No matter how many years of experience you have under your belt, there are certain things medical professionals should never do. Not only are the things on this list pushing the ethical envelope, they could also be damaging to your career. As a medical professional, the public views you as someone knowledgeable, compassionate and authoritative. You should be proud of your position and continue to uphold this image. So whatever you do, don’t do these 15 things! 1) Don’t Smoke As a medical professional, you know that cigarette smoking is the single most preventable cause of premature death in the United States. You aren’t in Mad Men. Times have changed, and espousing health and wellness while you smell like smoke is a definite way to lose confidence with your patients. If you are going to smoke make sure that nobody sees you or smells your habit. This could mean only smoking after you’re done with your rounds or an extensive regime of air fresheners, soap, gum and hand sanitizers. Whatever you do, never smoke in your scrubs – it will linger all day and hurt your professional credibility. 2) Don’t Wear Scrubs in Public Scrubs are a signal of your profession, but they are also an article of clothing designed to be sterile if you have patient contact. Wearing your scrubs in public is a good way to soil your uniform on a dirty subway or bus. It’s not just unprofessional, it is dangerous. Many people in hospitals are already in a weakened immune condition. When patients see artifacts from that purportedly “clean environment” in inappropriate places, it makes medical professionals look like they don’t take their responsibilities very seriously. 3) Don’t Lie or Downplay a Patient’s Condition Unlike you, patients haven’t been trained extensively on the workings of the human body. This means that they are already in an anxious state of confusion and worry about what is wrong with them and what they can do to fix it. Sometimes there is hopeful news and sometimes there is not, but not knowing the reality of the condition is worse than believing in unrealistic recoveries. If a patient is made aware of the full extent of their condition, they can go through the natural process of internalizing and dealing with that condition. If you mislead them it will only cause greater confusion and extend their anxiety. 4) Don’t Bad Mouth Another Staff Member or Patient As in any professional environment, bad mouthing your company or your colleagues undermines the professionalism of the entire organization. Hearing negative commentary on other patients and staff members undermines your life-saving authority and adds greater stress to an already tense — sometimes dire — situation. People want to believe that they are in good hands, don’t let them believe otherwise simply because you have personal issues with your team. 5) Don’t Search For Other Jobs at Work (This includes you Health Admins) Your job requires you to be very present. A distracted medical professional is no help to themselves, their team, or their patients. People will be in heightened states of anxiety and will often be panicked and demanding with their questions. One way to mitigate anger or confusion is to be professionally courteous and very present. If you are lost in your personal Facebook drama or immersed in a job search, you won’t be a very good resource when a frantic mother asks you if her son is going to be okay. 6) Don’t Date a Patient It’s an age-old temptation to date people with whom you have the most contact. In this case, it’s not only inappropriate, it’s unprofessional. Patients are in a subordinate position to their medical providers because they lack the tools, training, and knowledge to solve their own problems. They should be in good hands, just not that good of hands. Dating a patient creates an unbalanced situation where the power dynamics make the relationship unsustainable and can often leave the hospital open to lawsuit because of potential claims of sexual harassment or hostile environment. 7) Don’t Post Questionable Content Online Yes you are only human, and yes everybody else is doing it, but that doesn’t mean you can too. Your job, unlike many others, is actually a matter of life and death. This means that you have a greater responsibility to your profession, your community, and yourself to uphold the highest standards of professional conduct. If you wouldn’t want your mom or your senior hospital administrator to see it, don’t post it. Not even once. 8) Don’t Promise a Patient Anything Patients are desperate for concrete pieces of information. They want to know definitively if they are going to be okay or if a risky procedure is going to work. Unfortunately, in medicine as in life, perhaps precisely because of its very close connection to life, there can be no guarantees. It’s natural for you to want to assuage worry and to comfort your patients, but promising outcomes that you cannot control will only hurt the patient’s psyche more in the long term. 9) Don’t Let Emotions Get the Best of You Sometimes people are going to yell at you and tell you that you’re wrong. Sometimes people are going to cry and scream and insult your intelligence and your professionalism. You may feel compelled to defend yourself, to respond to antagonism with hurtful condescension. This impulse, while natural, is not appropriate. Instead, stay calm, be reflective, put yourself in their very troubled shoes, and deescalate the situation. 10) …But don’t be Cruel and Emotionally Distant You are not a robot. You are a highly trained person with a very important specialty. People want answers but they also want empathy; they need a diagnosis but they also crave dialogue. Remember that your role is both caregiver and fellow traveler. You and the patient are connected by the very real and very mortal consequences of your diagnosis. Don’t deliver news in a way that makes you less human at a time where simple humanity may be the only comfort available to a devastated patient. 11) Don’t Give Up Yes, you are tired. Yes, you have worked dozens of hours more than should be humanly possible. Yes, if you make a mistake people can die. All of the above are true. You have chosen an incredibly difficult profession. You have also chosen an incredibly rewarding one. If you stop who will take your place? Who will save that next father, or daughter or infant? Remember that, and keep working, your job is too important not to. 12) Don’t Pass Judgments on Your Patients During your professional life you are going to come into contact with many types, sizes, and kinds of people. Some of them will be dirty. Some of them will be drunk, some will be strung out on narcotics, and others will be morbidly obese. This is the reality of your profession. People that are sick are often sick of their own making. Your job is to help diagnose and mitigate the problem, not to offer judgment on their poor lifestyle choices. While it is tempting to point out that people are hurting themselves through their bad decisions, it won’t help you do your job. Always address the illness. Don’t get caught up babysitting the individual. 13) Don’t Steal Anything Every job offers some temptations. Maybe you’ve got your eye on some nice equipment that nobody is using, or worse, maybe you have access to pills that someone you care about needs or wants. Never indulge these temptations. Your role has given you great responsibility over people’s welfare and you can’t abuse that, no matter what. 14) Don’t Claim to Have All the Answers You know a lot, that’s why you have this job. But you don’t know everything. Remember that. If every one of us had all the answers than there would never be a need for a second opinion. The fact remains that, while extensively educated, you are still human — not omnipotent. Keep things in perspective, don’t get defensive, and never claim to know everything. If you do, you’ll just spend too much time explaining blips in that exaggeratedly perfect record. 15) Don’t Stop Learning “Ancora Imparo” – “I am still learning.” Michelangelo said that before he died an old man having had completely redefined an age and unleashed a cultural Renaissance. The lesson is clear; if he was still learning until his last breath, we have no excuse to ever stop our own educational process. The fact remains that no matter how much we know, or how much we’ve learned, there is always room for improvement. Getting another degree, a specialized certificate, or learning another skill will always make you a more valuable medical professional. Who knows, maybe you’ve got the medical equivalent of the Sistine Chapel inside of you, just waiting to get out there and heal the world. Source
