The title has the number 13 because I have written on 12 different attitudes before. That it is the first in this vein in the year 2013 is purely coincidental. We have a staff member who has this funny response when an Assistant Professor or Resident Doctor in that unit is assigned duty for conducting examination or attending training camps organized for them by the civic body.
"I have OT or OPD on that day. I will not relieve this doctor" he declares.
"This is official work that is being done at the orders of a much higher authority" we try to explain.
"No. I will not relieve him/her. He/she is required to treat my patients here" he says.
Getting him to relieve that doctor requires all sorts of maneuvers, including the final one - threat of complaining to the Boss. What I cannot understand is that person's megalomania. The belief that he/she is the supreme authority, despite knowing full well that he/she is a small peg in a gigantic machinery is unexplainable. Perhaps it is an effort at proving his/her non existing greatness to self rather than to others isthe motive.
This person has been around for a long time. I thought of this attitude today not due to him/her, but because I interacted with someone else who showed similar attitude. I am required to conduct confidential inquiry of all maternal deaths in the institute by the order of the government and the civic body. Doctors from different departments who had treated the deceased have to be called. There is a unit head in another specialty, who is quite junior, but has developed an attitude after getting the position of a head of unit, more so after being given some administrative job in addition to it.. This person refuses to send his doctors for the inquiry making the same statement our own person with that attitude makes. Doctors from that unit failed to come for the meeting we conducted this month too. When I met this person near the administrative office, I quietly asked him the reason why they did not come despite adequate notice.
"My doctors are very sincere. This is not possible."
"I am telling you they did not come.A notice has been received by your department" I explained.
"May be" this person said. "But I am telling you, you cannot talk to us the this way. This is not your department."
"This has nothing to do with my department and me being the head of it" I explained patiently. "I have to conduct this inquiry by the order of the state government as the chairman of the maternal death inquiry committee here."
"May be" this person said. This attitude of not accepting facts stated by a person years senior was amazing. Then he/she called the concerned doctors, came back and said, "my doctor got a call at the end of the meeting!"
"That was the last reminder" I said.
"You cannot talk to us like this" this person said again. "This is not your department."
"OK" I said and dropped the conversation. If this person with some management training did not know that acknowledgement of receipt was a solid proof while the word of mouth was not, he/she only an attitude but not much thinking power. The adrenalin surge in him/her was causing tremors in his/her pointing finger. I was worried he/she would develop a stroke if the matter continued any further. The senior faculty around us were aghast and remained aghast for quite some time after he/she left.
I kept thinking what had caused such an outburst in a person who had had no conflict with me in the past, especially when all I had said was a casual statement about his/her doctors not coming for an inquiry. Long after that encounter I remembered me writing a post, in which there was a line on this person. If he/she had read the blog, that one line must have really stung him/her owing to the underlying truth that he/she had probably realized only after reading that post. The post was at the following link. I bet no one else can make out which one line in those 50 lines is the line responsible.
http://shashankparulekar.blogspot.in/2012/09/condolences.html
"I have OT or OPD on that day. I will not relieve this doctor" he declares.
"This is official work that is being done at the orders of a much higher authority" we try to explain.
"No. I will not relieve him/her. He/she is required to treat my patients here" he says.
Getting him to relieve that doctor requires all sorts of maneuvers, including the final one - threat of complaining to the Boss. What I cannot understand is that person's megalomania. The belief that he/she is the supreme authority, despite knowing full well that he/she is a small peg in a gigantic machinery is unexplainable. Perhaps it is an effort at proving his/her non existing greatness to self rather than to others isthe motive.
This person has been around for a long time. I thought of this attitude today not due to him/her, but because I interacted with someone else who showed similar attitude. I am required to conduct confidential inquiry of all maternal deaths in the institute by the order of the government and the civic body. Doctors from different departments who had treated the deceased have to be called. There is a unit head in another specialty, who is quite junior, but has developed an attitude after getting the position of a head of unit, more so after being given some administrative job in addition to it.. This person refuses to send his doctors for the inquiry making the same statement our own person with that attitude makes. Doctors from that unit failed to come for the meeting we conducted this month too. When I met this person near the administrative office, I quietly asked him the reason why they did not come despite adequate notice.
"My doctors are very sincere. This is not possible."
"I am telling you they did not come.A notice has been received by your department" I explained.
"May be" this person said. "But I am telling you, you cannot talk to us the this way. This is not your department."
"This has nothing to do with my department and me being the head of it" I explained patiently. "I have to conduct this inquiry by the order of the state government as the chairman of the maternal death inquiry committee here."
"May be" this person said. This attitude of not accepting facts stated by a person years senior was amazing. Then he/she called the concerned doctors, came back and said, "my doctor got a call at the end of the meeting!"
"That was the last reminder" I said.
"You cannot talk to us like this" this person said again. "This is not your department."
"OK" I said and dropped the conversation. If this person with some management training did not know that acknowledgement of receipt was a solid proof while the word of mouth was not, he/she only an attitude but not much thinking power. The adrenalin surge in him/her was causing tremors in his/her pointing finger. I was worried he/she would develop a stroke if the matter continued any further. The senior faculty around us were aghast and remained aghast for quite some time after he/she left.
I kept thinking what had caused such an outburst in a person who had had no conflict with me in the past, especially when all I had said was a casual statement about his/her doctors not coming for an inquiry. Long after that encounter I remembered me writing a post, in which there was a line on this person. If he/she had read the blog, that one line must have really stung him/her owing to the underlying truth that he/she had probably realized only after reading that post. The post was at the following link. I bet no one else can make out which one line in those 50 lines is the line responsible.
http://shashankparulekar.blogspot.in/2012/09/condolences.html
