Monday again. How is it that it’s somehow always Monday? The weekend never feels that long.

I had a good day at work, on Friday no less. (Fridays are almost as annoying as Mondays, heh.) It made me think.

If someone would ask me what my greatest weakness is, work-wise, I would say that I have a very hard time with being manipulated. Thus I have a very hard time working with patients where manipulation happens more often - addicts, certain personality disordered patients. I would say that this is one of the things that I’m worst at in real life even. It hurts me very badly and it has been the only reason that I’ve ever shut people out completely, more or less.

My biggest strength goes hand in hand with that. It’s my way of being there and making the other person feel that I care about them and take them seriously. Which isn’t hard, because I do. And I have a hard time combining the two sometimes - for me, to be that open and warm, I have to believe in the best in people, and then it hurts twice as much when I notice I’m being taken advantage of.

Anyway, all that’s to say that I think I’m good at my job not mainly because of medical knowledge (not that I don’t have any) but because I’m able to make my patients feel safe in my care. They trust me. I try to never downplay any concerns, I never tell anyone it’s just in their head or that they just have to lose the weight. (Talk about pet peeves here.)

I realise that they’re sick and not at their best, because God knows I know how I am when I’m sick. So even if they might start out snippy or just plain tired, that’s no reason for me to react anything but friendly and civil (to a certain limit, of course).

And most of the time, that’s just how I do my work. I honestly don’t know how people can do it any differently. It’s “Dienst am Menschen”, and I don’t understand certain colleagues who seem to put the patient last - the reason I learnt all this stuff and crammed things into my head that I’ll probably never need is to be in contact with people, and, yes, cliche ahoi, to help them. Really. So mostly, I don’t notice what I do because that’s the way I always do it. I think it’s the way it should be done.

So sometimes, I’m a bit thrown off kilter when I do the normal thing, and people get all overwhelmed with gratefulness. The sweet old lady who gripped my hand tightly and thanked me because she hadn’t thought she would be treated this well. The woman with severe muscle pains who didn’t think anyone would believe her. An elderly lady with pain in her back and legs who got ridiculed by a colleague because she wanted to *gasp* see a chiropractor, and how she relaxed when she noticed I wasn’t laughing. And last Friday, a sweet Hungarian couple I joked with for about half an hour, and it was so obvious that they felt comfortable, even though they were scared when they went in.

When they went out of the door I got this wonderful feeling I don’t have too often, that I’ve done really good work. Not because of some fancy diagnosis - we’re not there yet - but in that they know they can trust me, and they will be back. The whole warm and fuzzy thing. And I felt a bit silly too, because I thought, well, that’s really just an intrinsic part of the job, and I shouldn’t be feeling this good about it, it’s nothing special.

But listening to my patients every day, I hear more and more often that sadly, it seems to be special. And I just don’t get how that can be. I’m no oldtimer, but I have been working for a few years now, and even though the job can be tough and I sometimes don’t especially like going to work - I love meeting the people I meet. I just don’t know why you would want to do this job if you don’t.

Still with me? Wow, you’re good. I’m hesitant to post this because it might sound incredibly arrogant. It’s not like I don’t have bad days, but I do think my job is cutomer service related to say the least, and I would never get uncivil or laugh at people. I just don’t get how people can think that would be okay.

End diatribe. Patient waiting outside ;) 

 

 

 

 

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