#makes themselves busy: VA Business manager and Nurse Chantal Hubert
“I’m calling in sick,” she says to my colleague.
It was an intern and she already reported sick for the 4th time in a short time. I decided to call her back and said: “I see that you have already called in sick for the 4th time. I’m not calling to “speak up”, but to ask if something else might be going on, I’m worried about you?”. She starts to cry and says sobbing that she doesn’t like this profession and would really like to do something else.
I show her empathy and explain to her that it is absolutely not a failure if you make a wrong choice in choosing a profession. I tell her that calling in sick when you’re not really sick doesn’t solve anything, because then we don’t know what’s going on in her head and we can’t help her, so her problem persists. I try to teach her that next time she better look at the problem directly so that she can be helped by people. She responds gratefully.
Then a circus ensues:
– I get a call from her practical trainer from her school
– I get a call from her teacher, both angry that she called in sick so often and didn’t say anything about it.
It touches me deeply: “I’m glad it’s visible now so we can help her. That girl is 16 years old and has made the wrong choice in the profession she wants to practice later. Is that bad? Can she choose wrong? Can she be allowed to learn how to deal with this in a constructive way? Or are we going to teach this girl not to make mistakes? That it is because it is not convenient for us that it is only her behavior that has caused these “problems”? I say
It falls silent.
“Do we teach her that she is now displaying “bad behaviour” or can we teach her that this is also part of developing yourself and self-reflection: recognizing that something is not the right choice and then learning that in a resilient way in a constructive way? dissolve?” I say
What would happen if we gave each other more space to learn from things? Without immediately judging, labeling and disapproving?
Bron: LinkedIn post van Chantal Hubert
Are you also worried?
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