In my day we were grateful when a consultant took the time to harass and belittle us.
TMR spoke with Professor Candid about bullying in the workplace.
TMR: You’ve been a doctor and a medical educator for over 40 years, what changes have you seen in that time with respect to bullying in the workplace?
PC: Well things have changed a lot over the course of my career. Back when I was a junior doctor nobody talked about bullying or safe spaces, we just got on with the job, we got on with looking after our patients and teaching the students.
What methods did you use when you first started teaching medical students?
Well it was a different era and techniques have changed, but what I would really try to do is instil a feeling of inferiority and inadequacy in my students. If they could carry these feelings on into their careers then I knew I’d achieved something.
Was this approach helpful?
I’m not sure if it was helpful but it worked. I’ll give you an example: back when I was a medical student the lead consultant would shake me out of my sleep, hose me down and force me to run round an obstacle course which he’d built in the hospital grounds whilst flinging cow shit at me. It was brutal but it taught me some valuable things.
Like what?
Like always remember to keep your mouth shut when somebody’s throwing cow shit at you.
Your experiences have clearly left their mark but do you see bullying as being a problem in today’s hospitals?
It may be, but the most I can now hope for is being allowed to scowl at a medical student if he or she doesn’t know the right answer. And I say “she” because there are a lot of girls about the place these days.
Does that concern you?
Not at all. For years I thought that girls were just strange little boys, nobody thought to tell me that they’d started letting women into the profession. Turns out my wife is a woman too! Who would’ve thought?
What do you see is the biggest challenge facing medical education in the next few years?
We need to change the whole culture in medicine.
Really! In what way?
We need thicker skins. We need thicker skins and bigger balls, great big balls covered in thick skin, and we need more pipe smokers as well, hardly anyone smokes a pipe these days, and we also need bigger balls, did I mention that? And obstacle courses … and cow shit … and … balls.
