Setbacks can make or break your life, it’s up to you to decide which.
A Loss of Optimism
In 2023 I started my final clinical placement. The placement that would decide the outcome of my time at university, and indeed my career. As part of this placement, I was assessed daily — having to provide evidence of my knowledge, communication and professionalism.
Prior to this I had been at university for almost four years, so in the beginning I relished the opportunity to demonstrate and improve my skills. However, once I started I realised something… that being given feedback every single day was not fun.
While we often tell ourselves that we accept constructive criticism, that is easier said than done when you are critiqued on an hour by hour basis. As staff members felt obliged to give ‘constructive’ feedback for every single patient interaction, there was pressure to perform non stop, every single day.
This chronic pressure led to the gradual decline in my optimism, becoming more and more pessimistic as time moved on. Instead of measuring how much progress I’d made, I would look at how far I had to go. I would ignore the positive comments in favour of ruminating on the negative ones.
Constant reflection on criticism, until this began to compound.
As one criticism bled into my next interaction with a patient, I became more and more pessimistic, with residual pessimism building up, day after day, week after week.
One of the reasons for this was how quickly I would receive feedback and then be expected to implement it. I would speak to patient one, receive feedback then minutes later have to use that feedback to improve my interaction with patient two. Without ever having time to reflect myself.
Needless to say, I wasn’t going into each consultation full of confidence having received criticism just minutes earlier, regardless of how constructive it was. Day after day this started to get to me. The constant roller coaster of emotions combined with the pressure of passing placement, stress of the environment along with the laundry list of variables that could influence each consultation…
Was I going to remember the feedback from yesterday? Would the patient engage in conversation? If the patient asked me a question on something I studied six months ago, would I know the answer? Would the supervising staff member be helpful? Or did they have a bad nights sleep — are they busy or stressed, and would this impact my feedback?
Any of the above could have influenced my feedback, and consequently how I felt about myself — irrelevant of whether it was in my control or not.
I liken this to when you experience something negative in your life, such as a long-term breakup, or going to a job you dislike, where it becomes increasingly difficult to get out of bed in the morning. However, the difference in this situation was that the feedback, constructive or not, was a daily occurrence. While the negativity was much less severe than the end of a long-term relationship, it was also much more constant. Instead of a five mile sprint, this was an ultramarathon.
Consequently, the opportunity to go home, reflect, learn and essentially ‘get over it’ was removed, with the time for reflection being minimal or nonexistent. If you’re a current or ex medical/healthcare student you may be able to relate to this.
But eventually I realised that something had to change.
I was getting feedback regardless, and the only thing within my control that could influence my future performances was how I reacted to it.
The Reset
While I generally consider myself an optimistic person, some setbacks can take longer to get over, and this was one of those situations.
But it didn’t matter if my supervisor had a bad day, or if they were stressed or if they disliked me. All of these things were completely out of my control.
So I decided to react better, and faster.
In the knowledge that I couldn’t predict the future or control how harsh different supervisors would be, I decided to reduce the time it took me to take feedback on board and move on from negative comments that weren’t constructive.
The goal wasn’t to ignore or ‘get over’ the feedback, it was to improve the speed at which I could learn from it and adapt.
This approach, so I thought, would bode well for when I finished placement, regardless of the outcome. If I could “treat triumph and disaster the same”, in the words of Rudyard Kipling, progress was inevitable.
One way I like to describe this is resetting your optimism, or as I would sometimes tell myself — sleeping off the pessimism.
Resetting your optimism is setting time aside to reflect on helpful feedback and disregarding what is not, being able take on board feedback and adapt your performance as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. That being said, helpful doesn’t inherently mean positive feedback. It means reflecting on feedback that is going to help you improve and move forward.
It is also critically important to remember that not all feedback is helpful, and therefore you should try to avoid ruminating on random comments or unhelpful criticism.
Side note — if you are prone to worrying, consider reading the fantastic article How to Beat Worry by Lawrence Yeo.
After a few days I began to improve my ability to bounce back from criticism. Where previously I would ruminate over feedback for days, now I would move on overnight, or in some situations — in minutes. Taking on board what I perceived to be useful and discarding what was not became second nature as I practised it. If there is one thing that my placement taught me, it’s that overthinking would do nothing but ruin my future performance.
A book that helped me a lot with this is The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan, and measuring myself against the gain (the progress I’d made) rather than the gap (the distance between where I was and where I needed to be).
Additionally, approaching feedback pragmatically helped, trying to take all emotions out of it and looking objectively at what I could improve.
Summary
If you’re a student in a similar situation and can relate to this, or you’re about to start a placement, don’t be too harsh on yourself when you receive feedback. It’s part of the process and most people genuinely want to see you do well. Although it’s certainly easier said than done, don’t let the constant feedback get to you, it’s there to help you improve — even if it doesn’t always feel that way.
Measure yourself against the gain, be objective when reviewing feedback and most importantly, don’t set yourself up to fail by assuming you already have before you walk in the door, because this will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Thank You
If you made it this far, thank you — I appreciate you taking the time to read my work and sincerely hope you enjoyed it. If you would like to continue reading, I’ve included a few of my recent articles from my website below. I’d love it if you could check them out!
Thanks again.
Rob