Experiences of a paraplegic psychiatry resident on an inpatient psychiatric unit

The author reviews the literature on disabled physicians and describes her own adjustment to paraplegia. While she was a medical student and practicing internist, she encountered few comments about her disability, but during her later psychiatry residency, hospitalized psychiatric patients discussed it frequently. The author presents examples and points out that patients' reactions often revealed much about their characteristic response patterns; reactions to her disability became a type of projective test. Her primary defenses against patients' remarks were intellectualization and isolation of affect. Supervisors who were able to discuss the impact of her disability on the doctor-patient relationship were considered most helpful.