31 August 2023
As I stared at this list of questions I had to answer about myself, not knowing where to start or what to say, it became increasingly apparent that I care far too much about what strangers think of me.
My VIA character strengths quiz also hit the nail on the head with my top strength (which I also consider a weakness) – honesty. I’m unable to do this assignment in a timely manner because I am simultaneously too concerned about how I come across, and too honest to say anything I find inauthentic.
In the interest of ‘getting on with it’, I am going to try to care less what people think, but this is still going to take me hours.
I’m starting this off with a very large life decision that I’ve made, which also happens to be an ethical one. I became extremely sick with Covid-19 midway through 2022 – it affected my memory, my thought processes, my physical endurance, my breathing, my heart rate, my personality, and my energy. I started off house-bound, then I could do quick outings/errands. Slowly I became able to drive to work again, but then I had no ability to concentrate, think or just walk around. After trying for months to get back into the swing of things on a seriously tailored and extremely part-time roster, I decided I needed to have another career plan and stop working as a doctor. My day-to-day work involved life and death, putting people off to sleep for surgery (and waking them up again), and taking people’s pain away (think epidurals for labour).
I decided that I could no longer do the job to the standard required of me. My memory still isn’t what it was, I am also more easily distracted, find it harder to focus, and I don’t have the same physical endurance to keep up with shift-work or critical situations. I feel like I don’t have the ability or the energy to do my job like I could before, and I don’t want to subject my patients to that. It also terrifies me that sometimes my brain just drops out of my head and I can’t speak, it hasn’t happened for a while, but I can’t imagine being a critical care doctor who has this kind of disability. Being ill also completely changed my perspective on life, and I no longer want a career that demands so much of my time and energy. I now desire more flexibility, the ability to pick up hobbies and have something I can do every week at the same time, the ability to take my leave without asking 6 months in advance, the ability to say ‘yes’ to more of the events my friends have and participate more in their lives, to spend more time with family, the ability to travel and work overseas (without all the boundaries that medicine provides).
This decision is an ongoing one, and I still find it difficult to think about. There are many aspects about my previous job that I will really miss, but unless I am well enough to do it properly, I will never do it again.
Broadly, the main cultures I’ve been exposed to and influenced by are: my education, my dance community, and my mixed heritage.
My education (both school, uni and medical) have fostered values such as achieving high academic success, ambition, integrity, social responsibility, loyalty, kindness, trustworthiness, and high ethical standards.
My dance culture fostered confidence, teamwork, supporting your rivals/friends, being sociable and having fun.
My mixed New Zealand and Filipino cultures have fostered acceptance of differences, viewing life from a range of perspectives, a love of travel and learning about new cultures around the world.
These values are all part of my identity and change how I interact with the world.
- Trustworthy/honest – I take responsibility for my faults and don’t take credit for things I haven’t done. This supports me on my learning journey as I will be able to do the things I claim to do.
- Complete tasks, even if the task makes me frustrated – I tend to keep going and this will help me get through this course, this would also be a strength at a future job.
- Organised – I am good at planning things and going through with them, this will help me to complete the content of the course.
- Thorough – I like to complete things properly and take the time to do it well. This means I will cover all of the material and content as far as timing will allow.
- One limitation is mild social anxiety which particularly affects me when it comes to public speaking or suddenly being put on the spot for something. It’s often not very obvious to an observer, but it makes me feel awful and avoidant of those situations. This can decrease my learning opportunities and slows my growth in these important skills.
- I can get frustrated with things easily and vocalise my frustrations. This can make it hard while working in teams with people who dislike my negativity.
- I don’t handle criticism well (I take it all very personally), but it is something I’m working on because I know it is very important for improving myself and learning to be better at something.
- I doubt my own abilities and always make assumptions that others are better than I am. In the past it has affected my learning by making me completely undersell my abilities and miss out on learning opportunities I didn’t think I was ready for.
Once upon a time, I was on a night-shift, about to start giving a patient a general anaesthetic by myself after a night of disasters (doing long difficult cases with my boss). It was 4am, I was exhausted, and my very senior anaesthesia technician was very upset with my very senior nurse and vice versa (I forget now what the quarrel was about, but they were arguing directly over the head of my patient with a broken leg). As is the case with many things in the hospital, I was the most junior member of staff, but I was also the one in charge. At the time, I was exhausted and scared, so I told them both honestly that I needed them to work together and to quieten down because I needed to focus. I said, “This is my first case by myself at night. Please.” and I think the small amount of fear in my voice caused them to stop arguing and focus.
It was very effective, and the senior anaesthesia technician apologised to me many times afterwards about his lack of professionalism in that case.
Now, being more senior, I would just be more assertive about telling them to stop arguing at the beginning of a case, because I know that they know it is unprofessional to do. If there was more time, and I was needing to work more often with those two together, I would try to talk to each of them about what the conflict might be about and whether they could find a compromise together, or whether they needed to be rostered to work with each other less.