From Whining to Winning: Transforming the Chronic Complainer into a Constructive Champion (2024)

It is a supreme understatement to say that medicine, as a physician, as a resident, as a medical student, can be challenging. The tension between clinical care and the frustration of clinical operational complexity is growing, layered on the high expectations for performance and mastery for trainees. Chief residents are often on the firing line for complaints big and small, and recognize quickly that frustration, biases, competing priorities, and limited knowledge of system operations inform resident perspectives. Everyone vents to someone, particularly peers who understand the unique experiences. But there is often a complainer who is no longer tolerable. As Berman said in an 2015 JAMA article, "Gripers gripe to blow off steam in impossible situations...Whiners, on the other hand, whine because they quite believe that their situation is unfair to them personally, and they want someone to let them off the hook." This workshop will focus on ways for chief residents to manage the whining, and work through strategies to separate the complaints, identifying those which are actionable opportunities for change, those which need to be acknowledged but may not be candidates for action, and those which should simply remain complaints. Within the large group, the workshop will introduce skills such as systems reasoning, perspective-taking, picking battles, reframing, and reflective listening. In a small group exercise, participants will practice applying these skills to coach another person through responding to complaints in relatable scenarios.