasonably manageable to me. I’m understanding my own physical and emotional limits. These stressors induce exhaustion, but the excitement of the work and the intellectual challenge of the job bring a lot of personal satisfaction.This is the poisonous pill. In any job.This AI is set to…
-
The challenge in the US is that the best and brightest increasingly have no interest in entering the medical profession. The debt, crazy years of minimum income, all to let an insurance company admin dictate your every move and while more and more physicians become a labor pool for PE healthcare tracked with metrics fit for warehouse workers. All…
-
I thought the point of this article is that unsuitable technology and the associated loss of personal agency is seriously affecting the mental health of doctors, yet none of the comments here seem to reflect that.
-
I see a lot of comments that we need more doctors to be able to pay doctors less. There are of course exceptions but I really don't think 300k a year is unreasonable when coming out with nearly 600k in debt in a field with such high burn out and liability risk.Unlike salary position that 300k, at least in my field, is all via private equity and we…
-
> Their salaries need to be lower, training needs to be cheaper and faster, and we need a lot more of them.The quality of the average physician is already so low I am not sure what you are hoping to accomplish with lower salaries and faster training.Doctoring isn't a matter of more warm bodies
-
I think one issue is that the admissions for medicine are getting harder and harder. In many places you practically need a 4.0.GPA, volunteer work, great mcat scores, research experience, sometimes a post grad degree like an MSc and PhD etc. This selects for highly competitive and intense personalities that are not always suited for every medicine…
-
Are you sure you can find that many more doctors? That they'll be any good?Speaking from Romania: here medicine is prestigious. So many parents push their kids towards medicine. There's a glut of newly minted doctors every year, but rumour has it that the quality drops every year. Sure, they pass the exams and residency and what not, but…