Lesson One: Check

First lesson. I know that I have ranted and raved about how taking a political stand is one of our most important doctorly duties, but sometimes my words taste mighty sweet, so I am eating them. Nurse D is sort of in charge of our experience in L&D (that’s labor and delivery in fancy schmancy medicine talk). She’s an important person to be on the in’s and in’s with. She’s someone you want to be on your side. You don’t want to piss her off. And, as I learned yesterday, you don’t want to let her see the Obama pin on your bag, because that quickly pisses her off and puts you on the out’s and out’s, on her enemy’s team. Here was the sequence of events: Scene 1: Laughing about small talk, everyone smiling. Scene 2: awkward elevator induced silence during which Nurse D eyed the offending pin on my bag and then scowled at me (there were eyewitnesses to this event, so it wasn’t my paranoia). Scene 3: Nurse D is mean and unfriendly towards me, but nice and friendly with everyone else. Scene 4: I covertly (and sheepishly), take the pin off of my bag and stuff it into my bag, along with my high horse (see earlier posts). Apparently AK is a red state. Who knew? Chalk that error up to education: Lesson one learned.

So this bring up 2 things. First, if I accept that my job right now is to learn everything I can from everyone willing (and unwilling) to teach, projecting my strong opinions about things is probably not the best way to be successful at my job. I remember in grade school they used to tell us to put our hands down and write down our idea so we could pay attention to our classmate speaking instead of spending all our energy concentrating on the brilliant statements we wanted to make. I’m not saying I need to give up my core beliefs and not so core political alliances, but I do believe that, at least in these early days, the more neutral of an image I present to my teachers, the more they will be willing to fill in my (seemingly) blank pages with their thoughts and knowledge. Then I get to go home and use those stored morals and values to sort through their beliefs and ideas. And I guess that brings me to number 2. Being neutral (within reason – you have to have a spine and think for yourself) for our elders is beneficial (again, in the early days); being neutral for our patients is almost essential. This is why we dress nicely, but not too nicely (business casual, or maybe a bit more). This is why, at least early on, we do not wear flashy jewelry, or dye our hair green, or show too much cleavage. It’s almost as if we want to be inconspicuous, because the less our patients notice us as individuals, the more reflective we become, and the more they divulge to us (and usually themselves) and the more we are able to help them (and they themselves). Later on, as we learn other tricks and become more steady on our doctor feet, this undercover, almost sneaky method of information gathering will become less important, but right now, it’s one of the only tools we have.