Dr. Jessi Gold’s new book draws on her work at WashU during the height of the pandemic

Dr. Jessi Gold’s new book, out this month from Simon & Schuster, draws on her experiences at Washington University, where she was director of wellness, engagement, and outreach during trying times for both populations she worked with as a psychiatrist: college students and healthcare workers (that whole global pandemic was definitely a buzzkill). Titled How Do You Feel? One Doctor’s Search for Humanity in Medicine, it’s one part memoir, one part patient narrative, and two parts self-help book.

After five years, Gold left WashU this past winter for a job as chief wellness officer at the University of Tennessee, but she’ll be back in town Tuesday. At St. Louis County Library’s Clark Family Branch, she’ll be in conversation with St. Louis city’s director of health, Matifadza Hlatshwayo Davis–better known as Dr. Mati.

Gold caught up with SLM before her visit to talk about whether she found what she was looking for—and what she misses most about St. Louis. 

You wrote this book about your time in St. Louis. What was your focus? 

It follows me and four patients for the first six months of the pandemic and looks at all of the challenges we face taking care of ourselves when we take care of other people. It tells my story as a psychiatrist who was seeing frontline workers, as well as the stories of a premed student, a resident, a nurse, and an attending physician in the ER. I talk about burnout; I talk about perfectionism; I talk about overwork; I talk about mental health stigma. And I think those themes will help healthcare workers or people who work in mental health to feel seen and understood.

You open the book with an anecdote about making a really embarrassing mistake: You forgot you’d ever met a patient. You’re working in this field, you want to keep working in this field, and yet you outed yourself for something that a lot of psychiatrists wouldn’t want to admit they did. Was that hard? 

Yes, it’s hard. There are a couple things that I wrote about that mentors or friends were like, ‘I can’t believe you said that.’ 

But the mistake wasn’t like I accidentally cut off someone’s leg. And I’ve had surgeon friends read it and say, “I forget people’s names all the time.” But in psychiatry, if you just told me a story you’ve never told anyone before, and I reintroduce myself like I never met you, that’s pretty harsh. It was a bigger mistake for me than it would be for another specialty. But I think because I didn’t cut off a leg and I didn’t actually hurt anyone, it gave me some freedom to talk about the things that we do where we’re not proud of it.

Part of the title of this book is your “search for humanity in medicine.” Were you able to find humanity in medicine?

Looking for humanity is looking for our humanity—my own, and also my colleagues and the people I take care of: Trying to find ways to maintain ourselves while doing the job. 

It’s something that I constantly struggle with, but I don’t blame myself for that anymore. I used to believe that nobody who’s good at their job burns out—that if you were the best leader, the best doctor, the best psychiatrist, you could hear the hardest things, you could do 14 jobs, and you can somehow be fine, right? Like, that’s what a good leader does. Through my experience, and reflecting on my patients’ experiences too, I’ve come to the understanding that to burn out, to be affected by our jobs, is part of being human. We’re not robots doing this. The expectation should instead be that our work will affect us. How are we going to cope? By finding the humanity, I mean, How do you maintain yourself in a workplace that doesn’t always think about you? How do you support other people in a culture that doesn’t do the same? 

You made the move to Memphis this year. Do you feel like you’re instilling good habits in which you’re practicing what you preach?

When I was thinking about moving, I had a lot of conversations with my therapist: How do you set yourself up to not fail in the workplace? And what does it look like to make a healthier schedule for yourself? And at the same time, I’m switching jobs, I’m moving cities, and I wrote a book. And so I think there’s a realism to it. But in so many ways, I’m much better[at identifying stuff early. Before, I would blow past early signs, and the only time I noticed I was struggling was if I was falling asleep every day after work. Now I’m better at going, “Something’s off. Let me look at that.” 

In med school and residency, there’s a belief of what you’re supposed to be. And I never really wanted to be the thing that I was supposed to be. I didn’t always get positive feedback, and [I] struggled sometimes in certain environments because of a desire to be more emotional, more vulnerable, more authentic. I don’t feel like that anymore. I feel proud of that as a part of who I am. 

In St. Louis, you’re talking to Dr. Mati. How did that come about? 

We’re both people who have tried to be advocates, especially during COVID. We both dealt with what it was like to be an advocate in the context of a very hard time to be an advocate, and also a practicing clinician. We’ve grown to become friends and champions of each other’s work. 

While you’re back in town, is there any place you’ve been missing so much that you’re going to squeeze in a visit?

I’m very excited to see the people that I care about. I have a really good, strong community of folks in St. Louis, whether they lived next door to me, were in my neighborhood, or are friends from work. I’m friends with the wedding photographers that I met when they were photographing my friend’s wedding. I have a really fun community of folks in St. Louis, and I’ve been back a couple times already, and I will continue to come back. I like the people there. 

Also, I love that soup dumpling place. Soup Dumplings STL on Olive. Is that what you were asking about?

I was asking about restaurants, I guess, but I love that your answer was about people.

I’m inherently a community-driven person. I’m single, and I survived the pandemic as a single person because my next-door neighbor included me in their bubble. If she didn’t think like that, I would have been in front of my computer seeing frontline workers alone for months. 

My neighbors really supported me in so many ways through that time, and now I’ll stay with them when I come back. Which is weird, because I look at my old house right next door. They’ve been doing construction, and they’re putting in a pool. I was like, ‘Huh, I should have put in a pool.’