Different personalities(?): How to get along with your team?

[toomuch]

---

Members don't see this ad.

well, as a 2nd year surgical resident, i am on the same team for 2 months with the same people in other surg subspecialties and er/anesthesia. The attendings are great. My team just does not get along. We have different backgrounds and ways of doing things. We can't agree on a way. The only thing I can say is that I feel the others are lazy and not detailed oriented enough in which so many times I don't feel like picking up the slack for them. I will go the extra mile and teach them everything I know. I feel like I'm an intern again and I'm expected to do all the work. I am almost ready to let them fall for their mistakes and stop double checking their orders, but I can't because I care about the patients too much. However, I feel if I see them surfing the net, leaving early, saying I'm going to lunch for a prolonged period of time while I work my butt off, I'm going to do or say something very unprofessional. right now, we are all equal in rank except at night call when I'm by myself and there is a chief that supervises if anything goes wrong.Now, I would almost be willing to do night call for the rest of this net month.

 

[RegularNihilist]

You are bound to lose out. You will either get exploited, and left with the frustrating feeling you have now, or you will have to play it passively-aggressive, whilst still keeping an eye on things to avoid getting negative rep by your superiors.

The bonus is, if you are able to work your butt off, and your attendings notice, you might get a benefit out of that.

Another strategy would be to gather examples for some time, and present the problem in a suitable moment. I like the strategy where you emphasize that you would be willing to do a 'little more,' but when the balance is waaay off, it generates negative feedback that throws a spanner in the works of the entire team.

Third option is to make your team see the benefit of putting in more effort with you. Make them see how they benefit from having you as a back-up, and make it clear that you will continue with that, as long as they do a little more. You probably won't get even steven here.

 

[dragonfly99]

This is a difficult situation to be in. This doesn't sound just like regular personality conflicts. If what you say is true, then you are a hard worker stuck on a team with people who are kind of lazy. I think that realistically, it is hard to make someone who is lazy NOT be lazy. You have to be careful not to be too picky about less important details. However, as you have mentioned you have to keep patient safety in mind. Also, you don't want to do anything that makes you look bad to your superiors. You have to walk a fine line here. I think that if the others are writing notes that suck, that might be something you can let slide. However, orders or actual patient care that sucks has to be corrected.

In your situation I'd be extra careful to do a good job on call, so that your chief may notice that. Also, be really nice to your attending(s), proactive without being pushy, etc. What you don't want is to become so stressed, or appear so stressed, that your attending perceives you as either unfriendly and/or stressed out and "inefficient".

It's kind of weird to be on a team where there is no hierarchy. That may be part of the problem. It seems that nobody is in charge; you are presumably not in chart of interns, and there is no "chief" on your team, the way you explain it. Therefore, you are kind of on shaky ground if you try to correct the other PGY2 residents. I would say just try to stick it out, endure, and definitely bite your tongue whenever you want to say negative things to other team members. I think it would likely just backfire on you, particularly assuming that you guys evaluate each other at the end of the rotation.

 

[anniey]

hi, I had a very similar situation as you are having now. I actually was a senior resident in the team. One of Intern did poor jobs and argued with me. She has some personality issue. I did not go to talk with chiefs and asked help becuase I actually did not want to make her in trouble. I worked very hard and tried to make sure team jobs done correctly, and felt so stressful. On one morning, I could not control my anger after she made some fault she should not make. I yelled to her while my attending were not too far away from us. She complained to attending and chiefs about me being mean to her. I did not know until other residents told me about it because she had conflict with another senior resident who complained her to chief
Last Friday, I received evaluation from attending and gave me a general OK eval and a quite low score for my professionism for the arugument between us. I was very emotional when I saw that low score. I did wrong thing again: comment on the evaluation saying that I can't completely agree with the evaluation and explained why I yelled to her.
I signed. Soon I realized that I did stupid things again: Will I be in trouble ? I am extreamly worried now and could not focus on anything. I am worried that the attending will see the eval during committee meeting and get angry at me.
What Dragfly99 said is very correct !
I hope to get suggestion from your guys. Did you ever comment on attending's eval ? Will I get into trouble for that

 

[lowbudget]

I don't know your situation, but I'm gonna take the opposite position by asking: do you think you are being *too* detail-oriented? Over-meticulous? The beauty in working in a multidisciplinary team is that you get a chance to learn from everyone and all the different ways to skin a cat. Yes, maybe you have off-service people rotating on your specialty's service, but that doesn't mean you can't learn something from the off-service folks. Do you think it's your job to teach others? Or, is it possible that they're trying to teach you something... that being, maybe, the patients will be ok without the double checking of orders?

I don't know. Just food for thought. I think it's cool that you care about your work and take pride in it. But keep the big picture in mind and don't run yourself into the ground.

 

[Winged Scapula]

The other issue might simply be that they are not in the same specialty as you and therefore have less vested in being a superstar and are simply trying to get through the 2 months. While that may not fit with your do everything for the patient way of doing things, see it from their perspective, where they are on a rotation in another specialty and have little interest.

I agree that this is the most likely explanation.

It was very common, IMHO, to have problems with off service residents rotating on service. They are simply not as committed - either because its a different type of resident drawn to those fields than you are used to - or because its off service for them and they don't have to do anything but pass.

In addition, if there is no Chief and no direction, others may feel that there is even less reason to work hard or be detailed oriented.

Lastly, if the off service residents are interns...try and remember how you were as an intern. They maybe overwhelmed or for some reason, even though its November, not have learned the hierarchy and whats appropriate. Interns are notorious for doing things like calling in sick, showing up late, forgetting to follow up on tests, etc. - they don't know any better and it may be that your memory of how you were when you were an intern is somewhat glossy.

 

[toomuch]

These residents are not interns and not necessarily off-service because it is an icu rotation with some of their attendings as well.

 

[Shosha]

well, as a 2nd year surgical resident, i am on the same team for 2 months with the same people in other surg subspecialties and er/anesthesia. The attendings are great. My team just does not get along. We have different backgrounds and ways of doing things. We can't agree on a way. The only thing I can say is that I feel the others are lazy and not detailed oriented enough in which so many times I don't feel like picking up the slack for them. I will go the extra mile and teach them everything I know. I feel like I'm an intern again and I'm expected to do all the work. I am almost ready to let them fall for their mistakes and stop double checking their orders, but I can't because I care about the patients too much. However, I feel if I see them surfing the net, leaving early, saying I'm going to lunch for a prolonged period of time while I work my butt off, I'm going to do or say something very unprofessional. right now, we are all equal in rank except at night call when I'm by myself and there is a chief that supervises if anything goes wrong.Now, I would almost be willing to do night call for the rest of this net month.

I am only a med student, so I apologize in advance for treading here.

I am sure that caring about patients would motivate most of us to work tirelessly and pick up the slack for others. However, the problem is that if these other physicians-in-training become habitual slackers then many more patients may be harmed later on in their careers. They are in a teaching hospital where there are people who can catch their mistakes and teach them a better way of working/behaving. By covering their mistakes or shortcomings, you are essentially robbing them of the opportunity to be objectively evaluated and to be trained or retrained as better doctors.

I believe in being a team player and I am always happy to lend a hand to a colleague when asked, but there is a difference between occasionally stepping in to help when asked and constantly running around picking up the pieces after someone keeps dropping them all over.

 

[michaelrack]

I am only a med student, so I apologize in advance for treading here.

I am sure that caring about patients would motivate most of us to work tirelessly and pick up the slack for others.

😕 Shosha, you have a good attitude, but I think that in a few years your idealism is going to be crushed by the horrors of residency training.

 

[Winged Scapula]

These residents are not interns and not necessarily off-service because it is an icu rotation with some of their attendings as well.

You have surgical subspecialty attendings in the ICU? Except for Nsgy, I've never seen ENT, Uro, Ortho, etc. manage anything in the ICU except their surgical wound. Everything else - vent mgt, lines, nutrition, etc. was managed by the SICU (and these were open units).

IF you are referring to anesthesia residents with anesthesia attendings in the ICU, then I understand more. The fields attract different types of people and the expectations are different. The best thing about my SICU rotations during residency was the concept of being off "pre-call" which was pushed for by the anesthesia residents. Therefore, these residents may actually be performing in a way that fits their personality, work ethic AND in a way that they've been taught is acceptable and appropriate by their attendings.

If they are acting that way with all attendings, even the general surgery attendings, either YOUR expectations/view of the situation is skewed or they haven't adapted to the different expectations/focus of the different attendings. Not everyone will have the same work ethic. I'll bet there are residents in your own program about whom you can say that.

But I feel your pain...our SICU rotation had residents from other specialties and many of them showed up late, tried to leave early, would leave work undone...then again we had a few interns that tried that too.😀

Try to pick and choose your battles. Doing/not doing things that cause harm to your patients means that if you have to do the work when the others don't, then its the right thing to do.