- In everyday life, you're gonna meet people
with difficult personalities.
However, if you wanna be successful and mentally healthy,
you're gonna need to learn how to handle
and navigate these difficult personalities.
That's what we're talking about today.
Welcome to Wednesday Checkup.
(calm music)
During my fourth year of medical school,
I was going on to do my electives
where essentially you pick the specialty and the doctor
that you wanna follow for four to five weeks.
And I picked sports medicine.
That was where my passion was.
I'm still really passionate about sports medicine.
And the doctor that I chose was a very successful,
is a very successful sports medicine doctor
here in New York City.
So I was very excited about it.
He gave me a lot of freedom so that was nice.
So I could go into the room with a patient,
interview them, do the whole history,
the physical exam, make up my own diagnoses
and unlike most doctors who allow you
to present it in their office,
he wanted to do it in front of the patient.
Which is unique and can carry some benefits,
but then the way that he did it was so mean-spirited.
If I made the slightest mistake, if I mispronounced a word,
he jumped all over me and said,
"How do you not know this already?"
And it really hurt me and embarrassed me
in front of the patient
and I don't think that's a good learning style.
And then I took out the time to figure out
why was I so upset about him saying,
"C'mon, you don't know that already?"
And I realized I shouldn't be upset.
I'm a fourth-year medical student.
I'm supposed to be making mistakes.
I'm supposed to be lacking in some information.
He's supposed to be teaching me that information.
So as long as I came with a passion to learn
and I wanted to constantly better myself,
that's all I could do and ask of myself.
To me, I was doing my job and that allowed me
to not get so depressed and not beat myself up
when he would say these things to me
in front of another patient.
And in fact it made me better.
It made me better in handling his feedback.
It made me better in my interactions with my patients.
And I actually saw a lot of improvements in myself.
Now, I'll tell you where I hit rock bottom with this doctor.
One of the last few days, I was leaving
but I ended up staying late to help him out
and see extra patients.
I walk up and I gently interrupt his conversation
with a fellow doctor.
I tell him that I'm leaving
and instead of just saying, "Goodbye"
he's like watch this,
and he sort of nudges the doctor next to him
and he takes out his prescription pad,
scribbles on the prescription pad some names
of nerves and muscles and special tests
that I've made mistakes on in the past,
rips it off and hands it to me and says,
"Check this out, I'm giving my medical student
"a prescription for knowledge or what he doesn't know."
These types of interactions are just so unnecessary
and I think they truly contribute to the burnout
that we have in medicine.
You hear about suicides, you hear about doctors
leaving the field, their dissatisfaction with the field,
and I get where they're coming from.
These types of personalities are prevalent
in the medical community.
Being a person that has spent time,
probably 30 somewhat hospitals, in multiple departments,
I've seen this happen a lot.
And I'll tell you what I learned from it.
I learned that instead of focusing on the negative qualities
of these doctors, nurses, whoever it may be,
I like to focus on what it is they do well.
And that's sort of a form of charitable thinking.
Charitable thinking's when you attribute,
when someone says something to you,
you say that they're coming from a good place,
they're not stupid, they're not dumb,
they're not out to hurt you.
You automatically assume the good in people.
There's no such thing as a total failure or a total asshole.
It doesn't exist.
These people must do something well.
If he knew book knowledge well, I focus on that.
If she performed procedures well, I focused on that.
If they handled difficult patient interactions well,
I focused on that.
And what that allowed me to do
was not dwell on the negatives.
I instead focused on their strengths
and tried to learn something from that
so I can use that in my everyday life.
Not only did that make me a better physician
and better with my patients, but it also helped me up here.
Many of you tell me that I'm always smiling in my photos
and I'm always in a good mood.
No!
I get upset, I get depressed, I get angry.
But it's about how you bounce back from that.
And how you can rationalize a given situation
and see that, "I get all As all the time
"and now I got a B I'm a total failure,"
why that thought is irrational.
But if we're able to correct that thought,
focus on some of these positives, we can redirect our brains
to achieve something truly special.
Harsh criticism doesn't only live
inside the medical community, it's all around us
and it happens in the most unexpected places and times.
And I want you to be prepared for it.
And there's a few things that you can do
to manage and deescalate that situation quickly.
There's a whole field of research on this,
it's actually called Verbal Judo.
I've read it into it, I've looked at the research
and I find it very very interesting
because it's stuff that I've used in the past successfully
but written in a more cleaner fashion.
First, instead of defending yourself
or even attacking that person
which can make the situation worse,
you can deescalate it by finding a point
to empathize with that person.
For example if they tell you they're very angry at you
for doing something that you didn't actually do,
just agree with the point that if someone did that to you,
you would also feel the same way,
you understand their feelings.
Now you can't say this sarcastically or jokingly,
you have to truly mean it.
But just having that point of common ground
can already deescalate the situation
and I've seen this work very well in all sorts of settings.
If you wanna do even better in a situation,
you can agree with the person.
And a lot of times, you can find a hint of truth
even in the most wild accusations.
For example people have said,
"Mike, you're obsessed with social media."
To those critics, I can say,
"Well yeah, I can see why it seems that way
"and I probably do spend too much time on social media
"but I'm working to try and find the right balance."
Just by finding that little bit of common ground
and agreeing on a point, we're already closer
to finding some sort of better outcome for both of us.
By doing that, you disarm, you deescalate the situation
and what you're doing is called Verbal Judo.
This might not be judo, but y'know.
You have to check out my Fears video,
it's one of my favorites on the channel
and as always, stay happy and healthy.
(calm music)