Be human
In a consultation in the practice a little while ago I met a lady who was terrified and who’d been to someone else who had really frightened her about the prospect of potential implant surgery.
I see everyone for an hour when I first start and I got to know her as best I could and so, at the end of the consultation where she’d already decided to go ahead with treatment with me (almost regardless of what price I was about to give her) she thanked me for being thorough and for being kind.
What I realised in the first 10 minutes of the consultation was that this extraordinarily clever individual who had been a primary school teacher prior to retirement needed me to be very thorough.
She was a detailed and thorough individual and she needed that in return. What she also needed though was kindness.
To have someone be grateful for providing what you think they need is a vindication of the time you take to understand them.
The ability to understand them is the ability to be human.
In some fairly recent research carried out in the world of empathy it was identified that one of the best ways to develop empathy (which is a learnable skill) is to read fiction.
Not to watch fiction but to read it.
When we read fiction, we transport ourselves into the world of the characters and we see the world through their eyes and that is what empathy is.
Emotional intelligence is different (also learnable and no less important), but it is the ability to alter your persona or your presentation or your language in keeping with the circumstances in which you find yourself.
Think ‘read the room’ from Anchorman 2.
Adding humanity and emotional intelligence together creates an extraordinarily powerful combination in the world of healthcare.
Having observed thousands of healthcare professional over the past 25 years and been inspired by some of the greatest teachers and mentors and exponents of healthcare, I think these are the most important things that we can do and explain to our younger colleagues that these are developable skills which must be developed.
If a young dentist came to me and asked me how best to develop their empathy, I would ask them to read ‘The Five People You Meet in Heaven’ by Mitch Albom or ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ by Rachel Joyce or even Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman but they’re unlikely to do that.
If they wanted to understand emotional intelligence, I would ask them to read Daniel Goleman and his descriptions of the different types of intelligences and then particular emotional intelligence and how to develop their EQ because it is a totally developable skill.
When we meet people for the first time in our clinical environment it’s a critical point in relationship building and exploration of trust and if we don’t have the time or the skill or the inclination to take that further then we misrepresent our patients from the very start and anything we do after that is less likely to be successful.
For the people who want to be exceptional surgeons they must first try to be a better human.
Blog Post Number - 3184
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