Bad work experience

I had a really annoying experience in the OR today and I'm going to share it with you. Not because I care that much, but because I think it's really important, especially for people just starting out in residency to know that these things happen. And to know that it's really not worth your time to care about it for more than five minutes before you move on. I'm now on an off-service rotation and I'm in the OR a little bit more, trying to get better at suturing. I'm towards the end of intern year, basically at the very end, but I'm still not the best at suturing and I'm learning. And many attendings have been extremely kind, you know, helping me get better and teaching me all these skills. But I come into this case and the scrub tech was extremely rude to me. It was very much like this person was picking on me, like criticizing every little thing I did when I wasn't doing anything wrong. The first thing they decided to say is that I'm wearing the wrong glove size. The sizes that I use fit me really well. I have big hands for a woman and I think like a lot of people are usually surprised that I wear such a big glove size, but I'm also a tall woman and I have big hands. So, um, my glove size fits. But they were like, it's the exact size you should be wearing. And I'm like, okay, I put them on and the scrub tech was like, oh, okay. Whatever. Later in the case, the attending is giving me some suturing tips and I'm following them. But obviously, you know, those times when you're just like, not getting something, and then you get nervous and the people are watching you, so you get even worse. When the attending wasn't paying as much attention, this scrub tech like comes in and starts correcting every little thing I do with suturing. It's a situation where no one's going to help you by saying that and I really do appreciate like an attending who has incredible suturing skills, teaching me these tips. But after I've gotten all that information, I don't need someone else hovering over me and correcting every little thing I do. They were making all these little comments under their breath. They said something like, "are you under disguise or something?" or like as if I'm not a surgeon or a resident. So, yeah, very offensive. But I thought about it for like five minutes and at that point, I was like, these things don't happen to me very often. But whenever something like this happens, this is what I like to remind myself. Anyone who spends that much time and energy putting someone else down or who is like putting someone down without even realizing what they're doing, those are people that don't deserve your energy. What you should care about always is if you're doing right by your patient and if you're doing right by yourself. All I care about is taking care of my patient and getting better at my job. I know these things are going to happen to me probably a lot. When you have much more important things to care about, these things just become very small. So just remember that if someone's treating you poorly like that, think about how much it actually matters in the grand scheme of your life. And you're most likely going to find that it doesn't matter at all. Take five minutes to be annoyed by the behavior and be annoyed by the situation and then move on. Always remember that as a surgeon, it is your responsibility to keep composure and be respectful. So how did I leave the OR today? I said thank you to everyone very politely, even to the person who was not very nice to me. So, yeah.