Why I Ghosted My Doctor
The true story behind the f*ucked up experience that inspired my startup
There are a few days in my life I will never forget.
February 23 is one of them. It was on this particular Friday that I learned I may no longer be able to have kids. The news came in an email. My doctor sent a message through the patient portal to tell me that if I wanted to have another child, I had until the end of the year — after that time, my chances would be slim to none. I was happily single and had no plans on working on Baby #2. Feelings of overwhelming sadness were quickly followed by feelings of indescribable anger when I wondered — Why the fuck did she think it was cool to send me an email to share such devastating news? And then I was sad again.
This cannot be what’s being taught about how to have difficult conversations with patients. I sat there, staring at my phone, re-reading the email trying to see if I missed something, missed her words of compassion, missed her offer to discuss her findings or possible options, missed her notion of showing she gave a shit or even put herself in my shoes. Nothing. At that very moment, I felt alone. After some time passed, I thought, maybe if she knew better, she’d do better. Then, the little me standing on my ‘angel-side’ shoulder thought — maybe she’s going through something and didn’t have the space to give me the compassion I deserved in that moment.
And while I’ve always been a strong advocate for letting someone know how you feel about them and being honest when things get uncomfortable — I ghosted my doctor and haven’t interacted with her since.
Now, I’m building a tool to improve the soft skills of health care workers for better patient experiences and happier work lives. I’m Tasheema Prince. I’m the founder of Premedly, part learning platform, part employee training tool for health care workers. A lot has happened since the ghosting and I’ve been pushing forward with purpose. Here’s what this journey has allowed me to do:
1. Connect with others.
I’ve shared my story with hundreds of people and each time, I hear the stories of those who too have had suboptimal experiences with their health care providers. Whenever I delivered my pitch to a room full of people and asked “Who too has had a poor experience with their health care providers’ I was always met with nods and raised hands that silently verified a shared experience of unpleasantness. People would come up to me after my presentation and share their personal stories of experiences they had or an experience of a loved one. A single story of someone who felt disconnected or unheard during an encounter with their health care provider was one too many. My drive to work towards the change I wished to see was further ignited knowing that I wasn’t alone in what I’d experienced.
2. Lead (and build a startup) with love.
On this startup journey, my team and I are on a mission to lead with love as we work to build and create something that supports those who have dedicated their lives to taking care of others, our health care workforce. They’ve completed years of training. Taken oaths to do no harm. They’ve freaking dedicated their lives to taking care of us and our loved ones. They are doing what they have been trained to do. And, over the course of the past year — COVID has sucked the souls out of our health care workers. But here’s the thing — I’m starting to think that they were actually depleted pre-COVID. My doctor had to be soulless to deliver such news to me via a heatless email. In the words of Kayne West, “How could you be so, cold as the winter wind when it breeze, yo!” They are quitting at unprecedented rates and to be honest and it’s really not okay that they’re not okay. Yes, we have thanked them with signs that read ‘Heroes Don’t Always Wear Capes’ or synchronous pot banging at some random hour of the evening, but they really need more, and frankly, deserve more. For this workforce, when it came to burnout or self-care it was touch and go pre-pandemic, so imagine how they are doing now.
3. Tell folks “Soft skills can be taught”
I’ve come to learn that it only takes 40 seconds to show compassion and make a meaningful difference for patients. In a recent Instagram post, third year medical school @kellytakesmedicine wrote “Sure, in emergent situations you have to be short and direct. That’s completely understandable and appropriate. But otherwise, “I don’t have time to be nice” is an excuse. I’ve met plenty of physicians, from ICU docs to surgeons to family docs, who take that 40 seconds.”
Like many of us, they have accepted how little control they have over their day-to-day lives, but their new normal in their professional lives is on a whole different level. You don’t have to look far to see that burnout among our health care workers is an ever present threat to the future of the workforce. The ugly truth is that healthcare workers are facing a ravaging epidemic of burnout amid the unrelenting pandemic of COVID. That combination is volatile and the consequences will not only erode the resiliency of health care workers but it will also have an effect on patients.
The damage that has been caused by the mass trauma faced by healthcare workers during the pandemic combined with the breakdown bubbling up underneath the souls of these individuals — at this very moment in time, we are essentially having a dry run for a potential exodus from the profession for these workers.
The pandemic risks damaging the nursing profession and the health care workforce as a whole for generations to come unless we take action now to address the COVID-19 Effect, which the experts suggest could trigger an exodus from the profession. And a Forbes article also called out the importance of soft skills in a post-pandemic world even beyond the health care community.
Looking back, I wonder if my doctor was experiencing compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue is a condition characterized by emotional and physical exhaustion leading to a diminished ability to empathize or feel compassion for others, often described as the negative cost of caring. For this very reason, one of our first courses focuses on compassion. Our team is working hard to develop an evidence-driven learning experience for health care workers to know better and do better when it comes to key soft skills critical in the health care setting. In the end, the attainment of these soft skills will not only lead to better experiences for patients on the receiving end of care but also lead to better work lives, lowering burnout and feelings of despair.
I can go on about my thoughts about the subject and how deeply my team is committed to doing our part to move the needle towards empowering our health care workers with the soft skills needed to build better health care systems. I’ll leave it here for now, but know that there’s a lot of work to do and we’re up for the challenge. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been drawn to the saying: “Try and leave this world a littler better than you found it’’ so, I know that in the end, if I can provide tools and resources to health care workers to ‘know better and do better,’ I’ll rest well knowing that I’ve left the health care world better than how I found it. If you’re interested in what we’re working on,
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My team and I are on a mission to get our tool to a half million staff by 2023 and help our health care workers thrive at work and leave us a little better than how they found us.
This story was originally published on www.meunapologetically.com.
