Today we are going to talk about getting fired. Some of you may have suffered this humiliation at least once, some may never have to go through the anguish. I’ve experienced it twice, once as an EMT for an ambulance company (doesn’t count) and once as a practicing emergency physician in a busy county hospital (which counted quite painfully).
This second occasion felt worse than being hit with a malpractice suit. My medical director at the time simply did not like my straight-from-the-60s antiauthority style, and as he could not terminate me for cause, he simply chose to not schedule me any future shifts. It was a typical “let’s make life too unpleasant to stay” maneuver, employed often by little men with little ideas when they feel threatened by what they cannot control. Not that I am bitter.
But I digress. In the case of a malpractice proceeding, the legal action is about something you may have done, while getting the boot implies (usually in detail by the one doing the terminating) that it is about who you are. Its capacity to wound lies in the fact that most of us tend to think of ourselves as an honest practitioner of the healing arts, a noble and respected calling. And if one identifies that strongly with a profession, we tend to take our “failures” very hard, as we cannot separate our personal value and worth from the persona of our job. Which then unleashes an existential crisis that has plagued humankind since Adam first found himself in the unemployment line (it was short).
I bring this topic up because it is interview time in academia, when students of all persuasions begin the annual trek to scholarly institutions across the country in search of graduate positions, and newly degreed graduate students seek gainful employment and relief from accumulated debt. I sit across a desk from them, both of us fidgeting slightly—they from nervousness and myself from boredom. My fellow faculty in the adjacent rooms pore over metrics such as grades, board scores, class evaluations, and instructor recommendations, while I set aside the entire application and read only 1 page—the personal statement. Because hidden there are the clues that determine which applicant is worthy of hiring and, someday, worthy of firing.
You see, getting fired by the aforementioned little people is not a catastrophe, but in fact a badge of honor, and like all such decorations, is given to only those who stand bloodied but firm in the face of oppression and attack. Health care today is a battlefield, with the attendant autocrats, generals, politicians, midlevel officers, foot soldiers (us), and, of course, innocent civilians who usually suffer collateral damage. And during our careers, the time comes to each of us where we must choose from what level of abuse of our integrity we will no longer back down, for the good of our patients of course, but, more importantly, for the preservation of our own souls. Some of us know the pain of a pink slip. Others know the more subtle, but far deeper, ache of the slow disintegration of being trapped in an impossible situation.
What I often tell my patients in similar emotional predicaments is that no one ever laid on their deathbed wishing they had spent more time (pick one—at work, in a bad marriage, worrying, anxious, dwelling on the past), essentially suffering for no gain. It’s simply not worth the time, and as we grow older we become more aware of how much time may actually be left. This is why, about a decade ago, I joined the 2-step program, which goes as follows:
Get over it.
Stay over it.
Frankly there just isn’t time anymore for the other 10 steps. Because it becomes more and more apparent, as years pass, that we are not on this ethereal plane for the money, or the job, or the children. We are here to become the best we can be, and the best way to do this is to surround ourselves, not by little men, but by those who love and support us. And if this is not possible, one of us has to go. And it is usually us.
So if you still feel the pain of that job lost, or that person, or that affluence, or that prestige, remember that deathbed awaiting you someday, and let the past go.
As the song goes, you can’t always get what you want.
But if you try sometimes, you might just get fired …
Biography
