Developing Your Radiology Chump-O-Meter
Are you being taken advantage of in your current radiology gig? Are you vigilant, hypersensitive or somewhere in between when it comes to standing up for yourself?
A common theme struck me one day as I was sifting through radiology social media posts: “Am I being a chump?” It also comes in other flavors, such as “Is my colleague being a chump?,” “How can I avoid being a chump in this situation?” or “Is my rad group being collectively chumpy?”
Probably most common is a rad wondering whether he or she is being paid fairly for the amount and type of work being done. If the rad perceives that a lot of other folks have similar burdens but are getting much better compensation, the rad might reasonably conclude that, yes, he or she is being a chump. It’s not necessarily due to bad behavior on the part of the employer. He or she might simply have chosen a suboptimal job or gone too long in it without renegotiating as the market evolved.
Wanting not to be a chump is a reasonable thing, especially if you have worked hard to get into a desirable but demanding career. Nobody should fault you for trying to get the most out of it. That doesn’t just mean getting paid decently. It also means reasonable volumes of work/stress and appropriately respectful treatment.
Folks in careers that require high intelligence and good scholastic performance can be late bloomers when it comes to standing up for themselves. It is no coincidence that literature, TV, movies, etc., showcase the social hazards of such prerequisite behavior: Many choose to keep their heads down and avoid trouble while getting their good grades, even if it means being bullied or otherwise pushed around.
Some never quite snap out of that but most do, and overcompensation can be the result. Nobody’s ever going to take advantage of me again! Get sufficiently hypervigilant, and next thing you know, it seems like everyone is out to make you their chump, and you are constantly fighting back to hold your ground. Meanwhile, onlookers can’t see many of the phantom foes you create for yourself and might decide to keep their distance to avoid being dragged into your drama.
A “nobody’s chump” rad has plenty of potential subjects for griping, whether or not he or she overdoes it. Whether it is payment, time off, scheduling and share of call shifts, non-clinical responsibilities and administrative authority. It is pretty much anything in which an individual can look at peers and perceive differences.
It doesn’t have to be limited to peers of course. A rad can resent that he or she (or the rad group) are being chumps for some other department. I have seen more than a few struggles over “Who’s going to do procedure X,” especially when some folks want to control X during weekdays but try to fob it off on radiology during nights and weekends, lest they be on X-call. Radiology utilization and protocoling are other common battlegrounds.
With all of the legitimate scenarios for rads to stand up for themselves (and their brethren), how are any of us supposed to know when we are on solid footing versus going overboard? When does a rad go from being nobody’s chump to a person with a chip on his or her shoulder?
It is all very subjective, and if a true objective measure is unobtainable, relativity (not Einstein-ian, comparing things to one another) might be the closest you can get.
One of the simplest methods is to ask other folks who are in the same boat as you. Hey, does it seem like the ER is making too many ridiculous demands for STAT cases in the middle of the night? Are we excessively bowing and scraping to our “VIP” referrer? Are we get treated decently by the partners in our rad group?
While quick and easy, there is only so much of this approach you will want to use, and you will want to spread it around as much as possible. If you are always going to the same individual with these things, he or she might get fed up with it. Also, the point of doing this is to broaden the base of the “chump-o-meter” you are trying to develop. When it was just you brooding on your own, you had an N of 1. Asking another person means N=2, which is of course better but not great.
It is for this reason that so many people take their inquiries to social media. In most jobs, you don’t have a huge number of colleagues to ask and there is probably only a fraction whose opinions you respect and discretion you can trust. When posting in a radiology forum, especially anonymously, you have a much bigger target audience although the price is that some of them will be trolls.
Another tool for calibrating your chump-o-meter is maintaining an awareness of how frequently you think about whether you are being a chump. If the thought only comes up rarely (say once a year), it’s more likely to be legitimate. Meanwhile, if it is a constant thing and you don’t have a good reason as to why (for instance, you are in a genuinely crappy situation and haven’t extracted yourself from it yet), you are probably doing some shadowboxing.
To expand upon this, how does the frequency of your “am I being a chump” thinking compare with that of the other rads you know? If you always seem to be the one with issues, your chump-o-meter probably needs to be dialed down. If most of the saber rattling you hear comes from others, anything you do come up with is more likely to be reasonable, if not actionable.
It is also worthwhile to look beyond your professional life. It is of course possible that your chump-o-meter could be over tuned when you’re wearing your radiology hat, but not in other situations. However, if you can identify that you are defensive about chumpiness in general, you might just want to be watchful for it while on the job.
Are you the sort of person who keeps tabs on which tables in the restaurant got served before you did? Are you an aggressive driver, preventing anybody from getting in front of you (and maybe making sure they hear about it if they try)? Are you frequently identifying and correcting situations where folks tried to “get one over” on you?
Lest it need saying, I have known a few folks who fit that profile very well and wouldn’t be embarrassed if you pointed it out to them. They are proud of getting what they think is coming to them and being nobody’s fool. To each his or her own but I think a hyper-clocked chump-o-meter makes for a lot of wasted energy and unhappiness and is best avoided for most of us.
The Reading Room Podcast: Emerging Trends in the Radiology Workforce
February 11th 2022Richard Duszak, MD, and Mina Makary, MD, discuss a number of issues, ranging from demographic trends and NPRPs to physician burnout and medical student recruitment, that figure to impact the radiology workforce now and in the near future.
