AMA efforts aimed at preventing medical student and physician suicide

CHICAGO — The American Medical Association (AMA) adopted policy during its Annual meeting today aimed at better understanding the incidence of depression and suicide among physicians and physicians-in-training. With reports showing a lack of systematic reporting and inconsistencies in available data, the new policy offers recommendations on studying and collecting data that better reflect the actual incidence of and risk factors for physician, medical student and resident suicide in the U.S.

Specifically, the policy calls for the AMA to explore the viability and cost-effectiveness of regularly collecting National Death Index (NDI) data, as well as confidentially maintaining manner of death information, for physicians, residents, and medical students listed as deceased in the AMA Physician Masterfile for long-term studies. Accordingly, the AMA plans to partner with a leading academic medical institution to conduct a pilot study using NDI to initially identify manner of death for a subset of the AMA Masterfile population.