Working with patients demands a certain demeanor and attitude from professionals. Patients come to us with their own fears, anxieties and problems. We must see through whatever attitude they are presenting and give them what they need from us.
What happens when the professional is dealing with heartache? How does she/he carry on and give all day long? How can we as managers, bosses or co-worker's respond in a way that shows we care and that helps get the person through the day?
We are currently experiencing three heartaches in our practice. The first was the break-up of a relationship that everyone thought would lead to marriage. The other two are life-threatening illnesses of loved ones.
I think, that as a manager, you have to take the personality of the staff member into account. You must weigh what she needs to help her make it through the day as opposed to what she may desire in response to her situation. In the break-up situation, I was very sad for the staff member, but I also realize that she tends to be dramatic. In this case, empathy (I'm right in there with you and I feel what you feel) would have been a disaster. She would have cried all day. Instead, sympathy (I know you're sad and I'm sorry you're suffering) followed by a dose of reality (you have to do what you can to put your sadness aside while you're working) was the ticket. She came to me and said that it was a relief to get away from her sadness and focus on her patients.
The next is an employee whose husband is going through his third cancer diagnosis in 6 years. She's terrified and she needs time off. This is a person who sees coming to work as an opportunity to escape her problems for eight hours so she doesn't need a pep talk from me. I have to look at her situation from many different angles. What she needs most is to be able to set the tone. She doesn't want to be fussed over. She also needs security. In a perfect world, we would say take all the time you need, your paycheck will keep coming and your job will be waiting. In reality, her job will be waiting, but we may have to be creative about the paycheck. Trying to reschedule her patients into openings in the same month keeps our production unaffected and may help. Our other hygienist is willing to work Friday mornings without pay so there's more help. Hopefully, the hygienist herself will be able to at least work part time. If any of you reading this have dealt with a similar situation I'd love to hear about how you handled it.
Finally, the last situation is my own. My older brother has been diagnosed with melanoma of the lung and esophagus. I'm heartbroken, but I also have my responsibilities from day to day. I realized that, at first, I was angry since this guy has beaten cancer twice before. He's supposed to be a survivor and he's proved it. So, it doesn't seem fair to hit him harder than ever before. The day after I found out, I went into work and saw that some stock had been very carelessly put away. It was one of those, "Oh, that's good enough" moments of carelessness on someone's part that I usually would have just addressed and moved on. This time I let all my frustration with "Just good enough", come to the surface in our staff meeting. It was a good thing and a bad thing. They needed to know that they were slipping in some areas, but that's not the way I usually communicate with them. I needed to realize that I should address issues sooner so that it doesn't build up waiting for a weak moment to explode. I also needed to let them know what I was dealing with so that they have the opportunity to give support. So, for my own heartache, I can take a moment to ask myself if I'm reacting from my own pain or are my impressions justified, and take my own advice. I don't dwell on it while I'm at work. When the pressure builds, I look for an opportunity to take a walk. I did that the other day, and had a good cry while I was at it, and came back to work composed and de-stressed.
Life happens, good and bad, happy and sad. We have to go through it all. We can help others along the way, we can accept help and we can help ourselves with deciding that we are strong and that as our heartaches increase the strength will come that we need to get through it. I don't know any other way.
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