Jessica “Jessi” Gold, MD, MS
Chief Wellness Officer/University of Tennessee System; Associate Professor/Department of Psychiatry/University of Tennessee Health Science Center
Speciality: Psychiatry
Tell us about your work.
Psychiatry was the place in medicine I fit in the most. I loved the content and that I could see 100 people with depression and the reasons for their depression could all be different, and they mattered (not just the diagnosis or treatment). Their stories were key to helping them, and I have truly always been interested in people’s stories (hence the anthropology background). I also found myself wanting to be the soft and supportive landing for college students that I didn’t have when I asked for help in college and was told I wasn’t sick enough to get help in campus counseling and needed to go off campus. That invalidation always stuck with me, and I knew I could help people feel supported, heard, and safe, and hope I always get that opportunity. When people say things like “You are the only person I’ve ever told this,” it is hard not to love my job and feel honored to do it. As an added bonus for me, psychiatry also had people in the field who wrote, who did advocacy, and who didn’t just see patients, and that balance was (and still is!) incredibly appealing to me.
I also didn’t wake up one day and decide to be a burnout expert, but it more or less found me. When I was in college, I started to observe that people in pre-med who were kind, not cutthroat, and would have made awesome doctors, regularly dropped out. I became so curious about why, that I studied pre-med as a culture for my master’s thesis in anthropology. After that, once my eyes were open to some of these challenges and disparities, they were constantly aware. I studied medical student mental health and access to care in medical school and started (and helped lead) support groups for medical students as a resident. Aware that burnout was a major issue I was hearing about in all levels of training even before the pandemic, in March 2020, I had the background to jump in quickly and help. I was clinically seeing healthcare workers, students, faculty, and staff, and also working on outreach and education. At the same time, noticing the same issues across the country, I was talking about it in writing (e.g. I wrote a STAT piece on it in April 2020 long before it was covered elsewhere) and on social media. COVID didn’t create the mental health crisis in healthcare, so it doesn’t stop just because COVID did. It is my job to remind people of that.
My first book is out 10/08. Learn More »
What helped get you there?
My dad. My dad is a psychiatrist and initially him being a psychiatrist meant I wanted to do something else. But, I kept being drawn to it no matter how hard I tried, and he was there basically saying he knew it all along, and supporting me, too.
Another big influence for me was my medical school mentor (now close friend). She was the first person who talked to be about how she managed her own mental health, or who told me she struggled in medical school, too. I felt very seen and supported, and not just in the work, which matters
What challenges have you faced in your medical career?
Mistreatment/struggle with hierarchy- I wrote a whole piece in medical school in the Annals of Internal Medicine on this experience, and it pretty much defined my view of medical school. Wrote about it in acpjournals.org. This actually inspired me to write, however:
I started writing as a way to process. I wasn’t on the student paper in high school or college, but I knew medical school brought up a lot of opinions and feelings and I wanted to write about them (in part because I wasn’t sure I could share them out loud otherwise!). I had also always liked physician memoirs (e.g.., by Atul Gawande) and that helped me understand the field. One time when I was on a rotation I was (long story short) tricked into performing cardiac massage on a patient who was already dead (physically pumping the heart and thinking I was saving him). After that, I went to talk to my dean and she said something like, “We’ve talked to him, that is just how he is.” Feeling defeated, I took to writing about it. I then showed it to my mentor who suggested I write it up for a medical journal, and I did. It was published here, in the Annals of Internal Medicine. It was the first time I realized my story and experiences could be used to educate and advocate. My dean even sent it to the whole school and I felt like I somehow gave her a different voice on the issue, too. I have kept writing ever since, using my experience and observations as they have grown, to expand on topics and conversations that need to be had.
Burnout: See above, but that really impacted me especially during the pandemic. I wrote about that for wbur.org.
I also often struggle/struggled with feeling like I didn’t belong in medicine. Sometimes because I was an anthropology major, or sometimes because I wanted to write and do media/social media and that wasn’t “academic enough.”
What advice do you have for women in medicine?
Getting help is a strength not a weakness. We have to care about ourselves to be able to care for ALL the other people who need us. That means we have to pause and actually ask ourselves how we are doing, and not just look around and ask our family, our friends, and our patients. often think about a quote by Rachel Ramen: “The expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss daily and not be touched by it is as unrealistic as expecting to be able to walk through water without getting wet.” I think it’s about time we talk about it all out loud.
What is your leadership role in AMWA and/or share a passion that you’ve turned into an initiative and invite others to join in furthering this endeavor.
I have helped with AMWA’s mental health initiative, Humans before Heroes. I am committed to the work of AMWA as a lifetime member.
Have you had an Ah-Ha moment? or, Is there anything else that has impacted your career trajectory or work within or outside medicine that has been a significant influence?
Self-disclosure is an interesting topic because it’s an area that even mental health professionals discourage. You are supposed to be a blank slate so that a patient can’t come in with beliefs about you because of your story. But I have a public presence (through writing and social media) that has grown to include more of my own experiences over time. It wasn’t easy, say, to write about being on medication and stigmatizing myself for it, but I decided it was necessary, and that if it helped one person who read it, it was worth it. That doesn’t mean no one in my academic life has ever judged me for it, or that I didn’t worry about the consequences. But I’ve decided self-disclosure is not just important for a patient; it’s necessary for culture to change around mental health in general.
Part of the reason it has become easier for me to be so vulnerable is work in my personal therapy. I’ve talked about writing and what parts of my story I owe others (hint: none), and I’ve also seen my therapist use self-disclosure beautifully to make me see things I wouldn’t otherwise (like telling me she is on meds to emphasize it didn’t change my opinion of her). It is no wonder that data suggests clients who have therapists who practice self-disclosure had lower levels of distress and liked their therapists more. Our lived experiences also make us more empathetic to the experiences of patients, and I personally think I’m a better doctor for all of it.
Social Media:
@drjessigold
drjessigold.com
LinkedIn