Safety

At a recent final year medical student examination I was glad to have the chance sitting next to Professor Sung, our truly legendary physician. Like a student myself, I'm always hungry to hear his stories, which are at the very heart of Dickensian or Sherlockian flavor.

A lesson I learned was how we could have behaved like an asshole or bosshole without knowing it. The unfriendly and rude bullying behaviour of senior doctors was much more common in the old days, as I was told, when superiors treated young followers like dirt. What about now? Somewhat better in many fields, I guess. But not as good as what we might have wanted.

What does it mean? That's called bosshole gap. In short, bosses are notoriously poor at evaluating our own performance. We could have bragged about being a great boss, without knowing how much we're getting close to be a full-blown certified asshole.

How is it possible to assess the culture of psychological safety? One good metric is, perhaps, checking the willingness of young doctors or students to take interpersonal risks at work, to admit error or simply say "I don't know" in front of a senior.

To answer the last question, I must say "I don't know."