Resident devotional day 7: Be humble!

But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Matthew 23:11-12 NKJV

The road to becoming a doctor is a long one. First, you’re a college student with a dream; then you’re the medical student, the baby of the team; then you’re the intern, the person who does all the scutwork for (seemingly) very little in return. Then you’re the resident, and while you get more agency than the intern and the medical student and the college student with a dream, you’re still grinding your way through the system. You go from junior resident to senior resident to (optionally) fellow, pressing your way up the chain little by little, until you finally become an attending, and you beat the game.

With every step up the medical hierarchy, the temptation is there to look down on those under you, who don’t know as much or haven’t been through as much as you. To make them suffer as much when you did when you were in their position. After all, if you had to suffer at the hands of your seniors, why should your junior get off scot-free? Everyone deserves to suffer just as much as I did, you might think. It’s only fair.

As a fourth-year medical student on breast surgery, I worked with a first-year fellow whose exact attitude reflected the above. During clinic, the fellow would constantly berate and insult their junior residents in the name of “joking”. During cases, if a junior even so much as asked a question, the fellow would talk over them as if their opinion didn’t matter. Their teaching method consisted of one method only: intimidation, and yelling at juniors for getting even minor things wrong. After about a week of being around this fellow, I asked the attending in charge of the rotation to switch me to another surgical service, and I got my request.

The next week, I switched to another surgery rotation with a whole new set of coworkers. The senior this time was a final-year surgical resident who happened to be pregnant at the time. You would have thought, given the years of surgical residency with a pregnancy on top of it, that the senior would have been even more moody and higher-maintenance than my previous senior, but the opposite was true. She wasn’t cookie-cutter positive, but she was kind and patient. She joked with her team members instead of laughing at them. When I made mistakes, such as taking too long on a presentation or messing up suturing, she gently corrected me and gave me the space to learn from my mistakes. 

Between the two seniors I worked under, the difference in the team dynamic was astonishing. Under the first senior, no one really talked or tried to get along with each other; everyone was just trying to get through another day with that senior. Under the second senior, my coworkers and I worked, well, as a team. Not only did I feel better and do better under those conditions, my team members were also generally more relaxed and got along better. The interns did more teaching, and I learned a lot more on the second team.

The preacher and Bible teacher Andrew Wommack once said, “If you’re wrapped up in yourself, you make a very small package.” In reflecting on my experience on this surgical rotation, I realized one thing: being mean and passing down intimidation not only makes the people under you sad, it makes you look smaller. Both of my seniors (one who had done six years of residency, the other five) were part of the same specialty. They had similar medical knowledge and experience. My first senior thought that they had all the knowledge, but no one wanted to be like them or even be around them; my second senior, who was more humble and patient, was not only well-liked by the entire service, but stood as a role model for the people working under her.

No matter how “high” you are in the medical hierarchy, pride will only bring you down to size. Stay humble.