Attitudes

This is about attitudes. Some of the departments in my institute have a high incidence of stress. In my department the work stress is very high. In addition there are attitude problems of senior residents that I wrote about before, and that causes a lot of psychiatric disturbances in somewhat weak-minded persons. We are working on it with the help of the psychiatry department, and soon should have good results. There is another department, where the problem is said to lie with the staff members. The head of the department has a high regard for himself and his staff members, who are said to have a style statement of their own. They get resident doctors for superspecialization coming from different parts of the country. They are all intelligent doctors who have excelled in their fields of the medicine, got good marks in the common entrance test for this superspecialization, and got these coveted jobs. Some of them come from towns and villages and lack the stylish English pronunciation and the stylish clothes of the city doctors. Instead of appreciating their talent as doctors and ignoring their lack of style, this head of the department is said to look down upon them and to ridicule them at times. Some of them end up with psychological disturbances like anxiety, depression and sometimes suicidal tendencies. There was one such a resident who needed treatment for suicidal tendencies. The psychiatrist treating this resident doctor managed to get him OK. She also advised the head of that department to change his behavior with the residents so that they would not develop psychological disturbances. This head of the department went back to his department and told the staff members not to speak badly to this resident doctor or he would attempt suicide, and the blame would be put on him and his staff members. The unfortunate part of this was that he made the statement quite loudly in front of the concerned resident doctor and a lot of other people. The resident doctor was greatly humiliated instead of feeling reassured. His condition was aggravated and he needed further therapy. The treating psychiatrist was also disturbed by all this. When we discussed this issue, we concluded that the said head of the department had a problem of a wrong attitude and it was beyond repair.