Would My Physician Coworkers Become Judgy McJudgersons? by Jan O'Hara

FEARLESS FRIDAY

Please join me in welcoming Jan O'Hara with a most fearless post! And leave a comment for a chance at her eBook...

In thinking of a topic for this post, I remembered a time when I was still working as a family doctor and when I made a call which had the potential to threaten my livelihood, my coworkers’ impression of me, and the future of a clinic.

While that may sound pretty dire, I can’t qualify it as fearless action because it felt like a calling I couldn’t refuse.

My story begins during what appeared to be a routine departmental meeting.

We had a guest lecturer in—Dr. Ronna Jevne, a Ph.D. psychologist armed with statistics and research. While the scent of stale coffee permeated the room, she talked to us about the importance of hope. The bottom line? As a profession, we were doing a lousy job of communicating realistic hope to our patients, and that meant they paid a huge price. If you doubt that, consider the placebo effect, which is nothing more than people getting better because they believe they have the means to get better. Depending upon the study, it routinely runs about 5%, meaning that one in twenty people get better solely because of the power of hope.

Anyway, as Dr. Jevne spoke, I had goosebumps chasing up and down my skin, and after, though I’m generally a quiet introvert, I had to speak with her. When we were alone, I blurted out something like this: “The reason doctors can’t give hope to patients is that we have so little of our own.”

For some context, I had just returned to work after taking medical leave for burnout. But as I settled into the traces and looked around my clinic, I could see I was in better mental shape than many of my colleagues. They were as exhausted as I had been, the difference being that they weren’t admitting the depths of their suffering.

Fortunately, Dr. Jevne understood what I was saying. And as that conversion spun into further encounters, we began to dream of big things.

Was there a way, we wondered, to teach medical doctors how to get in touch with their own hope? To learn a system of hope cultivation? Would they then pass that hope on to their patients in a contagion of positivity? What if we didn’t restrict the reeducation to doctors but involved all the staff in a particular clinic? Would that strengthen the effect?

To our surprise, when we took our vision to the department chair, and then to the hospital administrator, they seemed equally excited about the possibilities. They helped garner resources. (To this day, I wonder if their openness was because the hospital had been founded by an order of religious nuns so that the link between spiritual wellbeing and health had already been validated.)

This is where I confess, though, that in the midst of our preliminary success, I developed selfish concerns.

By even talking about this stuff, would I risk the good opinion of the other doctors in my clinic? While I had been getting excited during Dr. Jevne’s talk, that hadn’t been true of everyone. I hadn’t missed their polite silence, even the rolled eyes. A few colleagues already saw me as weak because of my medical leave. Would this mark me as someone who couldn’t cut it in “regular” medicine, and therefore someone who cultivated woo-woo solutions?

But as I said above, it didn’t feel like I had a choice, so onward we marched.

In the end, what were the results? 

We began with a clinic-wide workshop and finally met one another at an extraordinarily personal level. (Imagine facing your coworker and asking, “If hope were a color, what color would it be, and why?” Then imagine responding in kind. Not typical water cooler conversation, is it?)

We learned about specific hope-strengtheners and hope-detractors, and how to change what we did in the exam room.

We decided to remodel our clinic so our physical space would reinforce the message of hope. This meant different paint, quotations on the wall, personalized artwork, and a financial cost. But once again, the hospital administration came through with funding, and when they saw the results, they took the model to other locations in the hospital, then other hospitals in the network.

The patients loved the outcome. In our refurbished, kinder space we had deeper conversations about things that truly mattered to their health.

As for my fears about being written off by my skeptical colleagues, for the most part they were unrealized. We had the support of the majority and the hospital board, so the people who might have become hostile simply remained quiet non-contributors.

In writing all the above—and thank you, Brenda, for the opportunity to revisit a lovely period in my life—I realize how many emotions I borrowed from this experience while writing my latest release.

In Cold and Hottie, the heroine learns she is being sent on a corporate retreat that will be run by a psychologist. (Reportedly an aggressive one, rather than the brilliant ones who helped us.)

She understands that she’s about to become more visible to her employer and coworkers while playing these “games”, and that there’s a real possibility they’ll decide she is weird.

She also has history with her boss, so she knows she could be handing him further reason to get rid of her.

On top of everything, she has to worry about wearing a bathing suit in front of her colleagues.

Have you had an office socialization experience that was awkward, and potentially affected your employability? To be entered in a drawing for an e-book copy of Cold and Hottie, leave a brief comment below. In the meantime, if you’d like to know more about the book and me, here are the deets. 

Blurb for Cold and Hottie: 

She's being sent to Jamaica for a team-building exercise. It will be led by a crazed psychologist, and the man she done wrong...who is now her boss. Oops.

A decade ago, in a messy breakup with the only man she has ever loved, Olivia Prosser behaved badly. Since, she has lived with the consequences.

Then bad news comes in rapid succession: the company she works for has been purchased; her ex, Finn, is her new employer; and she'll be reconnecting with him during a mandatory retreat in Jamaica. Five days filled with forced emotional intimacy and corporate-speak, not to mention memories better left in the past.

A white knight's armor will rust in salt water.

For years, Finn Wakefield has known who to blame for his breakup with Liv. Then new information comes to light. Liv might be innocent, and the party who framed her might be lodged within Finn's company, continuing their acts of sabotage.

But Liv shows no interest in righting the wrongs of the past. Is that for ominous reasons or because she is over Finn? Either way, for the sake of his company, Finn must push for the truth – even if the cost is a twice-broken heart.

Cold and Hottie was previously published as part of the Tropical Tryst box set, which became a #1 international bestselling ebook anthology (Aug. 1/17). See why readers call it "...a delicious page-turner set in an exotic setting.

Sales links:

Amazon: http://a-fwd.com/asin-com=B079NK31WP

Barnes & Noble: https://goo.gl/FBubPy

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/cold-and-hottie

iBooks: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/book/cold-and-hottie/id1344689317?mt=11

Author Bio and Connect Links

A former family physician and academic, Jan O’Hara left the world of medicine behind to follow her dream of becoming a writer. These days she confines her healing tendencies to paper—after making her characters undergo a period of delicious torture, naturally. She writes love stories (and biographies) that move from wackadoodle to heartfelt in six seconds flat.

Jan lives in Alberta, Canada and is a columnist for the popular blog Writer Unboxed.

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