When I was a Senior in High school we had this project called “Job Shadowing”. It seems to be fairly common, enabling kids to follow around a professional in the field that they were interested in working. I was gung-ho about a medical profession and helping others to feel healthy even then. However, at that point, I wasn’t privy to the benefits of holistic medicine.

So, I did what any uber driven teenager would have done…I approached the hospital’s chief of staff surgeon and convinced him to let me to watch him operate on patients. I had to sign confidentiality waivers and dress out in scrubs.  Over 4 or 5 days , I watched a multitude of surgeries, from hip replacements…to hemorrhoids…to abdominal procedures…to cosmetic eye surgery and much more. I was fortunate that many of other surgeons also didn’t mind me jumping into their surgeries. I saw a lot and it seemed like a very cool window into that career. I got nauseous a couple times. However, I was entirely enamored by the effectiveness of anesthesiology.

I recall one specific surgery where the patient was only numbed from the waist down. The surgeon quickly got to work and the patient was talking to him the whole time. She was fairly chatty and at some point she said “Let me know when you start cutting”, at this point I was totally grinning under my surgical mask because the surgeon looked back at me as she said that…only to see that he had cut her open and had his hand around the bone inside her leg. It was amazing and I was intrigued.

Following the surgeries, I spent time in the recovery room. I followed him around to “do rounds” the days after the surgeries. I was curious about all of it and inquisitive in efforts to understand more.  Then something happened. We were in the process of making rounds and as we were on the way out I heard a woman, we had just examined, screaming out in pain. I turned back to see what was happening and there was a lot of fresh blood seeping out from the incision wound and dripping onto the floor. He kept walking to the next patient and when I tried to tell him something didn’t seem right…he quickly reminded me of my place and moved on to the next patient.

I was shocked when he said that there was no time to deal with the patient’s pain…that was the nurse’s job. I listened and did what he said, but it felt fundamentally wrong. That happened on my last day of shadowing him, so I never really knew what happened to her.  Here’s the kicker though…when I got back to my teacher the following week I received a review of my time in the hospital. Overall it was positive, yet there were two comments that distinctively stood out :

1. She is too curious and asks relevant but thought provoking questions that are disturbing to my authority as chief of staff, even if asked in privacy. Although they were always asked privately, and not in front of a patient I have no patience for this curiosity. As a subordinate that disturbs the rhythm of my work according to the protocol that I use.
2. She is interacts with the patients on an individual basis, makes eye contact and asks them how they feel. This is the role of the nurses and for this reason I feel that she would be better suited as a nurse than a surgeon.

Needless to say, when I heard those comments I was disturbed. I went into the process told to” be inquisitive”. It was my nature and for some odd reason, even at that age, I thought that it was important to make eye contact with people I was talking to, be them doctors or patients. I didn’t feel good at all about the comments, as I had thought I was doing what I was instructed to do, to fulfill my duties in this job shadowing. My teacher reassured me that I had chosen one of the toughest people to follow with his dominant and chauvinistic mentality and that I had done what I was requested to do.

It’s amazing how much the opinions of those that we admire play into our psyche. I felt as if, in order to succeed in the medical world, I needed to stop asking questions, stop treating  people as individuals and to get back to the numbers of “successful” treatments.

This set the stage for many years of confusion trying to live up to this idealism that he had created regarding my place in the world. That is, until I was willing to admit to myself that being inquisitive and empathetic were my strengths and I wasn’t willing only to operate according to protocols.  No one should decide your place in the world but you. I saw and still see people as individuals and not numbers.

Fast forward 25 years, now working as a health coach I get paid to ask a lot of questions , to look people in the eye, to listen to their souls as they strive to become a better version of themselves. Frequently we are told that we should try to strengthen our weaknesses. Now more than ever, I am convinced that we should build a body of work by respecting, honoring and honing our strengths.