I used to work in the hospital till late hours. But not now. To a new father, eager to see his daughter, being at home is the only way to make the day count.
If you thought I'm getting lazy, I would have answered, "Quite the opposite." And I would have added, "If that surprises you, it surprises me, as well."
Lest I be misunderstood, let me make it clear that the longer we stay at workplace doesn't necessarily mean the more we would have accomplished. This is often the case when we keep taking breaks to play Farmville.
The truth is that I'm making better use of the morning hours. Often I need my alarm clock to wake me up. Hey! But then the miracle happens when I get up and start my morning rituals, and one thing leads to another, and eventually, before eight forty-five, I find myself calm and satisfied. By then, I should have had my morning coffee, thumbed through a few pages of medical journals, read my mentor's blog, entered quite a few ticks in my diary's to-do-list.
Now, see, I got time to write a blog this morning.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Silver lining
Teaching our children has always been more by trial and error than science, but that has been pursued for some time, at least in experiment.
Think about a beautiful example done at Temple University in Philadelphia some years ago. The parents of a 4-year-old girl invited a research team to their home. The two professors explained to the little girl that she will get a prize at the end of their visit. This is just what they did, handing out 10 potential "prizes" and asking the girl to rank them from the best prize to the worst prize. Right before the girl, she found a truck, a doll, a broken pair of sunglasses, a pair of socks, and so forth. She was deliriously joyful at this game because she was told further that she will get the prize she liked the best.
The girl zeroed in on Barbie, and happily waited for the moment to receive the best prize. Yeah (drum roll please), and wait - oops. Something wrong. The researchers explained that they had made a mistake and they had to give the girl that she ranked as dead last - a pair of brown socks.
"Sorry for this big mistake."
Now, how does the parent help the child cope with this disappointing news? And this is the real research question.
What will you do? Before I tell you the answer, take a few minutes to think about the possible ways out.
Do you shift your girl's attention away from the socks toward the nice wrapping the prize came in? Do you comfort your girl by holding her or verbally soothing her? Do you "reframe" the situation, putting the socks on your hands and making them into a puppet or suggesting you give the socks to another kid who might really like them? Do you encourage your girl to change the situation, say, by talking to the researchers and telling them that she got the wrong prize?
Of all the options above, none are more positive than shifting the girl's attention and cognitive reframing. The effect of looking more closely at every cloud, to see the silver lining, is riveting. This is, in fact, associated with the lowest level of sadness and anger. If you think you are helping the child who was encouraged to change the situation by talking to the researchers, nothing could be further from the truth. That would lead to more anger and sadness than those in other conditions. The child would simply lose the ability to regulate her emotion in a positive way, directing herself to vent and lash out, instead.
Taking another perspective to look at adversity can always be a new opportunity. Whining never is.
Think about a beautiful example done at Temple University in Philadelphia some years ago. The parents of a 4-year-old girl invited a research team to their home. The two professors explained to the little girl that she will get a prize at the end of their visit. This is just what they did, handing out 10 potential "prizes" and asking the girl to rank them from the best prize to the worst prize. Right before the girl, she found a truck, a doll, a broken pair of sunglasses, a pair of socks, and so forth. She was deliriously joyful at this game because she was told further that she will get the prize she liked the best.
The girl zeroed in on Barbie, and happily waited for the moment to receive the best prize. Yeah (drum roll please), and wait - oops. Something wrong. The researchers explained that they had made a mistake and they had to give the girl that she ranked as dead last - a pair of brown socks.
"Sorry for this big mistake."
Now, how does the parent help the child cope with this disappointing news? And this is the real research question.
What will you do? Before I tell you the answer, take a few minutes to think about the possible ways out.
Do you shift your girl's attention away from the socks toward the nice wrapping the prize came in? Do you comfort your girl by holding her or verbally soothing her? Do you "reframe" the situation, putting the socks on your hands and making them into a puppet or suggesting you give the socks to another kid who might really like them? Do you encourage your girl to change the situation, say, by talking to the researchers and telling them that she got the wrong prize?
Of all the options above, none are more positive than shifting the girl's attention and cognitive reframing. The effect of looking more closely at every cloud, to see the silver lining, is riveting. This is, in fact, associated with the lowest level of sadness and anger. If you think you are helping the child who was encouraged to change the situation by talking to the researchers, nothing could be further from the truth. That would lead to more anger and sadness than those in other conditions. The child would simply lose the ability to regulate her emotion in a positive way, directing herself to vent and lash out, instead.
Taking another perspective to look at adversity can always be a new opportunity. Whining never is.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Emotional Intelligence
By any reasonable standard, no doctor would like to be called back to the hospital in the middle of the night. But some of them can't be judged by any reasonable standard.
Last night I went to see a 92-year-old woman who has been bleeding from the ulcer in her digestive tract. My guess was that I might have to ask someone to perform an upper endoscopy procedure to help that anaemic patient. Probably it's the most helpful means to control bleeding through a flexible tube going all the way from the mouth to the first part of the small intestine. But that's quite impossible – her doctors have tried this way for three times within one week but to no avail. Strictly, however, she wasn't fit enough for us to take her to the operating room.
I hesitated for a moment, and then phoned up the radiologist team. They had already attempted more than once to put a tube into her blood vessel in the leg and thread it up to block the bleeding artery near the stomach. My classmate radiologist barely flinched when I told him the story. "Prepare her for the third angiography," my classmate told me, "and I'll be back within an hour."
To give you a sense of what it's like for a radiologist to perform the angiography, imagine yourself wearing a sturdy apron made of lead (instead of cloth) and standing for an hour in front of a monitor. But wait: the monitor isn't as colourful as the Wii video games; it is a maze of black-and-white pictures where the radiologist navigates with the wires. So how can the radiologist go without getting lost in the maze? Hardly. They get lost as often as a puppeteer gets his strings entangled. Skill isn't enough. A radiologist can lose his way during the angiography but cannot lose his temper. That's the easiest to lose and the hardest to survive without. When my classmate found his way to the target artery, I was amazed to find that he couldn't go further because of the machine breakdown. More amazing still: he was perfectly composed to finish the task with his bare hands instead of the machine.
I was amazed. Even now.
Last night I went to see a 92-year-old woman who has been bleeding from the ulcer in her digestive tract. My guess was that I might have to ask someone to perform an upper endoscopy procedure to help that anaemic patient. Probably it's the most helpful means to control bleeding through a flexible tube going all the way from the mouth to the first part of the small intestine. But that's quite impossible – her doctors have tried this way for three times within one week but to no avail. Strictly, however, she wasn't fit enough for us to take her to the operating room.
I hesitated for a moment, and then phoned up the radiologist team. They had already attempted more than once to put a tube into her blood vessel in the leg and thread it up to block the bleeding artery near the stomach. My classmate radiologist barely flinched when I told him the story. "Prepare her for the third angiography," my classmate told me, "and I'll be back within an hour."
To give you a sense of what it's like for a radiologist to perform the angiography, imagine yourself wearing a sturdy apron made of lead (instead of cloth) and standing for an hour in front of a monitor. But wait: the monitor isn't as colourful as the Wii video games; it is a maze of black-and-white pictures where the radiologist navigates with the wires. So how can the radiologist go without getting lost in the maze? Hardly. They get lost as often as a puppeteer gets his strings entangled. Skill isn't enough. A radiologist can lose his way during the angiography but cannot lose his temper. That's the easiest to lose and the hardest to survive without. When my classmate found his way to the target artery, I was amazed to find that he couldn't go further because of the machine breakdown. More amazing still: he was perfectly composed to finish the task with his bare hands instead of the machine.
I was amazed. Even now.
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