7: The Challenges of Working With People Who Don't Support You

Session 07

You’re excited to be inching towards your goal of getting into medical school, yet someone you work with is being negative. How do you handle that?

[01:17] Caller of the Day:

"I work in an emergency department... and recently, I've had a few of my coworkers come to me saying just how there have been complaints from one nurse in particular about me sharing my successes. And it's not like I'm lagging. It's always a nurse would ask.

So when my coworker came to me and told me how this one nurse, in particular, has been saying some really nasty things behind my back about my road to med school and just how I'm not going to make it and she's tired of hearing about it. It kind of sucks because I'm sitting here and I don't go out of my way to tell you these things. I thought you genuinely asked. It really hurt. And the crazy part is this is a person who is not even in my age group. This person is old enough to be my grandmother and I'm getting negativity from her. It's even more concerning because as an African-American, there's not a lot of us. And this person saying the negative comments about me is also African-American. Why are women are so quick to put each other down? And just coming to work has been so hard and training is stressful. Am I going to be met with these comments again? Am I going to be met with another individual who's asking about school and do they really care?

Just trying to focus on getting through undergrad... I'm a nontraditional student. I graduated high school in 2010, however, I had to take some time off. I had to leave school, family issues, and get back in school. I'm married. I'm older. It's not easy going to school full-time and then working full-time and having to be a full-time wife, and just trying to balance all these things... it's this one person has nothing but negative things to say. I'm really not understanding.

But with that though when it's just as crazy in the ED and patients keep coming on both sides. meaning the ambulance is bringing in the patients and then you have patients walking in through the front door, and our ER is not so big. So you can see everyone as quickly as a timely manner as they would like. I always get one patient that constantly be that one reminder that this is why I'm doing this. I am human. I have feelings.

For instance, we had a patient come in and they weren't looking too good. Their breathing wasn't normal. And EMS had told us how, due to his blood volume, they had to put in the IO to get the patient's fluids. But that wasn't working. The pressure was really low. Nothing was going right... By the end of that, the patient was talking. One of the nurses on the case was saying how she's had a patient before and she didn't even know that the patient could speak. That, though, was really, really good.

As someone who works in the ER, you're going to have those days where you do have to see a patient die. Not saying the cases are easy but some cases are easier to deal with than others. But as someone who has been working in an emergency room for three years, there are some cases where I've never dealt with.

I'm so glad you guys are doing this and you have this podcast where we can just talk and vent and just get it all off our chest because it really sucks. It really shocked my husband. He's like, "You've seen someone die in front of you? You say it so nonchalantly." "I'm not trying to be callous or heartless but it's just something that comes with the job." And he said, "how many have you seen?" And I say, "Honestly, I don't count because if I count, I'd have to think about it and if I have to think about it, it's not something I want to focus on and then my day is ruined."

But that side of medicine that we don't think about is the...