Am I doing it wrong? For Doctors by Doctors.

We start this episode on dealing with devastating situations as a doctor with Kristeen's memory of needing to lift her hands from the chest of her patient after the decision had been made to stop CPR. Any person would agree this is a discomposing situation to face for the first time - or even the fiftieth. However, it's not an unfamiliar situation for any doctor.   

Today's podcast holds an important conversation about how we respond both to ourselves and in our medical culture when bad things happen, which they frequently do in our work.

Doctors find themselves somewhat relentlessly in situations that aren't most humans would find challenging. Our work selects in for a high level of exposure to tragic human situations. 

When it comes to maintaining our integrity and health as doctors, while most of us would agree that emotional suppression is not a highly functional or adaptive long-term strategy, it's a strategy that many of us employ subconsciously. 

Is it because we don't know how to do anything else?

Is it because our fast-paced, busy clinical environments don't create space for an alternative?

Is it because we actually think it's the most productive and adaptive response for a doctor?

Is 'normalising' to suffering and loss a good thing as a doctor?

By asking and answering these questions, we hope to create some more clarity around what's going wrong, what's going right, and what we might be able to do better for ourselves and for our medical culture. 

We are looking forward to you chiming in on this one. Please share your experiences and wisdom so that we can collectively learn how we can show up for ourselves, each other and our patients when bad things happen. 

Belonging is a fundamental human need. It’s normal for us to feel a desire to belong and even to feel destabilised when we don't.

Many of us hold an idea about what a 'typical' doctor is... Or even a 'good' doctor. Consequently, it's common to feel 'othered' in medical culture.

It's never *easy* to feel othered. But, together, we can make this not only a better experience for you but also even a wildly enhancing one.

In this episode, we talk about common situations that make us feel othered in medicine:

... Failing an exam

... Diverging from a training pathway

... Not knowing which training pathway you want to do

... Delaying training

... Locuming

... Not pursuing research

This episode will have you checking in with your thoughts about what's 'normal' and, more importantly, prompting you to decide for yourseld:

- Is this definition of 'normal' really correct?

- If that's what normal is, do I want to be 'normal'?

- What's the problem with not being 'normal'?

- What are the strengths of not being 'normal'?

- If I know I don't want to be normal... Am I willing to be different?

- Is it possibly even a great thing to be different?

The only way to change the world is to be different.

Do you dare to be different?

Everyone deserves a space in their human lives to be their real human self - even doctor humans. 

It's less common today in a medical culture of strict expectations of this controversial thing we call 'professionalism', which can be unforgiving to the human condition. 

Life can be simply described a series of joys and dilemmas and there's no human who's exempt. To pretend that our reality is not real makes a challenging job and life even more so.

It's time for doctors to have permission to be more human. You don't need to pretend.

… It's exhausting.

And, there's something better on offer: authenticity. 

In this episode, we start with a health-related guilt that plays on the minds of many doctors - that we should be balanced. 

The nature of medical training programs in Australia is such that trainees are often left with little time in terms of absolute hours and also little control over their hours. 

The irony is, the popular ideas of what it is to be 'healthy' and 'balanced' create a demanding list of wellness activities that we should be doing. 

It's easy to look at your life as a doctor and think, "I'm doing it wrong" 

And this can lead us to override our actual needs in the name of ticking the 'balanced' box. 

And we haven't even started to talk about the effect of the guilt that this 'balance' prescription creates. 

We want to relieve you of the idea of 'balance'. Instead of fitting into this idea of what a balanced life looks like, a better question is, 

"What do I need right now?"

Leave your expectations at the door. Take your finger off the override button. And trust that you know what is best for you. 

Sometimes, we require something that looks less like classic 'balance' and more like 'survival mode'. At those times, the best thing we can do for ourselves is not add a layer of guilt and inadequacy around what we 'should' be doing.

This will likely be a new process for your mind to go through as many of us hold these firm ideas about what's 'balanced' and 'healthy'. 

Are you having the battle with balance?

Are you done pretending?

We look forward to sharing the conversation with you.