Effective Communication

Today at work I witnessed an incidence where communication went all wrong. Fortunately I was the observer rather then the participant.

After our weekly meeting this morning I saw the outburst of one disgruntled doctor (Let me label her as DR.A) with regards to our on call roster for October. She was near tears and almost shouting to the doctor (Dr. B) who made the roster. Of course, I was appalled by the whole scene and decided to stepped out of the meeting room. However, standing outside the door, I could hear her voice escalating to a scream and after a few second another doctor (Dr. C) burst out of the room crying.  My guessed was that whatever needed to be conveyed was disrupted by the unprofessional conduct of Dr. A who was shouting and emotional. Later in the day, I received an e-mail from Dr. B who explained the whole incident, admitting the mistakes in the roster but also commented on how doctors and colleagues should be professional enough to handle the whole incident without any dramatic outburst. I must say that I am saddened by the conduct of Dr.A but at the same time commended Dr. B who was able to handle the whole situation professionally. Dr.C on the other hand became the collateral damage where she became the unknowing victim to Dr. B's firing end.

Being emotional and throwing tantrum will not get you what you want. I myself have been put in situation where the calls rotation was unfair to me, but I talked to Dr.B  quietly and calmly without any temper tantrum being thrown to everybody else. And the rotations got change to the satisfaction of everybody else. The way I see it, if you want something from others, you need to be calm and communicate your grievances clearly. That way, you can maintain an amicable relationship with the people around you and you might just get what you want and more. The behaviour of Dr. A made me dislike her and left a bad impression. In fact it didn't make me sympathize with her situation. On the contrary, it just made me think that she doesn't deserve any help from us.

This serve as a reminder to me never to shout and scream in front of others regardless of how upset I get with my situation.