Episode 0 - Prologue

Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Imperfect Clinician. I'm going to be your host. My
name is Mike Grudzinski and I work as a pharmacist in the community. With me in the studio there
is my co-host. My name is Yuen Toh and I'm a senior pharmacist working in primary care.
Okay, this is nerve-racking. Let's start. Why did you start this, Mike? Why did we start?
Well, I noticed there are a lot of podcasts and resources in the clinical side of work,
but nothing directly addressing the non-clinical sphere of our development that will help us to
get better individuals, to become better clinicians, professionals and leaders.
Oh yeah, I totally get that. With my own reflection and what I've seen when I'm mentoring,
I notice a lot of the times when challenges appear for a clinician or a student who are training to
be a clinician, we can find the resources quite quickly for clinical answers. But what is really
slowing the progress or the growth is how we feel when we are faced with the problem.
So I'll give you an example. When I'm faced with a difficult situation,
the first barrier is, shouldn't I know this already? What if they don't think I'm good enough?
So I really want to delve deeper into the why.
Agreed. A lot of resources are available thanks to lecturers and professionals with wonderful
knowledge. There are plenty of organizations who aim to satisfy our clinical needs, our
knowledge gaps. And I can see that in a number of cases, those people may not have been directly
involved in patient care for quite a while. And we are just ordinary clinicians who see patients
day in and day out, have the same struggles as most of our listeners. We had good days
and bad days. Our daily work is often lonely and we are scrambling for time to learn something new,
but we really struggle to always look at ourselves as well as we deserve.
I get that. Can we pause here? I get that feeling of loneliness, whether you're lonely in a room,
lonely in your job as the only pharmacist or only clinician, lonely without your peers,
lonely with your responsibilities and your burden and what you said about not looking after ourselves.
That really hits hard. I had to learn it the difficult way I think for me,
learning to set time aside for myself, not to feel guilty for needing to do that
and not to put others need above myself at the expense of me. So who do you want to listen to
the podcast? Well, it's all very new and I hope that this podcast is going to be for the doctors,
pharmacists, nurses, technicians, physios, social workers, medical students, pharmacists,
nursing students, managers and leaders in healthcare and social care. It is also for anyone
who wants to find out the true whys. Finding out your own whys may be relevant to anyone working
in wider health and social care sector. So stay with us too. Also for those who are
acclaimed lecturers to go back to where they started and see their whys from then
are still relevant and compatible with the current selves. How about you?
Yes, we're back to the question of why. I think for myself and a lot of us, finding out the why
will inevitably involve digging deep into the past, reflecting on the present with why,
what and how the experiences shaped me. So what I'm hoping to achieve is personal self-growth
and for me to gain the skills, really transferable skills to be a better clinician,
leader, to better support people around me. So to all the clinicians and to those who are
interested in learning, I hope you will join us on this journey. Okay, so why are we doing it now?
Oh, I think for me, the pandemic for the last two or more years has been a nightmare with the
constant uncertainties. With our sister frontline workers, we gave everything and more with everybody
who worked alongside us, everyone in primary, secondary, community, anyone in the healthcare
setting, social care setting really gave their all. And the lockdown has been arduous and for me,
it's been a huge magnifying glass, something that I couldn't really control on all the fears,
anxieties and insecurities in both the professional and personal aspects.
I think a lot of people will relate to this in terms of worrying about family,
dealing with the daily stresses and the list goes on. It's hard to accept we don't know what's
happening. It's hard to be okay with that loss of control. And I have to keep telling myself,
we're doing the best that we can. It's scary. It can be overwhelming. And it is okay to feel.
That's absolutely spot on because I think that although the pandemics multiplied those fears and
considerations, but I think they become even more pronounced now going back to sort of normality.
For me, COVID and the whole pandemic was quite a curious time. Despite the terrible impact on many,
I want to know how much it taught me and how many things I have done I would not have even pondered
about. I had an opportunity to work to support clinicians in 111 and the non-emergency health
online if there's anybody listening from not necessarily UK. I conducted multiple online remote
consultations. I completed my prescribing qualification as well and somewhat got used
to the new ways of working that occupied my head and kept it sane from all the negative impacts of
the pandemics, not being able to see the family, not being able to travel or doing the things that
we like. Yes, I get a lot of that. It forces me to deal with how I feel in ways that has never been
done before. So like you said, without the traveling, without seeing family, I feel like
my distractions have been reduced forcefully due to the lockdown and I am
I'm forced to do a lot of introspection. Some are hard, some are scary and a lot of it resulted in
tears, but most are extremely liberating after continuous work into it. I used to loathe the
lockdown and blame it and resent it, but after days of facing my fears, I occasionally feel it
is a blessing in disguise. I also rediscovered my joy of certain activities and hobbies like
playing the piano and painting, so I'm having mixed feelings about it. I then noticed how I
grew as a clinician or a person directly first and then how it impacts how I am as a clinician
and the mentor. It got me thinking, have we been looking at it differently?
Do you remember our conversations prior to us starting this?
Well, we always spent a lot of time talking and I think that something changed as we noticed that
we feel better after discussing important personal matters and despite me being a rather happy person,
I had this faint feeling that I am becoming more consciously happy. It's hard to describe it really,
but I was always aware that the only person that can make me happy is myself, but I guess I started
to understand a bit better how looking into my own personal wise allows me to recognise
how my internal mental nucleus affects layers closer to the skin, to what you can see outside,
to what others can see and how you promote yourself as a person towards your staff,
towards your patients, towards your colleagues. We have been doing this retrospection for the
first time really together and what it's like to be a first timer. I mean, this is a podcast that
we're doing, it's the first time we've ever done anything like it. What does it feel to be a first
timer for you? Honestly, I don't know how it's going to work. I don't know how it's going to
sound. It is hard and I want to be authentically myself, but also trying to protect myself and
having my armour up. I've never done this before on my own, let alone with you as a co-host and
prior to my conversation with you, I'm having conversation in my head. So there's this part of
me saying, what if it's not right? And then the other part of me saying, it's a learning journey,
you won't know everything. And then the doubter or the person that doubts myself, self doubt appear,
what if I'm not good at this? And then the reassurance appear, you will make mistakes,
you will learn from it. And I just sometimes look at it a bit more optimistically. Maybe one day,
I'll come out of it thinking, can you remember the time it was hard and we can have a laugh about it
all? I'm having a laugh now. There is a first time for everything, I guess. And in my head,
there is this conviction that we cannot be the only ones having those questions, considering
issues that need discovering, doing like a sort of brain or mental stocktake,
doing a checkup from the neck up, as the saying goes. And some of the issues we sweep really into
like under the blanket of our brains, we would rather for them to stay there. But that blanket
also covers other important parts or ingredients of our happiness, like discovery, security,
self love or curiosity. Those are often buried under our everyday lives that is rushed, that is
more exposed to others. But those things, I believe, are
those parts that make us, and I think we need to understand them, to become better people
and better clinicians. Oh yeah, those things that I put under the blankets are usually fears.
So when I'm faced with these fears, I have to keep going back to my why. Why am I doing this?
What is my purpose? Most of the time, they gave me some clarity and give me some perspective.
If not, then going out for a fresh air works for me too. Most importantly for me is I have to see
the fears and not run away from it. So like you said, not just sweeping under the carpet.
I need to normalize it. I do it by talking to you when we plan about how I feel.
And when I realize I'm not alone, when we have a mutual agreement on how we're feeling,
it's liberating. It's like popping a balloon that's about to burst and the pressures release
and I find embracing the fears or sitting in the discomfort
allows me to learn to adapt to the fears and with time, it eases.
Well, I'm not going to lie if I say that on a scale of one to wonderful very or starting
with a curious to explorer and that's me who is the curious one and you are the explorer
because I'm definitely the one that is less, shall we call it enlightened and less rehearsed
in the topics of our chats. You have been working on your meditation for a while now
and I wouldn't even know where to start with it and never thought I would find it necessary.
I'm very excited but also nervous that I can ask questions you and the listeners might consider
irrelevant, unnecessary or just plain stupid. Well, keep in mind I'm new to this and often
might play devil's advocate just to see where the limits are, where are there those tricky corners
or like gentle reminders that not all questions might be same. I hope you're going to confirm
that there are no stupid questions, just poor answers because sometimes in my head there are
those questions that have to be asked, that's all. Oh, I know how you like to debate with me.
You can't see me now but I'm rolling my eyes. The nervousness, what you've just mentioned there
is paired with excitement, so the excitement to share, the excitement to grow alone together
with you and with the community and the excitement to be of help to others. I guess this is the
reality of first-timers, that's what keeps us growing I guess, that's what makes the brainfire.
You know what, it's the same feeling when you're a first-timer in a job or first-timer being a
parent or first-timer being new in anything, whether it's professional or personal, the
feelings are the same. It's going to take longer, it's going to be harder until I feel that I'm on
even ground and until then I need to learn to be okay, to feel all the wobbles along the way,
learn how to be okay with falling flat on my face sometimes, learning to balance
and learning to get back up again. Well this is why I am excited to see where this exploration
is going to take us, well let's stress where it's going to take us and our listeners and I hope
that we come across a single person, maybe two, who can say I thought of that too or maybe someone
who would listen and say oh I never thought of that but maybe I should. We shall see, I hope our
listening will not waste time with us and can benefit from the ride or even better, join us
and share. Lovely, right, shall we get into the nitty-gritty? Okay yeah, so we in this episode
zero want to tell you that we have in this season the topics, ideas we want to discuss that are
formed into episodes okay, so we might sometimes call them moments, although I'm not sure they're
going to be very short, or stops to discuss things, to pause and discuss things going forward.
So we are hoping to be learning from our own experiences, from each other, from you and your
feedback too hopefully. Yes, I think we will be open, inquisitive and raw and it might get messy.
We'll be doing a deep dive or probably a lot of that, telling our stories and I hope you will
relate to the feelings on our journey. Like Mike said, we're hoping for you to pause with us
and reflect, reflect on your journey so far, relate to what we're talking about and rise above
where you were before. Yeah, we will be talking about hard and soft skills
and why we don't really like calling them that. Then we want to consider where we are now
and to understand it we need to unpack what brought us here. So in order to start the journey
we need to unpack the baggage. It's the other way around comparing to normal traveling,
but we're going backwards first. We will also be looking at the vulnerability and why
we are afraid of facing our fears. Then it will be time to explore our authentic self.
Oh, and how can we explore authentic self
without looking at hidden armours like shame and guilt that we're not even aware that they're there?
How do we practice self-compassion? What's the difference between coping and thriving,
which a lot of people might be doing consciously or unconsciously during the lockdown?
And why is it necessary? How do we level up? Well, I think you're telling people a bit too
much now. I think we're going to leave it for the episodes. Oops, sorry. Right, so almost finally
we hope to achieve transformation and absolutely finally, just a snippet,
we want to engage with you in a ripple effect. So now let me tell you a little bit more about
the Domestics. So we are going to be releasing weekly and we would strongly encourage you to
subscribe on your favourite podcast platforms and join us on the Imperfect Clinician social media
pages, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter at your disposal. When we are ready, we are hoping
to get our own website up and running too, so stay tuned. Thank you for the time you took to
listen to this episode zero of our podcast. We shall be in touch soon. Don't miss it. We won't.
Goodbye for now and mind how you go. Bye for now. Thank you, everyone.