I never know where to start with any of these so let's start at the beginning. I believe that we confuse being strict, profesional, serious, focused, determined, being someone of respect with just being feared, with being loud, with being angry. I believe nothing might encapsulate this better than what happens in my profession. I am not quite a doctor, actually i am half of the way getting a degree but i hear stories about how when you are an intern, a medical student a newly postgrad senior doctors humiliate you, tear you down for not knowing something, for not being according to them up to their standards. Sometimes it even gets more personal with some students i know being called fat in a derogatory fashion. Today i got told how i should be thankful that today, in this day an age i am able to speak my mind about my teachers about what i think is good, bad, how things could work better because when they were students they didn't have that luxury. I don't understand that, actually i can't get behind that. What do you say when you walk into a class, at university in your third year studying something you love and the first thing that the professor tells you is that they are mean and if you put something like that response in their exam you are going to get 0. Thats not earning any respect, its fear. Or that you are having classes online and because its such a new thing to all of us with this health crisis the platform can't handle the traffic and you can't hear your teacher. What do you think happens next? I wish that when i communicate to my teacher that they will understand the situation and take a few minutes to explain things again, however, they exploded in anger telling us how they never get these problems with any of the other classes and its just us. Even when we suggested to change platform they got angry because all they could think about is how we would use it to record their lectures o take screenshots of their presentations. We never got an apology for it, why should we, we are the students? But that's the wrong mindset, when you behave badly towards someone no matter who it is you should be able to say I am sorry, maybe its the ego getting in the way. The same ego some professors when they say that what they tell you is the absolute truth even though science evolves every day and what they know might not apply in the same way now. I can only talk from the perspective of medicine but learning is a never ending process and senior doctors, professors could learn as much from their students as the students do from their teachers. But this is a reality that many deny.
I feel like here in ecuador in the field of medicine we live in a toxic environment that we are so used to, we don't question it, we just lower our heads and accept it, afraid of the consequences, the punishments. There are nonstop stories about doctors telling their patients that this other doctor doesn't know anything, or that he sucks. In a profession where we depend on each other to provide people with the best care we can, it seems that what we do is put each other down as a lesson. We are dealing with peoples lives, so mistakes are not an option, but they are a reality, specially when you are a student. Instead of an environment where the emphasis is on not failing, it should be on learning, thriving to be better. Being afraid of failure invites failure, all the greatest inventions, all the great athletes, all the great minds made mistakes but they took in their stride to turn those mistakes into success which is as much a function of your self as those around you, in a university the staff, the teachers, your classmates. Even between classmates there are those who take the opportunity to show someone else by humiliating them how easy they can do things, and that's a reflection of what happens around us with our doctors in our practices, in our classes. Instead of telling someone who could they even think of such a diagnosis or telling someone that they are dumb for thinking of something, why not tell them the right answer, discuss with them, tell them why you think that what they said is a mistake. We have all been guilty of it at some point so i am asking you to reflect on it, to change it where you can.
It's not right that a couple of days before an exam that we agreed to suddenly expands the amount of topics on it, not because of the content but because of the principal involved. Getting told that we are lucky to have more than one day to study because in their time they only had one day to do it is not a justifiable answer. Being told that we should be stronger because in our profesional lives we are going to be told and treated a lot worst, with more disrespect might be a sad reality but this attitude does nothing to tackle the problem. Why does it have to be that way? If you hated it so much why not push for us to change it? I say being strong is telling them that this justification is wrong, that the way they do things is wrong. Being strong is communicating your feelings, your fears no matter the consequences. I know people who are too afraid to stand up for themselves because of the retaliation. Does that sound right? Does that sound how education should be? Being strong is to stand up to the unjust, stare it down and fight for the change. Lowering your head and accepting that things are the way they are just because they tell you it used to be a lot worst before and it might get a lot worst later on is when we are truly defeated. Being strong is being able to critique yourself, admit when you are wrong, because we all make mistakes. I was scared of my first practice at a hospital, never before had i done a physical examination and its all theory until you face your first patient. I was scared from all the stories in which doctors would shout at you, ask you what you were doing, call you lazy, use words like pathetic. But it wasn't so, that doctor made such an effort to teach me, to guide me, to question my knowledge that it solidified what i learnt and prepared me for the next. This is the new generation, i wish more doctors were like her.
With all that being said i want to dedicate a part of this piece to those who show me that not everything is bleak. I have four teachers, older than me about a year maybe two who to me are examples of the doctors of tomorrow we should be having. They are as knowledgeable as the best of them but they have something that many lose along the way, that joy, that empathy, that happiness you get when you start studying something you love. Never once have they told me because i made a mistake that i am going to kill someone, that i clearly don't study hard enough, that i will fail their exam. No, they always push me to learn, to study more, be more complete for the patients i will treat because its for them that i am doing this. They don't shout at me when i ask them to explain something again, their exams are challenging, because they advocate for hard work but not through humiliation or fear but by making us enjoy what we do. They have given me the best classes in this faculty i have ever received. I remember how during a practical exam it took me more time than it should to put a central catheter because it was my first time doing it through a subclavical access. They told to calm down, asked me questions guiding my knowledge to find the solution, patience and in the end i made it. And after that i kept practicing and i still plan to, but i always remember what they taught me. They are the future, i have faith that they will change how things work for the better and when i graduate i will do it too.
When i was in london my final year project, my thesis, was supervised by this very strict, at first menacing professor. When she first had a meeting with me about my project she said she wanted the best, that science is about hard work, determination, effort, perseverance and long hours. That i will have to read, study, write like never before. So she tested me on everything i knew about the subject correcting me in the flaws i had but she never told me i was stupid or not good enough just told me to be prepared and so i did, from then on every meeting i would go to her trying to impress her, to prove i knew my stuff to be the best student in my field, to do my part of the study to the high standards demanded, i wasn't afraid to fail, i was anxious to learn and show what i got. After long hours in the lab, even nights she congratulated me on doing a good job, shared coffee with me over our meetings, showed me through any trouble i had. In the end I got an A on my thesis and it formed part of an important study in the development of a new therapeutic cure. Don't get me wrong it wasn't all peaches, when i was wrong boy did she let me know i was wrong but i was never humiliated, angry, i never felt put down just a thrive to do better. Being feared is not the same as respected.
My own teachers tell me to be afraid of others and they are afraid of them themselves. People can change things and its in this new generation that the answer lies. Don't lower your head, don't let them ever tell you that you are not good enough, don't be afraid to fail, be afraid to not succeed like you know you can do. Don't lose your humanity, that seems to be something that happens a lot in our career, hold on to being human.
