developing a thicker hide

[goldentwinkle]

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Any tips on how someone who cares too much about what people think can develop a thicker hide? I suppose this is more of a general life question. Considering surgeons seem great at this kind of thing, I figured this was the best forum to post in 🙂

 

[beaverfetus]

Step one would be selecting a username more badass than "Goldentwinkle".
After that, you could pay me to verbally abuse you over the phone.

 

[goldentwinkle]

haha that's awesome. but in all seriousness. how do you recover if you've clearly embarrassed yourself and need to develop a thicker hide?

 

[HitGirl]

haha that's awesome. but in all seriousness. how do you recover if you've clearly embarrassed yourself and need to develop a thicker hide?

Remember its not you, its them. Yes, sometimes you've messed up and should be admonished. But a lot of times, people are having a bad day or are rude to everyone. Their behavior ultimately doesn't reflect your worth as a person. I remember as a 3rd year I got yelled at for the umpteenth time by the attending for breaking scrub. I laughed and went to re-scrub. I cut myself some slack but made sure that I was more conscientious of my movements. I was new! What the hell did I know? And my actions could have led to the patient getting and infection! So he had the right to be annoyed. But at the same time, he was so high strung that I just found him to be a funny person in general. I'm sure another med student would have wilted. That attending ended up being a great mentor to me.

Really, try your best, think about the content of what people say and not how they say it (surgeons dont have the best social skills anyway), use it to improve, and cut yourself some slack. Absolutely no one is perfect. Some attendings still ride the backs of their finest residents. There is something funny about surgical culture - A. you have to prove yourself to surgeons for some of them to even acknowledge your existence (e.g. work hard, show initiative and improvement) and B. some surgeons think its weakens a trainee by complimenting them too much!

I used any negative energy thrown at me to just keep getting better and showed up every day with a smile on my face. By the end of my rotations my attendings were ridiculously happy to write letters of recommendation for me after I decided that I STILL wanted to go into surgery. And they ended up being really nice people outside of work!

But that's how I am in life in general, and it took me a long time to gain that perspective. Most people don't know you well enough to make any accurate value judgments about you. So if they're rude or mean, it has less to do with you and more to do with them and their issues. Keep applying that principle to your everyday life and your skin grows thick without you having to change who you are.

 

[Samoa]

Remember its not you, its them. Yes, sometimes you've messed up and should be admonished. But a lot of times, people are having a bad day or are rude to everyone. Their behavior ultimately doesn't reflect your worth as a person. I remember as a 3rd year I got yelled at for the umpteenth time by the attending for breaking scrub. I laughed and went to re-scrub. I cut myself some slack but made sure that I was more conscientious of my movements. I was new! What the hell did I know? And my actions could have led to the patient getting and infection! So he had the right to be annoyed. But at the same time, he was so high strung that I just found him to be a funny person in general. I'm sure another med student would have wilted. That attending ended up being a great mentor to me.

Really, try your best, think about the content of what people say and not how they say it (surgeons dont have the best social skills anyway), use it to improve, and cut yourself some slack. Absolutely no one is perfect. Some attendings still ride the backs of their finest residents. There is something funny about surgical culture - A. you have to prove yourself to surgeons for some of them to even acknowledge your existence (e.g. work hard, show initiative and improvement) and B. some surgeons think its weakens a trainee by complimenting them too much!

I used any negative energy thrown at me to just keep getting better and showed up every day with a smile on my face. By the end of my rotations my attendings were ridiculously happy to write letters of recommendation for me after I decided that I STILL wanted to go into surgery. And they ended up being really nice people outside of work!

But that's how I am in life in general, and it took me a long time to gain that perspective. Most people don't know you well enough to make any accurate value judgments about you. So if they're rude or mean, it has less to do with you and more to do with them and their issues. Keep applying that principle to your everyday life and your skin grows thick without you having to change who you are.

This.

 

[hanky1982]

"Maybe we should chug on over to mamby pamby land where maybe we can find some self confidence for you, you jack wagon!"


Just had to do it.

 

[Samoa]

Tissue?

 

[Dr.LeoSpaceman]

Just an observaton, but this year I've found that what's harder than dealing with direct criticism (that may or not be phrased...politely), is often not knowing what attendings/residents think of your ability. The near constant wondering of "Am I doing ok?" is much more unnerving than any upfront reaming I can imagine. In the latter case, at least you know what's what. It's odd, because I would never say that insecurity has ever been a part of my personality...but surgery residency has found a way to cram it in there.

 

[goldentwinkle]

I think the funny thing I can take away from my experience is that a bad situation can be as terrible or as good as you want to make it. Sometimes you just have to get over yourself and realize that you're not that important in the grand scheme of things. It's just life.

 

[skiz knot]

haha that's awesome. but in all seriousness. how do you recover if you've clearly embarrassed yourself and need to develop a thicker hide?

Like embarrassing yourself by not knowing the difference between "hide" and "hyde"?

 

[dpmd]

Like embarrassing yourself by not knowing the difference between "hide" and "hyde"?

Perhaps you would like to enlighten us, because the OP used the correct spelling for animal skin treated for human use (which is commonly used instead of skin in phrases such as "this really chaps my hide" and therefore approprately used as a replacement to asking how to develop a thicker skin).

To the OP, skin that is contiuously irritated eventually becomes thicker to protect the underlying tissue (such as callus formation in weight lifters). Similarly, the more you have to deal with getting yelled at or told you don't measure up (and don't fall apart) the better you will get at it in the future. Try to control yourself at the time, but go ahead and cry about it in private-or whatever makes you feel better-then suck it up and head back out there. Trust me, it will get better over time as long as you don't let it defeat you.