Gap

Ask anyone (yourself, quite possibly) who has to bring up a child and mentor a young doctor, and he'll tell you that they're somewhat similar. Oh, I was just reminded not to mix up the roles being a parent and a mentor yesterday during a sharing session on intern mentorship.

Still, I have to admit the same generation gap that exists between us - be they our children or younger interns. That means we have to rely on them to tell us how they feel, instead of equating their reaction with ours.

The Rules of Parenting teaches me that it's completely irrelevant how we feel when we're dealing with our children's emotions; their feelings are the only things that matter. When Riley (remember the movie Inside Out) has to move to a new state and a new school, she's genuinely devastated. Every inch of adults wants to tell Riley to tough up, or that she'll make new friends, or that there's always email, msn and texting ("and we didn't have that in my day").

Don't do it.

All these "good old day" advice and bygone standard simply backfire. Put simply, focus on our child and forget about ourselves (I mean, that old self decades older). Take their feelings and coping mechanisms as seriously as we do our own. The same applies to feeling how our newer generation interns feel. And indeed, what's the point of lecturing a doctor-in-training how we dug references out of the hardcopy Index Medicus in library when he gripes about difficult access to electronic journal at the office?

So, yes, we're to help the new generation react to the challenges that befall them, and not how we react to them. This rule seems pretty obvious, but chances are I'll forget. That's why I arranged the sharing session to remind ourselves. A lesson I should keep in mind forever.