Gang warfare
In 1961, French historian and philosopher Rene Girard described a concept of mimetic desire, through which all human conflict is mediated. Based on his principle, the desire for possession of a singular item by two or more parties is likely to be settled through violence of action in order to take control of the object of desire. To imagine this in real life, picture that two children were given uninhibited access to a toy store. One child was allowed in first and began playing with a toy. A second child following shortly enters the store. Though both the children are allowed any toy in the store, which toy would the second child want to play with? What further degrades the situation is that the first child laid initial claim to the toy and is certainly not going to give up. Therefore, in a room full of toys two children fight… Continue reading
Bullying in Hospitals: What’s the Solution?
The focus of this year’s Marseille Patient Safety Educational Roundtable is to develop solutions for disruptive behavior in medicine. Some of the required reading for the week examined how other health systems are confronting issues such as bullying in the workplace. Our patient safety and quality experts from Australia, Kim Oates and Cliff Hughes, have shared information on the New South Wales health policy statement on how to combat bullying in the workplace. A second reading, an article by A Lazare & R Levy in Chest (Chest 2011;139;746-751), discusses how humiliation in medicine leads to less than optimal care, and offers strategies on how to apologize for inflicting such an offense so that healing follows.
A post on the physician led blog, KevinMD entitled “Hospital bullying requires everyone to share in the blame and solution” written by Kevin Pho himself, addresses the need discussed this past… Continue reading