How can you be happy in your daily work? What makes your job fulfilling? Wouldn't it be amazing to have a job where you gain fulfillment every day. Where you feel a bond with those around you and you know that you are working to a common goal. The irony is that in a world where we are becoming less physically connected - the answer lies in the PEOPLE we spend our days with, not the actual work we do.
Fulfilment and happiness in life comes not from what you are doing, but the fact that you are helping someone else. Giving and gratitude are the keys to happiness. Sounds corny I know, but stick with me on this one!
When you get a thank you card from a patient at work, or when they gush over you the next day, thanking you for your successful operation or the medical intervention you did, how good does that feel? Don't you go home and feel good about yourself, happy that you have done something for a fellow human being and that it has been acknowledged. Even when it's not acknowledged or the patient doesn't seem particularly grateful, you still have that warm feeling inside - not because you did a technically sound procedure (OK, well maybe a little bit of that) - but because you know you have helped someone.
It's not just about our patients; when you take the extra 10 minutes to teach your medical student, you can see they are hanging on your words and how grateful they are; when you ask a colleague if they need a hand with their job list because you finished yours. The irony is that you have more to gain by helping them than they do, because helping others makes us happy.
Give feedback
As leaders, we have to help others understand that team working isn't only good medicine, it's happy medicine and work satisfaction. We have to find ways to bring people together and help them recongise the benefits of doing so. If you are the team registrar, that means making sure your medical student and RMO have the opportunity for ownership of their work, and to give them feedback and support that acknowledges their contribution.
Every single day look for opportunities to recognise and reward individuals of your team for the good that they do. We don't do it enough and it's profoundly important to their development - and the strength of our teams as a whole.