Collaborative Insight: Post 76
As I reflect on major insights that I have experienced over the past three decades, most have arisen from talking with women:
- In Nursing Collaboration, I celebrated Nikki who took me aside during a busy ED shift and told me, “Just because this is the 7th patient you have seen with a sprained ankle in the past hour, does not mean that it was her 7th ankle sprain.”
- In the same post, I also mentioned the 10 nurses who told me that the aim of a residency program in surgery should be to teach communication skills, not just technique and surgical judgment, which has guided my career path ever since
- In Collaborative Gender Issues, I mentioned that I felt like I was hit by a 33-degree wave when I heard that women are socialized to value relationships for the first time in an Organizational Behavior group discussion
I felt similarly humbled a couple of weeks ago in Chicago, where I spoke on “Practical Strategies for Transitioning to Non-Clinical Careers” and mentored physicians taking the SEAK Non-Clinical Careers for Physicians course, that approximately 250 physicians attended. I described the environment in Tip of the Iceberg? New perspectives on disgruntled doctors, in which I mentored over 50 physicians in 15-minute segments until my talk the second afternoon.
I asked a rural surgeon who came to me for guidance, “When was the last time that you felt really alive?” trying to uncover his passion. He looked at me blankly, “I don’t know.”
I replied, “Some times, when guys can’t remember, their wives can. How do you think your wife would answer that question?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Can I go back into the lecture hall and get her?”
“Sure,” I replied. “I can’t wait to hear what she says.” It turned out that she was also his office business manager, which meant that they spent over half their waking hours together. She told me, “His passion left him years ago.” He nodded, sadly.
In the remaining 10 minutes, we talked about what he was really good at: teaching. Gradually, I saw a smile appear on his face and some light sparkle in his eyes, as his energy began to return. He made a decision that once he moved closer to his grandchildren, he would contact the local medical school and offer to teach anatomy to medical students. He left feeling that he now had a reason to get up every morning, which brought him hope. A day later, as we departed for the airport, his wife told me, “Although he still spends more time telling me what he doesn’t want to do than what he does want to do, at least after this weekend, he has at least one thing that he wants to do. Thank you.”
As I waited for my plane to take off, I felt grateful to have a weekend “with my people.” I mused that physicians are not leaving the profession solely due to the economic costs of running a practice, as a recent CNN article stated, but also because they have lost touch with the feelings that attracted them to healthcare careers in the first place; to make a difference in the lives of patients and their families.
At a transition point in my career, when I lost my academic job due to a budget cut at the VA at White River Junction, VT and prepared to attend the MBA program at the Tuck School at Dartmouth, most of my male colleagues told me that I was wasting my surgical oncology and reasearch training and should look for another academic job, even though my wife did not want to move. On the other hand, at least 10 female nurses told me that as one door closed, many others would open and that I would enjoy a career where I was able to bring a variety of strengths to play that were not highly valued in my present job. When I asked the 10th nurse why she thought that there was such a difference in replies, she stated:
Women are hard-wired to deal with change. Some of us go from college to jobs to marriage and raising a family, but no matter what we do, change happens to us every day, so we learn to embrace it rather than fear it or fight it .”
It is times like the ones I have described in this post that make me want to celebrate the 23 chromosomes that derive from my maternal DNA.
What do you think?
- Do you work with physicians who no longer enjoy coming into work
- Have you asked them what are they really good at and what makes them feel truly alive, as Jim Collins advised in Good to Great
- If so, what did they tell you
As always, I welcome your input to improve healthcare collaboration.
Kenneth H. Cohn
© 2009, all rights reserved
Posted in Building on Success
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