Inside-Out Leadership: Tragic Optimism Part I, the Pitfalls of Complaining

 As a growing part of the healthcare team, we have seen it first hand. The medical students who gather in the cafeteria over lunch to complain about their instructors, but don’t take action to improve the curriculum. The surgeons who congregate in the lounge to grumble about how the scrub nurse wouldn’t hand them their instruments in the correct direction, but don’t work with the scrub nurse so that she can improve for the next surgery. The nurses who continually chat about the patients and physicians who are rude. As a community of healthcare workers, complaining is not just common, it’s endemic. Medicine is difficult and we’re not perfect, but that doesn’t mean that a culture of complaining should be the only way we share our dissatisfaction and identify problems in the healthcare system. These tendencies may be perceived as positive coping strategies to deal with the challenges of working in healthcare, but we believe this has unintentional negative consequences on the professional culture in medicine. In the first of our two part series on Tragic Optimism, we dissect the culture of complaining in medicine, and try to make the case for tragic optimism as a mindset that can improve your satisfaction as a member of the healthcare team.