I used to get upset when I came to work on Monday mornings to be confronted by patients who had trouble over the weekend or issues that had to be dealt with at the start of the week. It took me time to realise that the problems that occur on a Monday are part of the job and in fact are a very important part of the job.
To come to work day by day and expect that there will be no issues, no difficulties, no one will be sick, no one will be pregnant, computer systems will work all the time, patients restorations won’t break or fall out, implants wont have a problem is pie in the sky and utterly nonsense.
Your service is defined by how you deal with the problems, not by whether it has problems or not. It is defined by how you react and learn from the problems, how you reduce that nature of problems so that your service can become more complicated and provide more detailed services which in turn will bring separate problems that you have to deal with and learn from.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you will build a life where problems are not encountered. Build a life with resilience; learn skills to be able to deal with problems carefully, honestly and objectively. This surely must be a much more satisfying approach than the ‘pie in the sky’ approach of trying to eradicate the problems entirely.
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