Failure Is Not An Option In The Medical Field

Except that it happens every day and we should have a healthier attitude towards it.

You’ve probably heard the acronyms related to fear: FEAR — False Evidence Appearing Real, courtesy of Tony Robbins. FEAR — Face Everything And Rise, according to Marie Forleo.

Or the famous quotes related to failure: “There is no such thing as failure. There are only results.”(also Tony Robbins); ”Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”(Napoleon Hill).

For many years I sought inspiration from these authors, and while their insights were valuable, they never provided me with the relief I needed.

I was a beginner, making mistakes every day, and their words couldn’t take away the hurt that I was feeling. Because while I failed before, many times in my life: exams, relationships, job applications, I had never failed on a patient.

While failure is a character-building necessary evil, failure inside the medical profession is a different kind of beast. Because you err on a live human being.

Yes, you learn something after the shock of your mistake wears off. And yes, the medical field itself will be enriched with your traumatic experience, now translated into a medical journal, or an anecdotal piece of evidence when speaking to your colleagues.

But what’s invisible under all that research is the unbearable hurt those doctors felt at the sight of their first mistakes. Grey’s Anatomy thrived on those emotions, but real-life experiences aren’t that cinematic.

Newbies and avoiding failure at all costs

Tony Robbins said it, and also my boyfriend said it: “If you did your very best at that moment in time and failed, but then also learned a lesson from it, can you still call it a failure?”. Me: “Yes, I can. This patient deserves better. My best was not enough, I should have known better, worked harder. Now he/she has to suffer the consequences of my shortcomings as a doctor, and it’s not fair.”

You can probably guess I’m an empath, as many doctors are. This trait comes with a heightened sensibility towards not hurting people, either physically or emotionally. Combine that with people-pleasing and perfectionism and that makes for a very stressed and anxious young doctor.

Fortunately, I work in a field, orthodontics, where mistakes take weeks, if not months to show, and my actions don’t have grave consequences on patients’ lives. But for me, that was one more reason why I should be extra-vigilant and not make any mistakes. See the irony there?

Mistakes were unacceptable. Failure was not an option. Quitting was unthinkable. Basically, I was stuck in this job, as a newbie, with no mentor, to act as God. To know it all through no trial and error of my own.

And failure came, in waves, destructive and heart-breaking, and had I learned to accept it sooner, I would have saved myself years of trouble and torment.

Gurus and pretending failure doesn’t exist

I spent a fortune on courses held by outstanding international experts. Every two months or so, I was traveling to Bucharest to attend an intensive training session over the weekend.

Speakers from the US, Italy, Spain, or Germany were rocking that stage like they were saving the world one crooked tooth as a time. And while I really appreciate the quality of their teachings and their mesmerizing finished cases, and I am very grateful for their contribution to our noble yet unessential profession, I wish they showed at least a touch of vulnerability.

See, all of us left those courses feeling inspired but also feeling 1000x worse about ourselves and our cases. The gurus hid their failures, always, just like every other doctor I know. They fed on perfectionism and praises, just like we do. They outlined a clear uneventful path to take — do this my way, and there won’t be any mistakes. Oh, and also pay me a nice lump of money, you’re welcome.

Coming to terms with my own personal failures

Five years have elapsed since my guilty newbie experiences, and I still fail every day. Sometimes I have the time and resources to fix my mistakes, but other times, fixing them might take too long, and patients are tired and want their treatment to be over. They don’t see what I see and are fine with their bite being a little off.

So I let go, bite my lip, and accept a less than perfect outcome. It’s still heartbreaking every time, to take those end of the treatment pictures. For now, I accept that I don’t have the skills to achieve that coveted bite in a decent amount of time, and prolonging the treatment would hurt the patient more than it would benefit him or her.

To soothe my imperfection, I used to share my mistakes with colleagues in this little group I created, and we exchanged photos and advice, but at some point, it became very one-sided, and I felt as if I was the only one being honest even among the closest of my peers.

So now I keep my lessons to myself, it’s kind of sad, but that’s how this profession has chosen to exist. At least I can vent here on Medium, thanks for reading this far.

I’ve come a very long way and learned a great deal from my mistakes and failures. I certainly don’t repeat the painful ones, I’m much more efficient and creative, and not afraid to try new things. It turns out, Tony Robbins, that you were right. And I suppose newbies have to start on patients sometimes, and patients might come across a good doctor or a not so brilliant one, and it’s all part of life.

But I can only imagine how a failure must feel when a patient’s life is at stake.

I can only imagine creating a faulty product, like a vaccine or a piece of medical equipment that hurts hundreds when you didn’t see it coming, despite all your research.

I can only imagine battling a monster like SARS-Cov-2, where the only way to do it is through tragic mistakes, trial and error, and failure to the detriment of those patients you treated when you didn’t know any better.

The dichotomy between infallible doctor and human error is unbearable, and a burden too heavy to carry.

Being a human doctor is vulnerable and scary, but it’s also just that: human.