Group Life Accidental Death Claim Form Employer'S Statement: Fill & Download for Free

**What is Life Insurance?**A life insurance provides financial protection to the family in cases like the sudden death or the permanent disability of the main earning member of the family. Thus, it is an assurance that the insurance company will take care of the financial well-being of the family members even when the breadwinner is not around. This is done by paying the sum assured to the nominee or the beneficiary. The insurance can also cover other contingencies like critical illness and permanent or temporary disability. To get this financial security, the policyholder agrees to pay a certain amount, also known as the premium, to the insurance company The premium amount to be paid is decided on the basis of various factors. The policyholder is called the insured, while the insurance company is called the insurer.Basically, a life insurance policy helps in meeting three goals in life. Let us look at them:1. **Protection**: A life insurance policy provides financial security to the family on the untimely demise of the insured.2. **Investment**: Along with protection, life insurance also helps in investment so that the money can be used for meeting various financial goals.3. **Saving**: Along with protection, through life insurance, you also get to save money which can be used during retirement or for other financial needs.1.**What is Life Insurance Premium?**A premium is an amount paid to the insurance company for getting a life insurance policy. The premium amount is an important aspect to be considered before finalizing a policy. It depends on various factors like age and gender. To reap the benefits of the insurance policy, it is important to pay the premium on time. In case of a non-payment or a payment delay, the policy can be considered as a lapsed policy. However, before a policy happens to expire, you usually get a grace period of 30 days. The payment mode can be regular or single. A regular payment can be monthly, annually and so on. Let us understand some factors on which the premium depends.**Age**: This is an important deciding factor while buying an insurance policy. Older you are, higher the premium amount. Accordingly, younger people have to pay a lower premium amount for a life insurance policy.**Gender**: the Premium amount for women is lower compared to that for men.**Smoker/Non-smoker**: In case you are a smoker, the premium will be higher because you are prone to higher risks in life. Thus, a non-smoker has to pay a lower premium.**Sum assured**: Higher the sum assured or the death benefit, higher the premium amount to be paid.Policy term: If the policy is for a longer duration, the premium amount will be higher.Types of Life Insurance PolicyLife insurance is of seven types. And each has its own features and specialties. You can choose them as per your need and requirement. They are Term Insurance, Whole Life Insurance, Endowment Policy, Money Back Policy, Child Plan, Retirement or Annuity Plan and United Linked Insurance Plan (ULIP).Term Insurance:Term insurance is a pure protection plan where the beneficiary gets the sum assured, also called death benefit, if the policyholder passes away during the term of the plan. However, if the insured survives the term plan, the coverage also ends, with the beneficiary not getting any money. Even the premium paid is not refunded to the insured, though there are some plans where the premium paid is returned, if the policyholder happens to the survive the plan. This payment is termed as survival benefit. The premium for such plans is quite high. Otherwise, a pure term plan is one of the most affordable plans compared to other types, as the amount of the premium is quite nominal. One can opt for regular payment or single payment mode. Term insurance is of three types:Level Term: The sum assured remains the same during the entire term of the policy. Thus, even the premium amount and renewal premium remain constant.Decreasing Term: In this type, the sum assured decreases over time; however, the premium amount does not change.Increasing Term: Both the sum assured and the premium amount increase over time. This is mostly opted by people who think beneficiaries will need more money.TYPES OF TERM INSURANCELevel Term Insurance**Decreasing Term Insurance****Increasing Term Insurance**Sum assured for the beneficiary remains constant throughout the term of the plan. Even the premium and renewal premium remains the same during the termSum assured decreases with time and the premium amount remains constant. Example: credit life insurance, mortgage redemption policiesNot just sum assured, but also premium amount increases with time**Whole Life Insurance/Life Cover Insurance:**Under this policy, the insured is covered for the lifetime, i.e. till his/her death. The maturity age is usually 100 years. Thus, you need to keep paying the premiums until 100 years of your age. Here, the beneficiary gets the sum assured along with maturity benefits on the untimely demise of the policyholder. On the other hand, the policyholder gets to enjoy the survival benefits, in case he/she happens to survive the policy term. A whole life insurance plan offers benefits in both the cases – when the policyholder survives the policy or on his/her sudden demise during the term.******Whole life insurance is of two types :**Traditional whole life plan and ULIP. In the case of ULIPs, a part of the premium paid is used for coverage and a part is invested in the market. Traditional plans can be further classified as participating, where the insured gets the bonus or dividend from the company, and non-participating, where the insured does not get any bonus or dividend from the company. You can enjoy the benefits at the end or receive them as periodic payments.**Endowment Policy:**This offers both coverage and a means for saving. Like any other life insurance plan, here, the beneficiary gets the sum assured in case of the death of the insured. However, if the insured survives the plan, he/she gets the maturity benefit. The policy can be both participating, where the insured gets bonus and dividends from the company, and non-participating, where the insured does not get bonus and dividends from the insurance company. An endowment policy can also be a ULIP, where a part of the premium is invested in the market apart from a part being used in coverage.**Money Back Policy:**In this policy, the insured gets a certain percentage of the sum assured at regular intervals during the term of the policy. If the insured survives the tenure of the policy, he/she also gets the sum assured irrespective of the percentage of the sum assured already paid out to him/her. Thus, in the end, the insured gets the sum assured along with the accumulated bonus.And in case of the death of the insured during the term of the policy, the beneficiary gets the full sum assured regardless of the number of premiums paid. It is one of the expensive policies, as it provides benefit to the insured during the term period along with the long-term benefits of usual life insurance plans. A money-back policy provides benefit to the insured in between the term of the insurance which he/she can use for meeting various financial goals.**Child Plan:**People can take this insurance plan if they want to save money for the future of their child along with getting coverage for the breadwinner. It is a combination of savings and insurance, where the insured can use the money for the future needs of the childlike higher education. The investment in this plan does not have any vesting age – one can start investing soon after the birth of the child and one can withdraw money after the child reaches a certain age. Some child policies offer intermediate withdrawal options as well. This can be either a ULIP or an endowment plan.**Retirement or Annuity Plan:**Taking insurance policies for the sake of the family is not enough. One should also keep one’s old age in mind. When you are young you have a regular source of income, but during old age, the situation can change. So, one needs to plan for retirement also. Along with coverage, retirement or annuity plans give the option of saving and investing money which can be used in the old age. Life insurance companies in India provide retirement plans which help create a corpus from which a regular income, called annuity or pension, is given to the insured after reaching a certain age.Retirement plans can be availed “with cover” or “without cover”. The first plan offers a sum assured to the beneficiary and the “without cover” one gives the corpus amount to the beneficiary only after the death of the insured. Retirement plans are of two types:**Immediate Annuity:**** **The insured gets the pension within one year of the premium amount being paid.**Deferred Annuity: **The insured decides a time frame after which he/she will get the annuity from the company. This time frame is known as deferred time.**Unit Linked Insurance Plan (ULIP):**Unit Linked Insurance Plan (ULIP) offers a dual advantage – coverage and a means of investment. Under this plan, the cash value/paid-up value of the policy depends on the current asset value. The total premium paid by the insured is divided into **two parts:** one that is invested in the market or debt funds and the other that is used for insurance. The type of investment is selected by the insured depending on the type of risk that he/she is willing to take.There are different types of ULIPs depending on the type of investment made and the death benefit.On the basis of investment made, there are three types of ULIPs:**Aggressive ULIP****:** Here 80-100% of the investment amount is invested in equity.**Balanced ULIP:** In this case, 40-60% of the investment amount is invested in equity and the rest is investedin the debt market.**Conservative ULIP:** Here 20% of the investment amount is put in equity and the rest is invested in the debt market.On the basis of the **death benefit**, ULIPs are of **two types**. In the first case, the beneficiary gets the sum assured or the fund value, whichever is higher. In the second case, the beneficiary gets both the assured value and the fund value.Group life insurance is a type of life insurance that covers a group of people. It is mostly provided by companies to their employees. As insurance is done in a group, group life insurance is considered cost-effective. The group can comprise lawyers, members of cooperative banks, societies, doctors, etc. This life insurance can be contributory, where the employees contribute along with the employer in the payment of the premium, or non-contributory, where the employer pays the entire premium amount.**Life Insurance for Senior Citizens**You can brave various situations of life when you are young; however, in old age, you need more protection and security. To manage such circumstances of life in old age, life insurance for senior citizens can be a good option. The insurance will provide them with financial coverage at times of need. In case you do not have any support for your spouse, life insurance for senior citizens can provide financial security to the spouse in case of your sudden demise. The death benefit can also be used to manage loans, debts and other financial needs.**What all Life Insurance Covers?**Along with the standard coverage which varies with a plan to plan, you can further enhance the protection with the help of riders, such as accidental death benefit rider, total or permanent disability rider and many more. The additional benefits can be availed on payment of some extra amount. Following are some common riders:* **Accidental death benefit rider**: Nominee gets this financial benefit along with the sum assured if the insured happens to dies in an accident* **Accidental Total and permanent disability rider: **Insured gets financial assistance if he/she is not able to earn due to some disability mentioned in the policy* **Critical illness rider**: This covers major critical ailments like cancer, heart attack* **Hospital cash rider**: A fixed amount is paid to meet the expenses of non-medical items in case of any hospitalization* **Waiver of premium rider**: Once you have this rider along with your life insurance policy, the company waives off the remaining premium payment on the sudden demise or total permanent disability of the insured**Eligibility Criteria****Particulars****Details**Entry Age18-75 yearsPolicy Term5-75 yearsPremium Payment OptionRegular, limited and single premiumSum AssuredRs 3 Lakh-100 Crore**How Life Insurance Functions?*** Before purchasing a life insurance policy, you should understand your need and analyze your financial condition and also decide your beneficiary* Choose the insurance company and the policy after a thorough comparison* Once you finalize the company and the policy, also decide the policy term. The premium is decided on the basis of various factors like age, lifestyle, gender, policy term, etc.* The policyholder has to pay the fixed premium to the insurance company for the fixed term. The premium is accumulated to provide the sum assured on the untimely demise of the insured* In case of the sudden demise of the insured, the claimant should immediately inform the company and provide the required documents along with the claim form* If the claim is approved, the beneficiary gets the sum assured. The claim can also get rejected because of reasons like nonpayment of premium, the reason of death not covered in the policy, etc.**Documents Required For Claim Process**Following are the standard set of documents required to process a claim:* Duly filled in and signed a claim form* Original policy certificate* Death certificate issued by a local authority* FIR* Post-mortem reports* Hospital discharge summary* KYC documents of a beneficiary like a copy of photo ID and address proof* Copy of canceled cheque and bank statement* If the claim is made by someone other than the nominee or assignee, the person making the claim has to submit legal proof of his or her title**Life Insurance Policy Claim Process**In case of the untimely demise of the insured, the nominee or beneficiary can file a claim to get the sum assured.* Inform the insurance company as soon as possible with details like time of death, place of death and cause of death along with a required set of documents given above* Once these documents are submitted, the insurance company would verify the details and accordingly settle the claim* Sum assured would be transferred to the bank account of the beneficiary* In case the company finds some problem while verification, it might reject the claim**Cases Where You Can’t Make Claims for Life Insurance Policy (Exclusions)**A life insurance policy protects the insured and his family against different scenarios, but certain claims are not covered by the insurance company. Below are some common exclusions. However, this might vary for different policies.* Self-inflicted surgery or deliberate self-harm* Involvement in extreme sports activities like paragliding, water-sports activities, rock-climbing* Man-made disasters or damage caused due to negligence on part of human beings* Loss of life due to HIV and STDs* If a claim has arisen due to the involvement in any unlawful activity**Time Taken to Settle the Claim**After informing the insurance company about the death of the insured, the claimant needs to submit the required documents, along with the claim form. The insurance company takes something like a week to a month to evaluate and approve or reject the claim. Settlement of a claim usually takes one or two months and in case it takes more time than specified, the insurance company might pay late payment interest on the sum assured. However, insurance companies also take the initiative to keep the nominee posted about the status of the claim.**Companies Offering Life Insurance Policy in India**There are 24 insurance companies providing life insurance policies in India. They are listed here according to their Claim Settlement Ratio (CSR) for 2017-18. A CSR is the total claims paid compared to the total claims received in a financial year.**INSURANCE COMPANIES**Max Life InsuranceDHFL Pramerica Life Insurance*Future Generali India Life Insurance*Life Insurance Corporation of India*Aditya Birla Sun Life Insurance*Star Union Dai-Ichi Life InsuranceTATA AIA Life Insurance*AEGON Life Insurance**Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance*ICICI Prudential Life Insurance*Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance*IDBI Federal Life Insurance*HDFC Life Insurance**Canara HSBC OBC Life Insurance*PNB MetLife India Insurance*Bharti AXA Life Insurance*Reliance Nippon Life InsuranceIndiaFirst Life Insurance*Exide Life Insurance**Aviva Life Insurance*Sahara India Life InsuranceSBI Life Insurance Co. Ltd.Kotak Mahindra Life InsuranceShriram Life Insurance**Importance Aspects**Since there are many companies selling insurance policies, selecting a particular company and policy is a big task. To ease this process, you should keep certain points in mind.* Ask your insurance provider to explain the exclusions under the policy you have chosen. This helps in getting a clear picture of what is covered by the policy* As your needs evolve, it becomes important to review your insurance needs on a yearly basis* Don’t defer payment or pay after the renewal date as this will be considered as a ‘bad risk’ and your plan may lapse* Choose wisely as per your need while selecting the type of insurance* Consider the claim settlement ratio of the insurance company as this indicates how reliable the company is when it comes to settling the insurance claim* Use life insurance premium calculator to gauge the pros and cons of various life insurance plans and then choose the best life insurance policy depending on your need and ability**Advantages of Buying Life Insurance Policy*** **Managing unpredictability**: Everyone wants one’s family to lead a good life even after his/her demise. No one can fill the void of one’s death, but financially, one can secure his/her family’s future so that the members don’t have to be dependent on someone else. This is when the sum assured of the life insurance policy helps.* **Financial cushion**: Life insurance policy helps bailing out the family from the financial troubles like loans and debts after the untimely demise of the breadwinner of the family.* **Retirement**: One needs to secure his/her old age when various sources of income might start drying up. An annuity plan can help in such a situation. The money invested or saved through ULIPs or endowment plans can also be used in old age.* **Tax benefits**: Tax benefits can be enjoyed for the premium payment and the returns given by the company under Sections 80C and 10(10D) respectively of the I-T Act, 1961. You can get tax benefits even on riders.* **Mental peace**: Once all the finances are sorted, a person is relieved from all the tension and thus, can concentrate on other aspects of life.* **Savings tool**: Along with the term plan, one has an option to choose a plan which will be a combination of protection and savings. This will help to create a corpus for future financial needs.* **Safeguard children’s future**: Things like education cost and marriage expenses can be a big concern while raising a child. Child plans can help in bailing you out from such situations.* **Loan against policy**: With certain insurance policies, one can even take a loan against the sum assured or the paid-up value, depending on the type of insurance plan taken. Usually, these loans are taken on a lower interest rate.* **Protection against other eventualities**: The riders or additional facilities offered through these policies can provide financial help in cases like accidents and disabilities.**Terms Related to Life Insurance**Below are some common terms related to life insurance:**Maturity Age: **Every life insurance policy comes with the maturity age at which the policy ends. Basically, Life Insurance Company will beforehand communicate to the insured about the maximum age till which the coverage will be provided to the insured.**Premium: **It is the amount which the life insured pays to the company in exchange for policy and the sum assured.**Premium Payment Term:**** **The duration of paying the premium. It can be regular (monthly, annually), limited payment term and a single payment.**Nominee: **It is the legal heir chosen by the policyholder to whom the sum assured will be paid after the demise of the life insured by the insurance company. The nominee could be wife, child, and parents of the policyholder.**Sum Assured: **It is the amountthat the insurance company agrees to pay on death of the insured person to the nominee.**Riders: **They are additional features or extra protection you can get on the payment of some extra amount. Riders increase the base cover and protect the insured against unexpected circumstances.

This may be one of the biggest social problems that is quietly evolving in an American background of physician secrecy, burnout and stress. Today, I work with young physicians, residents and medical students to teach them basic financial literacy, proper income protection and offer life-coaching for the physicians I have as clients. If they were to become disabled, I offer advocacy through that process, so the doctor does not have to be alone… and trust me, as a disabled physician in America, you feel very alone. I was a trauma and cardiac anesthesiologist until 2010. As a disabled doctor who has also attended law school and business school my life has been very interesting educationally and full of many of the greatest instants a medical career has to offer, as well as some of the career’s worst moments.Physician suicide is at an all-time high currently. More than one doctor per day is choosing suicide and physicians are the #1 professional to both attempt and succeed at suicide. Physician early retirement is a growing phenomenon due to stress, burnout and a horrid sense of hopelessness on the part of our physicians towards their careers.In 2018 the number of medical students choosing “any surgical specialty” has fallen 50% since just 2010. That will create a debacle for our society 10-15 years from now… the coming shortage of talented surgical technicians will make the 2001-2005 shortage of anesthesiologists look like it was a just a cloudy day for hospital staffers to deal with and overcome. Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners will not be able to fill the surgical needs of America in that timeframe. Something will give, or something will break.Physicians first feel the stress of near inhuman perfection in medical school where the pressure to perform and outperform colleagues begins with exams, then the first steps of Boards and finally with The Match each and every March. In 2018 over 1,000 medical students went unmatched into the fields of their choice and had to compete for unmatched transitional Intern years (think grunt for a hospital) and the number of individuals on their 3rd year consecutive unmatched year has reached a new record in the USA. Why? Residency program accreditation to increase slots takes longer than expanding the number of medical students in the overall system. There exists the widest gap between the number of graduating medical students and number of available training positions even in the United States.The problem is not just big, it is small and personal. Dr. Robert Chu wrote a letter to both national medical officials and government leaders explaining the flawed system of the Match that undercut his career before it even started. Dr. Robert Chu went unmatched to residency. He committed suicide. That’s a loss for tens of thousands of his would-have-been patients. That was before training even began, some doctor’s suicide notes reveal a fear of harming a patient so much from extreme sleep deprivation or other despondent work-environment issues. Instead, utterly hopeless, they choose to kill themselves.Why do they regret their careers?Because they were lied to, that’s why. The entrepreneurial spirit of the American Doctor has been subverted by the 21st Century efficient ‘business’ of medicine. Factory-work medical assembly kills doctors’ dreams first and then their bodies and finally, their souls. In a last act of self-punishment, they die by their own learned hand. Highly intelligent, compassionate and expertly educated individuals cannot properly care for suffering people in 7.5 minutes in order to stay on-track for the business inventory- flow numbers that day. With milestones competitive in the business-practice of medicine; “inefficiency” or “low productivity” labels sometimes push doctors to continuously ‘feel’ like a failure in their own practices. Government mandates create soul-crushing environments for brilliant talented doctors with increasing pressure from insurance companies beating the doctor’s reimbursement into submission along the way. All they really want to do is take care of people!Many suicide letters and notes form doctors point to working conditions with simply inhuman expectations. One big universal complaint is the paperwork/electronic record time to patient time ratio that has, by some measures, completely ruined the practice of medical care from the physician’s perspective. And ‘physician suicide’ as an issue is not just an American problem or a gender problem. Male doctors shoot themselves, female doctors’ overdose, New York docs jump and docs in India and China hang themselves by ceiling fans. Educated in how the body works for over a decade credentials doctors to have a suicidal proficiency seldom seen in any other group of individuals.I did not escape this phenomenon, myself. After my disability, it took six years for me to hit bottom. I was treated for suicidal ideation after learning I could not, no matter how hard I tried, no matter what legal methods I utilized… I simply could not learn how my group disability policy worked. I had to live knowing any ‘mistakes’ I made in returning to gainful employment would or could devastate my family’s finances. That just ‘killed’ me.Point in fact, male anesthesiologists are the highest number of physician suicides in America… and I was a male anesthesiologist. There was a study of ‘suicide attempts’ looking specifically at male anesthesiologists and the time it took between them deciding to try to kill themselves and their initiation of the suicide attempt… the answer was just minutes. They are found in their call rooms, in the operating rooms or they jump from the hospital parking lots… they have been found dead from overdose in their hospital chapels. They are showing those left behind where they were injured, hurt and let down.The secrecy surrounding physician suicide often leads to more doctors to think about or choose suicide as a method out of the mess of modern medical practice. We, physicians, are taught in medical school and residency to bury our emotional responses in order to be better diagnosticians and more efficient practitioners. We mask our emotions even to ourselves and so you get outwardly happy and content doctors returning from vacations killing themselves their next clinical day.The divorce rate is higher among doctors than the normal population. Child custody and care battles for more than a decade can erupt into nasty financial bouts between two emotional and psychologically injured people both using a physician’s income to sustain old wounds that won’t heal. No one enters medicine or a medical marriage thinking ‘I’m going to have to fight this highly educated, highly intelligent person for years over the kids.’ Infidelity is a known issue among doctors, as is the ‘skipping out’ on family issues including the death of family members or parenting duties to disabled children. You can hide a lot of your own pain and misery from yourself and your family by working 80-100 hours per week. Perversely, that incredible ‘work ethic’ leads to personal relationship dysfunction, infidelity, divorce, self- loathing and even suicide.In 11 years of treating patients in operating rooms… only one time did I lose my composure and let my feelings show in front of a patient’s family. Only once in more than 15,000 anesthetics. Thankfully, I was with an older doctor, the chairman of cardiothoracic surgery when it occurred, and he was kind in that moment, reminding me to never lose that compassion. When we lose patients under our care, we hurt…. and we hide that hurt from the outside world, we hide it from our colleagues, our families and ourselves. We practice this self-emotional-secrecy so many times it becomes habitual. Even in my own one-time case of emotional showing, I had done everything correct that day… I do not know why I lost my self-emotional-control. Yet, I still, to this day, sometimes wonder if I could have done more… like forgiving my-physician-self for doing my best is simply an impossibility.As I attended law school, I have assisted in many medical-legal situations generating a few dozen opinion letters both for plaintiffs and for the defenses of physician’s actions. I did this to be balanced and remove myself from leaning one direction or another on medical-legal issues. Yet, humans are mistake-machines during our lives no matter how much precaution is taken… especially unconscious mistakes. One of the last medical-legal cases I was involved with led to the discovery that the number and type of procedures being performed had shifted dramatically right after the previous employment contract had been completed between hospital and their little ‘factory workers’ called doctors. These physicians had ‘shifted’ their procedure numbers to maintain their incomes… consciously or unconsciously, doesn’t really matter because the expected number of errors rose dramatically… and in the particular case I was involved with, the changes had led to the death of a woman in her 30’s.Anything and everything a doctor screws up ends up a public story. The higher more-perfect standard one is held to in society, i.e. U.S. Doctors, the better the story of their collapse and public shaming is for society’s appetite to be entertained, enthralled and sickened by the actions of others. Sex, insurance fraud, DUIs, Medicare scams, greed, stupidity and loneliness all lead to poor decision making and the inevitable highly visible public shaming… all on a backdrop of the habitual inability to confront one’s own emotional state. Now with the Internet… these ‘human’ mistakes and the accompanying shame are forever for the American doctor.One big ‘advance’ was supposed to be the 80-hour work week! Begun on July 1, 2002, all medical trainees were prevented from working more than 80-hours in a given week or more than 28 hours in a row. I graduated in the late 1990’s. I was present for the 2002 switch-over… what happened in reality since the work still had to be completed is that all the residents went home at 5pm or 7pm depending on assigned hours restrictions and the attending physicians (me) just stayed until whenever to complete the work in the operating rooms. I recall working 100 hours per week as a resident and then, in late 2002, I was working 110 hours, even some 120-hour work weeks as an attending physician! Do I need to go into what sleep deprivation does to the human psyche?No one made me do it. That’s right, I chose to work 110 hours in a week. I could have just thrown my hands up and complained… but that’s just the problem, you can’t do that as a doctor in America.One bright spot pertaining that the work week reduction was the increased scrutiny concerning the maltreatment and hazing of younger residents by older ones in the pecking order of training programs… however this was coupled with necessary increased secrecy about lying about work hours so as to not get the training program in trouble with their accreditation bodies with violations on resident and intern time cards. I guess the bright spot was shoved back into the darkened corners of medical education and training. Worse, some resident and intern violators are then ‘outed’ semi-publicly within their residency program with ‘inefficiency’ or ‘low-productivity’ labels and are given the worst call schedules.Let’s back up for one moment. Doctors chose this career, right? They get paid great, right? They should just suck it up? Right? Unfortunately, that is exactly what they do, blaming and shaming go hand in hand pushing doctors to early career burnout. In the land of physician disability insurance, which I now inhabit, the greatest percent increase in claims illnesses are for mental/nervous conditions among doctors. The hopelessness and desperateness expressed by some doctors sounds almost incredulous unless you have walked in their shoes, which I have.My wife, a thoracic anesthesiologist, is a caring, compassionate and intelligent doctor. Sometimes the mercilessness medical system’s impositions and requirements and its accompanying political infrastructures seem unsympathetic towards the reality of physically practicing medicine properly. She works for what I consider one of the leading large medical institution in America. I know personally this system puts tremendous money and time into physician wellness… but they often miss the mark when it comes to application of those resources for their stated goals. Physicians just need to grin and bear the abuse, right?Normal people would scream by this point, “If you just can’t stand it anymore… get help… see a therapist… right?” Wrong. The confidentiality afforded regular Americans for psychological services does not exist for physicians. Even leaving town, paying cash and using a fake name sometimes cannot hide the treatment from the overall medical system, or your own colleagues. Your hospital, your own insurance carriers and even the medical board finds out you’ve sought therapy and then you are doubly screwed for trying to hide that fact from them. Confiding in colleagues does not work out well either, we are notoriously bad with ourselves as patients and even more so with colleagues because we believe we all have to just, ‘put up with it.’ Things are downplayed, rationalized away and any substantive discussion of true psychiatric issues are disregarded as weakness.Why do they regret their careers?Imagine knowing you have mental health issues and having nowhere to go and no one to talk to without making things worse for yourself, your patients, your family and your colleagues and friends… and left untreated and ignored, mental health deteriorates, and doctors choose suicide to escape the pain and the internal suffering. Do you know how humiliating it is for intelligent, compassionate, forthright and duty-bound individual who has championed for their patients to not use drugs and alcohol for years to be forced into random drug screening because the business of medicine wants cover from liability? For those suffering from emotional and psychological issues, coping with it via substances occurs very late in the disease state. If you think doctors do not know to avoid ‘testing positive’ then you are hopelessly naïve.Now some career specialties have more psychiatric issue than others; Emergency Department physicians and Anesthesiologists have higher rates of PTSD than other physicians. Whether as a soldier on the battle field or a doctor in the trauma bay or operating room… seeing human bodies apart unnaturally is a psychic-trauma for the caregivers. The cleaner the environment, think about a modern trauma bay, the starker the contrast of human misery are the traumatic gruesome moments in one’s medical career.What does society do after a physician suicide? Its hidden from the public and from other community physicians or explained in the newspapers as accidental death. Do you know what it is like to know your colleague hung themselves at home and have the community and newspapers all claim, ‘accidental death of this happy doctor’? Imagine answering questions for months about the loss to the community and having to lie about it. Medical schools cover up the suicide of its students because it hurts admissions. The obituaries claim ‘some accident’ or ‘passed away suddenly while asleep’ or worse, the newspaper mentions absolutely nothing about the cause of death… they just write about the happiness and accomplishments of the doctor, not the person.Are there solutions to the off-course nature of the 21st Century physician-career? Yes. They are complex and will take decades to categorically bring to the training and work environments of American physicians.I can’t fix the system. I start with the very simple idea of taking care of yourself first, before you take care of others. I try to assist each of my clients in the ways they need help. What I’ve noticed among young physicians and residents is that they are not taking care of the very basics of financial planning nor are they laying those foundational protections for their incomes. This is something I did very well myself and learned even more about how well I planned my life advocating on my own after disability. That is how I am doing my part to help others in this world, providing physician-to-physician education one doc at a time.~ChrisDr. Christopher YeringtonColumbus, OhioBio: Retired from clinical anesthesiology by a disability in 2010, Dr. Yerington has turned his love of teaching and service to others to his family, colleagues and community. He speaks and educates medical groups and residency programs about the importance of great disability insurance. Having attended law and business schools, Chris is a perpetual student, currently working on his financial certifications.