It may surprise you to know that most qualifying doctors in the UK never takes the ‘Hippocratic Oath’. Although it’s principles underlie much of the modern medical practice, it’s a little outdated. For example, we don’t ‘teach medicine to only the sons of doctors’ anymore and no others (e.g. no women).* Which is not to say ethics is ignored in the UK medical curriculum- in fact very much the opposite. I would say ethics and law formed perhaps as much as 15% of the undergraduate course at my medical school and at least 20% of the clinical side, not to mention underpinning every patient discussion and clinical decision besides.

The overriding principles of medical ethics are fourfold; 1) Autonomy 2) Beneficience (Do the best for your patient) 3) Non-maleficience (Do no harm) and 4) Justice (treat all patients fairly). I have been watching very closely events in Gaza over the past week, on social media as well as mainstream news, and given the above, am appalled at some of the attitudes my colleagues have.

First off, to date, over 150 civilians have died, with as much as a third of that number children. If you are asking “Children from where?” – then ask yourself “Are you a human being?” And then stop reading this blog because I have no time for you.

They are children. There is nothing in international law, the Geneva convention, the Bible or Torah or Qu’ran, or basic, human morality that justifies the murder of children in the name of ‘defence’. **

I have seen on social media colleagues who lambast ‘liberal’ critics of Israel saying they ‘do not know what it is like to live under existential threat’. Let me be very clear, there is nothing ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ about the views on the death of children by military attack. To use those terms implies a nuanced political argument about the death toll; ‘liberals’ would like less children to die, ‘conservatives’ are more pragmatic and accept a higher toll. In the 21^st century to sit and debate whether civilian casualties are deemed ‘acceptable’ is abhorrent and appalling.

Maybe I don’t understand the unilateral support for any state regardless of it’s actions. I grew up in Britain, a country renowned for it’s continuous dismay and critique of it’s own government, in a countryside town as the only brown face in a sea of white. The only sense of tribalism I have ever encountered is as a doctor- the ‘tribe’ of the MBBS has it’s own vernacular, it’s own set of values, it’s own unique perspective on humanity and it’s own rigorous ethical code. Which is why I cannot understand doctors who put out statements in support of any military action, but especially those that have had such high civilian death tolls. The value of life to a doctor is his or her entire meaning – if they didn’t want to preserve and defend life from illness and suffering they wouldn’t have signed up. But we have a duty to apply those same principles to every part of our life. We must not only ‘do no harm’ to the patient in front of us, but be champions of that humanitarianism across the board- on social media, to our friends, to our families, to our Governments.

Evil only persists in this world when good people do nothing. I cannot imagine a stereotype closer to ‘good people’ than a doctor. Colleagues, please, live up to it.

Juniordoctorblog.wordpress.com

*(in fact the majority of junior doctors and medical students now are women).

** The international law surrounding self-defense against occupied territory is very complex and makes for an interesting read if you feel like reading something important. See below;
http://www.cjpmo.org/DisplayDocument.aspx?DocumentID=71
and; http://opil.ouplaw.com/view/10.1093/law:epil/9780199231690/law-9780199231690-e401?rskey=xMiUjV&result=271&q=&prd=EPIL

“If you are admitted to hospital on a Sunday, you are 15% more likely to die than on a Wednesday”.

This is Jeremy Hunt- quoting a paper without atribution from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, conducted in 2010 by Freemantle et al [1] amongst nearly 15 million admissions.

Now I take off the spectacles and look again.

“Doctors will have to demonstrate that they have “emotional resilience” before they are allowed to practice”, so writes Laura Donnelly in the Telegraph. The Comments, sparked by an exchange with Professor Terence Stephenson, chairman of the General Medical Council (GMC), seek to highlight the psychological demands placed on junior doctors today.

Emotional resilience is an important skill. There are lots of ways that undergraduate education can help students explore and anticipate difficulties they will encounter in their training. This aspect of training should of course be taken seriously by medical curricula but lets not pretend that resilience is an all or nothing attribute. It is fundamentally fluid. It is not like passing your anatomy exam and suggesting that it will be systematically tested at undergraduate level is frankly absurd. Will there be a resilience OSCE?!! – the mind boggles. Preparation for emotional difficulty is of course an important part of a rounded education but any reasonable approach would add more weight to helping junior doctors feel like there will be a system there to catch them when they fall.

I have a couple of issues though with arguments that tend to band around the word resilience like it is going to solve the problems doctors face in todays society. First of all, medicine has always been difficult. There has always been sadness and trauma. There have always been uncomfortable sights, uncomfortable exchanges and uncomfortable dreams at night. So what has changed? Why is there a sudden concern that doctors have become psychologically inept? After all, burnout is a very real concern. Things we encounter in medicine however are no more sad then they were one-hundred years ago. I would argue that what has changed is everything else.

As I have said before, I strongly believe that the training of junior doctors today breads insecurity. We are constantly forced to move around the country. Each time we are forced to gather proof of our professional attributes from a growing multi-disciplinary team; ward-clerks to health care attendants to physician assistants and consultants; a constant treadmill of snapshot assessments. Sometimes it feels like you may as well be standing in the middle of the room screaming ‘validate me, validate me!’. At the end of each year we have an annual review of competency and progression (ARCP). This process again has been reduced to a kafka-esque farce of box ticking and pseudo-assessment. A colleague of mine has genuinely been held back in training because a supervisor neglected to fill out an end of block report and then retired.

Next we could talk about the actual shape of training pathways in the UK. Young doctors are being forced to make life changing decisions about where their talents lie earlier and earlier in their career. There is no provision for allowing time within the system to time to explore your personal attributes and decide what career path you are best suited to. The treadmill keeps going and will not wait…as the queen of hearts said to Alice ‘My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that’. Lets not forget that should the DDRB have their way, the ability to change career paths will become such a difficult decision that even more weight will be added to those very early career choices.

Lets talk about down time. Many junior doctors still actually face fixed annual leave. The short rotations and on-call commitments mean organising significant amounts of leave is a administrative nightmare. Junior doctors find themselves begging medical staffing department for rotas just so they can find out if they can attend their best friends wedding, in fact I also know someone who had a great deal of difficulty trying to find out if they needed to worry about being be on call for their own wedding! My current placement means I can’t take any leave for the first three months. I then have 13 days to use up in the remaining 3 months, but I can’t organise these yet because I don’t have my on-call rota for that time. Oh and yes I’ve been warned that if I fail to take my leave, I will not be paid in lieu.

What about job placements? Once you’ve secured your national training number you’re forced to wait it out to find out which part of an often very large deanery you are allocated to. Will you have to move house? Will your children be able to attend their school? Will you be able to live with your partner this year? In a system that claims not to be able to take the vast majority of personal preferences into account, we have young registrars passing four district hospitals just to get to the one they’ve been sent to with absolutely no evidence that there was a logical reason for that choice, either in terms of service provision or training needs. I am one month into a five year training program with a new mortgage and I cannot plan my life past the next three months.

What of the media? Type junior doctor and any tabloid into a search engine and see what news you find. Here’s an example of the first four hits from the Daily Mail:

Now lets add into this picture the fact that the government with their ‘accept or prepare to be forced mentality’ has recently put us all in mortal fear of their grossly unfair contract proposals.

There are a great many of things responsible for burn-out in junior doctors today, but lets stop banding around the term ‘resilience training’ like it’s the answer. It isn’t. If the powers that be really want to improve the quality of life for thousands of juniors doctors in the country they would do well to focus on everything else.

Dear Mr Hunt

This is not a letter about the ‘7 day service’ shaped political football which seems to be is perpetually in play. This is not a letter about the consultant opt-out clause. It is not a letter about the difference between elective and urgent care. This is a letter about the unjust and unsafe contract which the junior doctors of this country have been threatened with. I am by no means unique or particularly special among my profession, but as I stand aghast at the proposals being thrust upon us, I can only presume that you do not truly understand what they will mean for my colleagues and I. As Atticus Finch told us “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” This is a philosophy we often use in medicine, it helps us deliver patient centred care. I thought perhaps a personal story would help you understand why we have come out in force against the proposed junior doctor contract.

I am junior doctor in the West Midlands. I left medical school in 2011 and went straight into training, I worked hard to secure my higher training number and I am now an intensive care trainee at ST3 level. I am a junior doctor that works a minimum of forty eight hours a week. This of course does not include the hours outside of this spent developing my knowledge and skills. I hold myself to high standards. I participate in research and audit. I take exams. I care about patient safety and I try my best to be an agent for change wherever I work. As a junior doctor on an training programme, I work side by side with locum staff who do my work for four times more pay than me.

I am an junior doctor who takes time to hold her patient’s hands. I listen to patient narratives. I reflect on and learn from my mistakes. I support my junior colleagues. I engage in teaching the new generation.

I am an asset to your NHS.

I am a junior doctor who has not been able to plan my life further ahead than four months since I graduated in 2011. I cannot plan to go on holiday next summer or RSVP for my friends wedding in the Spring. I am a junior doctor who has not been on a summer holiday in the past five years. I am a junior doctor who does not yet even know if she will be spending this Christmas with her family or in work.

I am a junior doctor who cannot afford to stand down while your party impose a new contract.

Do you know that you are giving me a pay cut? The new contract will cut my pay by somewhere between 12 and 15%. I cannot understand how any government can look the doctors of this country in the eye and say we deserve this sort of pay cut. I feel this reality has been glossed over and dressed up as something else. Perhaps it is too uncomfortable or impossible for you to defend and so you have chosen to pretend it is not the case. Unless the bank are willing to take the equivalent sum off my student debt and mortgage repayments, I do not have the luxury of pretending anything.

Do you know that we have huge concerns that the new contract deliberately discriminates against women in medicine? That the contract will make it even more difficult for not only women, but those unable to do full time training for any reason to work within the NHS? Have you considered the effects of inhibiting this diversity in medicine? Do you understand that to place the massive burden of financial penalty on any doctor who realises that their skill is best suited to another speciality is not in the best interests of the NHS?

Do you know that the new contract would mean it would be perfectly reasonable for me to do a 12 hour shift with just two twenty minute breaks and if I start a shift at 8am I would not be entitled to any break until after 2pm that day?

Do you know what it is like to work in an understaffed district general hospital? My most recent medical placement had 4 filled slots on a medical registrar rota for 12. Do you think this new contract will attract more doctors into these jobs?

Do you think you could consider what it is like to have the weight of person’s life in your hands? Not in an abstract sense, not from the point of view of having to make decisions that affect a body of people’s lives as I understand you do. I want you to consider what it is like to stand beside a patient and their relatives and tell them that you will do your very best to look after them in hospital. Or tell them that your team has done all they can and you think they won’t survive. To hold their hand while they die or take on the responsibility of letting their family know that they have an incurable disease. To know that if you are too tired or too distracted by personal things you can make a judgement call that brings about a death. Can you picture it? What do you think your emotions might be? I can tell you that contrary to some opinions, I, like most junior doctors happen to be quite good at these things. We have gotten to where we are by displaying both strength and resilience. I am not however a machine and I do require to be well rested, supported, adequately recompensed and valued in my work place. As a doctor, I somehow feel ashamed that I have to say that, yet regrettably this is where I have been pushed.

During the London Olympics we watched the NHS held up as an ideal for the whole world to see; shiny happy doctors, dancing and singing with their colleagues. I am imploring you that if this government impose this unfair contract you will break us. Please understand that broken doctors do not dance, they do not sing and they certainly do not deliver a first class service.

Yours Truly,

Dr Aoife Abbey

We all want to know how to get respect. 

Research shows respect is key to both your love life and your career.

But it’s difficult. Others size you up very quickly. For instance, people evaluate how attractive you are in 13 milliseconds. Yes, milliseconds.

And first impressions matter more than you think. They’re the most important part of any job interview. And once set, they’re hard to change.

So how do you get respect? Let’s look at the research and see what works — and what doesn’t.

1) Power Is Respected… But There’s A Catch.

What makes us happier: money or power? Power. Do we prefer money or status? Status.

What do children say they want more than anything when they grow up? Fame.

Paraphrasing Machiavelli: if you have to choose between being loved or feared, pick feared.

Yeah, power gets you respect. So if you can make a billion dollars or become an international sensation by Thursday I highly recommend it.

But powerful people often behave badly. Power reduces empathy and often causes us to dehumanize others.

In fact, one of the most recognizable signs that someone is powerful is that they break rules. Why? They can get away with it.

And often this works in reverse — when we see someone who has the gall to break rules we assume they must be powerful.

Anger conveys competence. Narcissists are more likely to get promotions. Jerks earn more money:

…men who measured below average on agreeableness earned about 18% more—or $9,772 more annually in their sample—than nicer guys. Ruder women, meanwhile, earned about 5% or $1,828 more than their agreeable counterparts… “Nice guys are getting the shaft,” says study co-author Beth A. Livingston, an assistant professor of human resource studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

And these negative characteristics are valuable in some roles:

Several of the 12 “dark side” traits – such as those associated with narcissism, being overly dramatic, being critical of others and being extremely focused on complying with rules – actually had a positive effect on a number of facets of the cadets’ leadership development over time… “it appears that even negative characteristics can be adaptive in particular settings or job roles.”

In fact, research shows feeling powerless makes you dumber.

But respect gained through power and bad behavior comes at a cost.

Not laughing at other people’s jokes does make you seem more powerful. It also reduces social bonding.

Refuse to be impressed by others’ achievements? Definitely powerful. And in relationship research it’s classified as “destructive” behavior.

Congratulations, you’re killing your relationships and alienating the people closest to you.

What about the workplace? Do you need to strut around the office to show people who’s boss?

Research from Harvard shows people would rather work with a lovable fool than a competent jerk — even if they won’t admit it:

Powerful people don’t listen. And doctors who don’t listen get sued more often. Intimidating leaders actually reduce team performance.

(To learn what the most successful people have in common, click here.)

Appearing powerful definitely gets you respect — but potentially at a very high cost. Is it better to just be nice?

2) We Love Mr. Nice Guy… Sometimes.

Can you be nice and get respect? Many people immediately think “nice guys finish last.” You’ll get walked on.

But research from Wharton professor Adam Grant shows “givers” are disproportionately represented at the top of success metrics.

But in some professions, like the military, you have to be tough… right?

Shawn Achor, author of the excellent book The Happiness Advantage, points out that top leaders in the Navy are supportive:

In the U.S. Navy, researchers found, annual prizes for efficiency and preparedness are far more frequently awarded to squadrons whose commanding officers are openly encouraging. On the other hand, the squadrons receiving the lowest marks in performance are generally led by commanders with a negative, controlling, and aloof demeanor.

Stanford’s Bob Sutton shows that when bosses say “thank you”, employees work 50% harder.

Powerful people won’t admit they don’t know something and don’t ask for help. They might look weak. But they also don’t learn anything.

The best way to learn also turns out to be a powerful influence tactic: just ask for advice.

How do expert FBI hostage negotiators get what they want? Listening and empathy.

Studies show nice guys have higher quality friendships, are better parents, have better academic and career performance, as well as better health:

…agreeableness, one of the Big Five personality dimensions, is linked with higher-quality friendships, successful parenting, better academic and career performance, and health… Based on the review of the literature, it is postulated that being agreeable may be the path to enduring interpersonal relationships, happiness, success, and well-being.

So is it just that simple? Be nice all the time? Sadly, no.

While givers do make the top of success metrics, they are also disproportionately found at the bottom:

What I find across various industries, and various studies is theGivers are most likely to end up at the bottom. That’s primarily because they end up putting other people first in ways that either burn them out, or will allow them to get taken advantage of and exploited by Takers.

While we have a great deal to learn from total altruists, it’s a dangerous path. In some cases, yes, “Nice guys do finish last.”

(For Adam Grant’s tips on how you can be nice while protecting yourself from being taken advantage of, click here.)

Research shows not being aggressive limits goal achievement but being very aggressive hurts relationships. So what should we do?

3) It’s A Balance

We don’t merely respect people because of power… or just because of kindness.

Research shows we judge people on the qualities of competence and warmth:

Social psychologist Cuddy, an assistant professor of business administration, investigates how people perceive and categorize others. Warmth and competence, she finds, are the two critical variables. They account for about 80 percent of our overall evaluations of people…

But the tricky part is we always assume a trade-off between the two: more competent means less warm, more warm means less competent.

This idea of balance is pervasive. What happens when you see that uber-perfect person screw up a bit?

You actually like them more because it makes them human.

The best leaders are a balance. Not too assertive, but not too passive. They must juggle kindness and toughness:

“If you’re too soft—no matter how competent and able you are—people may not respect your authority. But if you only have dominance and you don’t have great ideas, and you use force to stay in power, then people will resent you,” he concludes. “Being successful as a leader requires one to have both dominance and prestige.”

Harvard leadership professor Gautam Mukunda explains great leaders have supreme confidence — and humility. (Skip to 4:15.)

Of course, riding that line is extremely difficult. And there are biases that make it even harder.

When men show anger they’re seen as competent. But women displaying the exact same behavior are perceived negatively.

And on the flip side, society tells men it’s okay to be vulnerable and open up — but then punishes them for it. (Skip to 16:15.)

(For more on what the best leaders have in common, click here.)

Becoming someone who truly embodies all these qualities sounds impossible, right? Can’t we just fake it?

You can… but that’s tricky too.

4) Don’t Be A Method Actor

“Fake it until you make it.” A little of that is only natural. But I’m seeing it reach a whole new level: out-and-out acting and utter manipulation.

And it’s a mistake. People think they’re going to act powerful and tough get a reaction like this:

What they end up doing is losing friends and gaining allies who will only be allies as long as there’s something to be gained.

And those who show Machiavellian kindness often suffer a worse fate — trust is easy to lose and hard to regain.

But perhaps that sounds pious. Here’s a more concrete reason: it doesn’t work — or at least not for long.

In five minutes people can size you up with about 70% accuracy:

Across a wide range of studies, Ambady and Rosenthal found that observations lasting up to five minutes had an average correlation of r = .39 with subsequent behavior, which corresponds to 70 percent accuracy at predicting outcomes…

Maybe you enjoy gambling but I don’t like those odds — especially over the long haul.

Unless you have an Oscar for acting, faking for big stretches of time is hard. In fact, research shows acting smart makes you look stupid.

The only way to convincingly change how you’re perceived is to do it from the inside. (We often call this “being delusional.”)

And what’s even more insidious is that over time, we can become what we imitate.

Harvard leadership expert Gautam Mukunda, author of Indispensable, spoke about the limitations of impression management:

You’re performing. If you perform for long enough you can begin to inhabit the role. You can begin to change who you are… When you’re acting out these roles, what you’ve got to remember is you are changing yourself. Over time you will change yourself into that person, so it had better be the person you genuinely want to be.

(For more on the techniques of FBI hostage negotiators, click here.)

Being a powerful jerk is a risky tradeoff — but so is being a total nice guy. And balancing is really, really hard.

So when we pull all this together what really is the best way to get respect?

5) How To Get Respect

You don’t need to strut around like a jerk but we can learn something from powerful people: confidence is vital.

People love confidence so much that we sometimes prefer those who talk a good game over those who produce quantifiable results.

So be moderately overconfident. See the world accurately but have belief brief in your abilities.

And what’s the best route to this? Work hard and become an expert at your job. Competence breeds real confidence. A feeling of control kills fear.

But be warm.

This is what we can learn from the nice guys. And don’t fake it. You can learn to be more compassionate. Karma works and kindness scales.

It all starts with self-knowledge. Gautam Mukunda explains:

Changing yourself is not inauthentic. Part of what people do is they change. They evolve, they can grow, and they can change themselves.

So what it is to be authentic? It doesn’t mean you can’t change, but it does mean that the changes that you make, again, have to be aligned with the sense of who you really are, and who you want to be.

In fact, research shows that when you try to be your best self, you end up presenting your true self:

In sum, positive self-presentation facilitates more accurate impressions, indicating that putting one’s best self forward helps reveal one’s true self.

Don’t be a total jerk and don’t be an utter pushover. And don’t be a method actor.

Be the best version of who you are.

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The post How To Get Respect: 5 Points Backed By Science appeared first on Barking Up The Wrong Tree.

If you’ve been promoted recently, you’re probably determined to do things differently than other managers. You want to remember your roots as a worker bee forced to please the boss. You don’t want to micromanage or discourage people. So you may avoid giving constructive feedback until you have a few months under your belt as a manager.

Wrong approach.

Here’s what you need to do instead:

1. Assure people you’ll be giving frequent feedback

People want more feedback than they’re getting. Everyone, especially young and hard-to-retain superstars, constantly say in employee engagement surveys such as Gallup that they’re discouraged because they’re not getting enough feedback.

And it’s not just that they aren’t getting enough positive pats on the back. Sixty percent say they don’t get enough critical feedback that can help them improve. (Click here to tweet this stat.) Tell them you’ll be giving feedback weekly (or more often) and deliver on that promise.

2. Invite their feedback to you in every feedback conversation

The feedback culture you want to create is an exchange. You coach them and they make suggestions about what you can do to help them reach their goals faster.

3. Envision success for everyone to focus your feedback

Spend a few hours imagining the team as wildly successful. Record on paper your images of what each individual and the group as a whole will be doing and saying in the future — six to nine months ahead on your calendar.

Imagine recognition by customers and celebration by company leaders. What capabilities will each person need to develop to achieve the vision? Use these notes when picking out the most important and doable feedback topics for each person.

4. Invest plenty of time to clarify and re-clarify goals

You’ll increase their buy-in for feedback if you’re all on the same page about expected outcomes. And you’ll decrease the chances they’ll be confused or discouraged later. The bosses people hate are the ones who can’t explain what they want, but are quick to criticize. You’re a boss who explains what you want — not what you don’t.

5. Give lots of positive feedback, but make sure it’s specific and accurate

You want to encourage people, but you don’t want to come across as a parent figure who praises everything. It won’t be good for either you or them if they become dependent on you for their self-worth fixes.

On the other hand, positive feedback that resonates with what they know to be a strength or a hard-earned accomplishment builds credibility with your employees. If they feel that you “get them,” they’re more likely to believe you when you point out improvement needs.

6. Make feedback so helpful and frequent that it becomes a no-big-deal experience

Although your first feedback discussions with people may need to be scheduled half-hour meetings, they’ll get used to unthreatening hallway chats where you suggest a new approach they can use with a customer, how to expedite a meeting or fast ways they can acquire technical knowledge.

They will start to trust you. The trust gets big when they know they can count on you to bring up problems and never surprise them later with feedback you’ve withheld.

7. Act on the feedback they give you

As you ask each team member how you can better help them achieve their goals, how you can support them and how you can help make it a better workplace, acknowledge the value of their suggestions. And act on all feedback that makes sense as quickly as possible to demonstrate you believe in the power of feedback.

In giving more, rather than less, honest, timely feedback, you and the whole team will discover that feedback is a big plus and you as a leader will enjoy huge success.

Anna Carroll, MSSW, through EverydayFeedback.com, specializes in workplace trends and training. In her recent book, The Feedback Imperative: How to Give Everyday Feedback to Speed Up Your Team’s Success, she helps leaders at all levels overcome their obstacles to giving feedback.

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The post How to Give Quality Feedback When You’re a New Manager appeared first on Brazen Life.