Team Work Makes the Dream Work.
CEO 4.3 “Use effective listening, observational, and communication techniques in all professional interactions”
A theme that I have worked hard to learn in medicine is how to be a good teammate. Medicine is a team sport and involves communication between providers of all types. This education started in LG during the very beginning of medical school. Although forced at times, we had to learn to communicate with each other while planning our next steps.
I decided that I could do a lot of good for my patients by advancing this aspect of my training. We, as medical providers, have the opportunity to be highly educated. However, I struggle to think of a profession where highly educated people work with such a spectrum on the education level. By this I mean that there are other highly educated care givers on the team, as well as the patients who can span the spectrum of knowledge and health literacy. It is an honor to still be able to involve all of those people in the care; especially the patient.
During the second half of my first year, I took part in first half of my advanced competency. I had the opportunity to work with a variety of health care students (medicine, nursing, dietitians, veterinary, social work, and many more!). We were given scenarios with standardized patients to learn how to communicate in the moment. We also were assigned a family case study based on real families in Columbus. Given that family’s struggles, we had to think through options for this family so that they could pay the bills, pay for food, and manage medical challenges. This taught us to use each other and what each profession brought to the table. It taught me a lot about resources that are available, but also how to utilize, and empower, others. This includes empowering the patient/family.
The next semester started the second part of the training. We received training on how to be leaders in the field. This actually built on the first set of training perfectly. It was necessary for this portion to come second in my opinion. We learned a lot about our own leadership style and how to best utilize this. But we also saw that not everyone in the room had the same style. While we could all be leaders, we would do it in different ways. Often we would not be isolated and another leader would also be present in the same team. Working with other leaders was as much a part of the training as being a leader ourselves. Strong communication was essential.
I then finally got to put these skills into action during my clinical years. I was serving an underserved population, and was not doing it in isolation. Being on the lower end of the totem pole, I had to use lots of skills to make sure that I was still a valued member and best served my patient. While on my general medicine service, I worked heavily with social work to provide the resources for one specific patient who had no family to visit. We arranged counseling, transportation, and follow up. I also worked with the nurses to make sure that there was sufficient times where the patient was checked on. Lastly, I called and made sure a service dog would be by to see her. The patient greatly appreciated this coordination, and leadership.
Below is a picture from the pediatric residents weekly newsletter. I am there with my PICU team. Although informal appearing, we were actually table rounding but we didn’t have access to our normal room. I loved being treated like an intern during that mini-internship because it allowed me to best care for my patients by working with a team. I worked hard even though it was my second mini-internship back-to-back, and at that point I knew that I wasn’t doing pediatrics. I used this as an opportunity to continue to hone these skills that I would surely be using every day after graduation.
