The Cutting Edge of Compassion by Rose Barry;

Author:Rose, Barry;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Published: 2016-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

12. ADDRESSING PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES IN PATIENTS AND PHYSICIANS

Whenever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.

Hippocrates

As a group, physicians are rather diverse. My wife chuckles when she meets a group of physicians, because within a couple minutes of conversation, she can usually predict each one’s particular subspecialty. Surgeons and ER docs are risk takers and will be the first to go after the adrenaline rush one gets from taking care of an acute trauma. In my case, that adrenaline rush comes by jumping out of a helicopter to get fresh tracks of snow. Nothing is more exhilarating than skiing through an incredibly steep powder field, and it’s something I thoroughly enjoy. Most orthopedists are usually pushing the fitness edge and many times are being treated by their colleagues for their own injuries. Internists and cardiologists are much more conservative, diet conscious, and straight laced. Neurologists and pathologists are detail oriented and sometimes, respectfully, a little nerdy. The list goes on.

Many physicians practice medicine based on their interests and personality. A radiologist or anesthesiologist spends more time on his skill set and less time on patient communication. On the other hand, an internist or oncologist may spend extensive time working with the patient and family to affect a treatment or cure. A pediatrician practices by looking for clues to diagnose an illness in a patient that, many times, is less than communicative. No one specialty is better than another, and patient care is the primary focus of them all.

I’m happy to say I have been involved in the leadership of my multi-specialty group, and part of our leadership training involves something we call the leader lab. The leader lab includes psychological testing we take ourselves as well as peer evaluations by those we work with, which are completed and tabulated prior to the lab. As a result, one gets placed into a certain personality profile. My two-day lab experience included a group of about thirty different physicians and allied health personnel who all had different personality types.

On the first day, we did an exercise that put each of us into one of two groups: empathetic personality types and factual/technologically-oriented personality types. I was in the empathetic group. Each group was then asked to describe a picture that included three guys and a girl on a backyard deck. Our group described the picture as follows: one guy was feeling angry and left out, while the other three were good friends, enjoying each other’s company. The other group described the picture as follows: they saw three Caucasian males—two wearing khaki pants and one wearing black shorts—and one Caucasian female wearing a tan dress, all on a brown-stained wooden deck. We were blown away. It was amazing to realize how differently different personalities can see the world. For the next few days, we worked together in small groups and discovered how our different personality types could best communicate and problem solve together. The experience was quite rewarding, but it also caused me to think about how we interact with our patients.

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