“Small” Acts of Kindness

As you read this, I hope you’re looking forward to some time off over the summer with friends and family. For me, this time of year always brings feelings of excitement, renewal, and new beginnings.

May and June are full of graduation celebrations and the enthusiasm and pride of watching residents and family achieve significant life goals and milestones. We get to watch those graduates cross the stage and move to the next level after years of work. As we enter July, many on our healthcare teams are beginning new roles, including new nurses, interns, residents, fellows, faculty, and advanced practice providers. This time is exciting and anxiety-provoking for many.

It is easy to forget what this time feels like when you’ve been in practice for a long time. A few years ago, I was reminded of this during a conversation with two friends who are both senior surgeons in specialties other than otolaryngology. We were discussing our experiences with a classmate who was in the first five years of his practice. The younger surgeon spoke about how every day for him was still stressful as he continued to increase his surgical proficiency and clinical decision making, decrease his surgical times, and learn what techniques worked best in his hands after years of residency and fellowship training. The senior surgeons conveyed that that feeling goes away over time. While we will always have some stressful days, what was once difficult becomes your day-to-day over time, no longer causing the stress experienced early in practice. Yet the positive and negative experiences early in practice can have career-long impacts.

On the flipside, this time of year can also create stress for patients and seasoned healthcare providers as a sea of new nurses and residents start their new jobs. I feel this is the perfect time to acknowledge the emotions everyone has during these transitions, and to focus on the common goals that bring us all together and the creation of an environment that cultivates honest, constructive conversations and highly functioning teams.

In their recent Harvard Business Review article, “What People Get Wrong About Psychological Safety,” Amy Edmundson and Michaela Kerrissey explain that one common misconception is that psychological safety means being nice (Harvard Business Review. https://tinyurl.com/y7b7wy2d). They discuss the idea that “nice” in this context is code for “Don’t say what you really think.” Instead, the authors think of psychological safety as “a shared sense of permission for candor”—an environment in which one can ask questions, admit mistakes, and disagree with a colleague without fear of retaliation. If someone is doing a great job—tell them. But kindness is also being respectful, caring, and honest, even when what was done was not done well, so that people can continue to learn. This is particularly important in early career stages and when new teams are being created, as negative experiences can cause individuals not to speak up for years to come.

During this time of renewal, we all individually have the power to make positive impacts on our teams through “small” acts of kindness and remembering that we too were once new.   

—Robin