Ever had to change a negative personal trait you didn't know you had? How did you go about it?

[BushyFromOz]

So, read the thread title....

Im one of those ambo's where self condifence makes or breaks your ability as a medic. its taken me 5 years to build up to a point where i am what i feel is a "competent" level of service provision. I wont go into how awesome i am but i get a pretty darn good wrap when it comes to the clinical stuff (thats a joke by the way)

So anyway, the last week has seen me be the lead ambo for a couple of pretty crook patients and im not an IC guy so when i work with other regular ambo's i find i get frustrated with other ambo's who for whatever reason cant move as fast or be as organised as i am. I particularly get annoyed when they cant seem to perform basic tasks. Anyway, to cut a long story short on 2 occasions this week i have unknowingly "snapped" at one particular guy for reasons i wont go into, basically the problem with what i said was not so much the words i used but the tone i which they were said.

On both occasions it was pointed out to me afterwards that i had done these things and i dont recall saying either one, but clearly the person i said them to was offended afterwards.

When you a confidence guy your integrity is paramount to survival, becuase in my case if you dont have integrity and respect i dont have confidence in myself

So how do you guys change personal attributes? What do you guys do to change your unconscious behaviour?

[island emt]

Being a person who suffers fools lightly is a common trait among EMS providers. We set our expectations high and have little patience for those providers not meeting our high standards.

To learn to temper this outward attitude is a hard thing to do.

When faced with such a position where you want to be snarky, just do the job yourself and after the call, make an attempt to use it as a teaching moment.

Sometimes it works , and other times not so much.

[Kiwiology]

Yep, somebody very near and dear to my heart told me I can come off at time sounding a bit "lecturing" or like a "know it all"; I have to say that over a year later that this still hurts me very much and for a time greatly affected my confidence generally and specifically my clinical confidence, particularly because truth be known inside I am almost the exact polar opposite.

I think that, like you Bushy, the Ambulance Service teaches you to be very self confident in your knowledge and ability, not in an arrogant one-upmanship way, but just because that is sort of how you have to be to survive on the road; it's no good going to somebody who is crook or where the family are all crowded around the patient not letting you at him that you just stay in the corner and go to pieces with all the bystanders or are not confident to treat the patient because you are not sure what is going on etc.

A part of it I think too was that in speaking to people from other jurisdictions I would get internally so frustrated and deeply disheartened with the disparity between various systems both operationally and clinically and the lack of progress that maybe a little bit of it slipped through because Ambulance is something I care very much about.

How did I change? Honestly mate I went and spent many, many. many months in the corner, just stopped talking to people that were once very good friends and just had a bit of a total meltdown ... I dno it might sound a bit childish or foolish or whatever but I dno, I am not sure if "think before you open your mouth" is the right thing to say because I think we all do this anyway, but I dno, I guess in the heat of the moment it can be a bit of hard task to do, but you just gotta be more self aware maybe?

Or clearly the answer is to become an ICP then nobody questions you (and you get teh ketaminez)

Edited September 26, 2012 by Kiwiology

[Arctickat]

It was pointed out to me that I do nit pick corrections of people when they talk, sometimes not even to me. Things that just really didn't matter and it pissed people off. Sometimes I still catch myself doing it. What has worked for me is to just slow down a little and engage my brain before speaking. The reason we didn't realise that were do those things is because we are not paying attention to ourselves. Simply thinking about how what we say will be perceived by others will go a long way toward fixing the problem.

[Happiness]

I have been known to have a very Alpha personality. As far as Im concerned it has made me a better paramedic. The one thing that I do though is that when I am with a new partner I say to them, "If we are in a real emergency and I start telling you what to do (Im the highest level in the station)or if I take over do not take it personaly" I make this very clear. I have had two problems with partners, one I sat down and we discussed the issue and it turned out that it was just a missunderstanding because she didn't hear the whole conversation and the other one in reality I didn't do anything because I didn't care.

Maybe sit down with your pts and just say "This is how I am and dont take it personaly"

[rock_shoes]

Before you go trying to change things first you need to discern whether or not it's actually a negative trait. More often than not it's strictly a matter of communication.

Sometimes people need to be told they're doing a shite job. If noone ever says anything they'll go on assuming that they perform to an acceptable standard of practice. I don't like being the bad guy any more than anyone else but I'll do it if need be.

Sent from my SGH-T989D using Tapatalk 2

[BushyFromOz]

Thanks guys

It must be bugging me, i actually lost sleep on it last night.

Im gonna grab one of my mentors this afternoon for a chin wag a chat and get some more feedback.

[DwayneEMTP]

Why are they too slow? Why did they do it differently? Nerves? Inattention? Arrogance?

Probably my biggest personal trait that irritates people, besides just generally being an idiot, is that I love to debate. The vast majority of what I want to know about EMS I don't know. And the things that I do know I'm not terribly confident are right. Even if I'm confident that they were right yesterday, I'm not confident that they're still right today. I want to know why you did what you did, what line of logic did you follow, did you consider other things, what made you choose that order, is that the way you always do it or was there something in this call that caused you to choose a different path, what was it? So that I can compare it to my own thinking. Nothing makes me happier than to have someone kindly shred my calls and question my logic, though it rarely happens.

Often I'll be in, what I consider a conversation, only to hear, "Never mind, I guess you know everything." And every time it catches me completely off guard as the whole reason that I was in the conversation is my conviction that I rarely know anything for sure. I get just enough reinforcement from running into others like me so that the habit doesn't just extinguish on it's own..so I'm not sure what to do...

As far as snapping, it's hard to say really without knowing all of the variables. I once had a chronic COPDer crumping on me in Hicksville. Resps around 48 bpm, pale, becoming altered, etc. Bad. The patient and his wife had made it clear that he was not to be intubated, no matter the reasoning, period. I was bagging in a neb through CPAP, pushed steroids, etc. and was losing ground. I'd told my partner, "Light it up and let's go...best time we can make." After a few minutes we were still sitting on scene and I yelled, "C'mon! Let's move!!" and my partner calmly said, "Getting there, getting there, they're moving the police cars out of the way..." No harm done.

Had that been a volly, then not only would it have gone differently, but it would have been counter productive as well. I guess that maybe that's my biggest point. If you believe that we're all here to elevate each other then you have to realize that being rude is counter productive. It makes people nervous, and nervous people make silly errors, and that means that you, as much or more than they, have queered your call and compromised patient care. Same result if you behave in a manner that makes people want to avoid you, or afraid to work with you.

I believe that snapping comes from arrogance. For me not being arrogant is really easy, as each time that I've started down that path, as I'm guessing most of us have at one time or another, the EMS Gods have put a patient, or a much better provider in my path to show me that I'm really just a wannabe douche.

Not sure who said this, but I think that's it's really true, "Each day we do the best we can. When we know better, then we do better." There is no benefit to making people that are already struggling and insecure feel bad about themselves when we're all trying to do the best that we can...

(Sorry so yacky...jungle fever...)

[Happiness]

Had that been a volly, then not only would it have gone differently, but it would have been counter productive as well.

Why, I dont mean to highjack but why?

[DwayneEMTP]

Because my partner was an experienced basic with really thick skin. He got that I was way out of my comfort zone and took my tone in that spirit rather than be offended.

It's been my limited experience that often Vollies, not always, but often, need to be handled more delicately...