Recent Breaking News
2/14/19 St. Louis KSDK Channel 5 Investigates PHPs
24-hour shifts were taking their toll on his mental and physical health. Most weeks, he worked more than ninety hours and slept no more than four hours a night.
In 2017, he had a newborn at home and a packed schedule as an anesthesiology resident, on top of a sleep disorder stemming from an injury he got serving our country as a soldier overseas.
More than a year earlier, he met with his supervisors to tell them about his sleep disability, and offer them schedule recommendations from his sleep doctor.
He says supervisors promised, but failed to make any accommodation to his schedule or his sleep disability.
“They (Supervisors) asked me, is this a drug problem? Are you sure you’re not using drugs?” he recalled. “I was floored.”
An organization called a Missouri Physician’s Health Program wanted him to fly to an addiction recovery center in another state, to be checked out.
“I had a bad feeling about it,” he said. “The whole thing just felt wrong.”
But he had no choice; colleagues warned him that if he didn’t follow the PHP’s requirements, he could lose his license and his career.