title: You can't hide the bridges.
abstract: After witnessing a man commit suicide during residency, I struggled to reconcile the trauma itself, my own competence, and multiple boundary issues I was exploring as a newly minted doctor. My powerlessness in the face of inevitability challenged my sense of capability to fulfill the very calling that brought me into medicine in the beginning-to help fix important problems in the lives of my patients. In the aftermath, I chose to remain connected to the experience in the way I honor him still today.
authors.affiliation: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan Department of Family Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan lshughes@umich.edu laurenshughes@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Lauren S
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Hughes
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007396:Internship and Residency; D000067073:Psychological Trauma; D013405:Suicide
keywords: professional boundaries; suicide; trauma