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It’s the Combination of Trust and Tension that Creates Value in Coaching.

The process of coaching is a delicate balance between trust and tension. It is not the same as other conversations and it is not meant to be. Coaching relies on a trusting relationship so the Coachee can get to the core of the issue, get under the waterline. And the Coach has been given permission […]

The Doctor Cannot Fix Everything, believing they can limits, hurts, us all

The Doctor Cannot Fix Everything, believing they can limits, hurts, us all Mostly doctors are used to being the brightest star in the sky. I mean that with absolute admiration, there is no ‘tone’ when I say that. Since their inception most medical schools have selected doctors primarily for their academic smarts in STEM. When […]

To be a patient is to be rendered vulnerable.

To be To be a patient is to be rendered vulnerable.The trust required to give consent to anaesthesia, surgery, pharmacological treatment on someone’s, a stranger’s, advice might be an act of desperationBlind faith… To be a medical student is to live up to expectation.The persistent commitment to academic learning, to sacrificing a social life, to […]

Prevention is so much better than a cure

Prevention is so much better than a cure every day of the week. Proactive action can help you be well, no matter where you work or what you do. Including working in healthcare. Healthcare workers have so much opportunity to shift the focus to prevention, to generate more health and wellbeing in our communities.  When […]

Self improvement creates wellbeing

There is a tension between accepting yourself as you are and the notion of self improvement. As high achievers, doctors often describe themselves as life long learners. Some even seem addicted to academic achievement, but is this the same as self improvement, or something else? The language of self improvement is out of vogue. Now […]

Leading a Hospital Unit Effectively

Leading and creating a hospital unit workplace culture, where people want to be. A provocation for generative thinking. Shanafelt et. al. have demonstrated and concluded that creating a wellbeing culture in healthcare needs to happen at the local unit level.1 Professors Amy Edmondson and Don Berwick delivered a keynote together last week at the IHI […]

Doctors celebrate the value of having a Professional Coach

Being in a room where doctors are openly celebrating the value of having a professional coach is a novel experience for me. We had the pleasure in March of attending the Creative Careers in Medicine Conference. A gathering of medical creatives and curiosos. The speakers were inspiring and really showcased a breadth and depth of […]

Personal Agency is Key to Individual Wellbeing and to Organisational Change

According to the Stanford WellMD model of healthcare, healthcare worker well being1 is achieved from 20% personal resilience and 80% organisational responsibility (changing systems and structures in the workplace). The Stanford research is impressive and guides a great deal of our work. It’s impact in helping healthcare organisations to get serious about their responsibilities to […]

Medicine is an inexact science.

Researchers and clinicians work hard to bring evidence to the table, to notice and measure patterns, to share information in the service of everyone. And medicine has done an extraordinary job of this. For example:   🌱Average global life expectancy has more than doubled   🌱Child mortality and maternal mortality rates are lower  🌱We are […]

Why doctors and coaches need to retreat for balance

In retreat, in the quiet, we can listen for our true selves and reconnect to our own meaning. The world is incredibly noisy. There is so much junk to sift through. I find it tricky to work out what to attend to, what to read, listen to, watch. Is it just me? Doctors in the […]

Compassionate Care Competencies need our attention

Bedside manner and communication skills are the ‘tip of the compassion iceberg’ according to Dominic O. Vachon. In the big machine that is modern day healthcare, we have prioritised throughput, technical wizardry and the financial bottom line. In other words, we still talk a lot about compassion, but we are not walking the talk often […]

I see you, tell me what you truly need

  Being seen is the foundation of wellbeing AND therefore the foundation of high performance. Before 2011 I said things like ‘as long as the surgeon is skilled and competent, we don’t care about the rest’. Let me be clear I was talking about his technical, surgical skills. I was wrong in two important ways. […]