Love along the wards
BMJ Career Focus, 2006
Your eyes meet across a crowded canteen and before you know it you’re skipping hand-in-hand through the ward rounds. But can you really mix business with pleasure? Cath Janes reveals the good, the bad and the ugly of love at work
Introduction
It’s not all Mills and Boon book covers, although read them and you’d swear that you spent endless shifts clutching your fiercely beating bosom or getting lustily entangled in your stethoscope. Yet the fact is that you are more likely to find love while on duty than ever before. Mix long hours with like-minded colleagues and a post-shift pint and it’s easy to become involved with anyone from your consultant to the lowliest house officer. According to the TUC a quarter of all long term relationships start at work so it seems that finding love is the easy bit. But no one wants to stumble over registrars furiously snogging in the sluice room. So when it comes to your career it’s how you handle your workplace romance that really counts.
The love bug
Finding love amongst the venflons seems like a bright idea when you are on your third spirit-sapping shift of the weekend and it’s hardly a surprise. It is widely believed that a workplace romance boosts your levels of motivation and productivity, increases enjoyment of day-to-day tasks and improves your level of interest in your work. Leaping out of bed at the 6am alarm becomes something to look forward to rather than endure. However, further down the line it could have the opposite effect. You become distracted, responsibilities slip and it’s increasingly difficult to separate your private from your professional life. Worse, your reputation as a trustworthy and reliable doctor is dented and before you know it the gossip that you are no longer up to the job is rife. It’s when that gossip reaches the very people who could make or break your medical career that love amongst the venflons doesn’t seem such a bright idea after all.
An affair to remember?
Whether you and your colleague are embarking upon a forty year marriage or one crazed night of passion, there’s one question you should ask yourself: can this really work? You may have sparked with that new registrar but if they have a reputation for bad manners or being wildly untrustworthy then your affections could be seriously misplaced. So get real about what you are doing. Is this person really someone you’d be happy to live and work with? Or is it someone who can honestly handle the blushes of the morning after? If it is not then step away from the relationship.
Also think about every move you make and how it could impact upon your career. Can you really ignore the squabbles about forgotten birthdays while you are in theatre? Or are you level-headed enough to forget that one night stand even though you are on duty with the very person you slept with? You have to go slowly, however much your madly beating heart is telling you to leap right in. Who wants to see their medical career ruined just because they couldn’t separate their heart from their head?
It takes two
So, you’ve been swept away on a wave of love, or at the very least lust. The deed has been done and you’re more familiar with your colleague’s bedside manner than ever before. Where do you go from here? First, be discreet. Gabbling inanely about your conquest, pawing each other in front of your consultant or gambolling hand-in-hand across the outpatients department will do you no favours. Leave that sort of frolicking to Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. Then accept that hospitals are hotbeds of gossip and do nothing to fuel it. If anyone asks be honest, admit that you are seeing a colleague and leave it at that. You don’t need to give them a blow-by-blow account of last night’s love-fest. Keep quiet and the interest will soon die down leaving you to get on with your job.
Stay professional too. Favouritism will infuriate the colleagues with whom you are not intimately acquainted while raising personal issues publicly will just make them cringe. Even worse you’ll start haemorrhaging trust to the point that they won’t even consider you reliable enough to do your job. After all, if you can’t keep the confidentiality of your new found love, or at least respect your relationship, how can you be expected to display either of those feelings towards a patient?
Take a break
Just when you thought that it was tough to keep your rampaging love to yourself you split up. Suddenly being on duty is an emotional assault course.
If you aren’t resisting the urge to fling the BNF at the heartbreaker in question you’re furiously avoiding eye contact or being vilified for the fact that they won’t stop sobbing. Save yourself from looking like a Holby City storyline by avoiding any drama. Don’t talk to anyone about it, make efforts to move on and make sure that unresolved issues are only dealt with when you are both off duty. Anything less will look even more undignified than trailing your professor while sporting a hastily buttoned shirt.
How will I know?
While the heady scent of love in the air will put a spring in your step it could also affect your career judgement. Suddenly, cutting corners so that you can meet up for lunch feels like the right thing to do. Unfortunately you won’t know that your career is suffering as a result until it is too late so watch out for the warning signs. Are you still getting your fair share of responsibilities at work? Is your consultant taking less interest in your diagnoses? Are you being overlooked when there’s a chance to offer an opinion? If so then it’s a sign that your colleagues no longer trust your judgement.
Ask yourself why and pinpoint when the problem first manifested itself. Could it be because you are distracted or unable to concentrate? Have you started making silly mistakes while on duty? Or have you been turning down unique opportunities just because you’ve lost interest in your specialty? If you’ve answered yes to any of these you’d better read on.
Best practice
It goes without saying that while handling a romance badly can kill your career, doing it well could be a welcome boost. Smart doctors do it by harnessing their renewed enthusiasm, directing it at their careers rather than their love lives (at least until they are off duty). Use your heightened motivation to take on new challenges or make a play for the post you’ve been itching to get your hands on. And if you do find yourself working longer hours as a result of your love life put them to good use. Is there a course that you’ve been dying to try? Or do you need to practice a particular procedure that’s fazing you? Either way the renewed determination will be obvious to your consultant and that’s exactly who you want to take notice.
Resuscitate your reputation while you are at it. By balancing your private and professional life you’ll prove that you have what it takes to be a great doctor. You’ll demonstrate staying power, the ability to control your emotions and levels of trustworthiness that could secure you the most exciting opportunities. It’s about being squeaky clean. Clouded emotions and disasterous decisions go hand in hand which is what you and your partner won’t be doing should you allow your career to take the knocks.
How not to do it
Still fighting the urge to drag your beloved into that sluice room? Well, if you really want your heart to rule, or ruin, your career here’s how to do it:
Strut across the ward the next morning with a smug grin on your face
Start sentences with “Don’t repeat this, but…” while revealing lurid details
Religiously paw at your date even in front of your professor
Snigger to yourself while being shown a delicate procedure
Loudly demand to know why your date hasn’t responded to any of your texts
Spark a bitter argument in the clinic as your, now, ex-date tries to avoiding you
Bawl loudly when asked when you are seeing your ex-date again
Demand a week off work because you need to learn how to love again