Taming Your Ego: Too Much Self-Importance
Every individual has an ego. Some egos are larger than others. And some are downright unrealistic. Are you a high-achiever dreaming of becoming a doctor? Then, taming your ego is vital to your success as future physician.
None of us are born with an ego. It tends to develop quite quickly during childhood and matures during the teen years. As adults, especially those in the business of helping people, such as healthcare professionals, empathy must outweigh egotism to provide quality care.
Once your ego takes control, it’s pretty difficult to set it aside for the sake of others. Your arrogant attitude effectively drives your mental and emotional state, as well as the way you see yourself physically. The ego is also a driving force behind the materialistic success you may hold dear to your heart.
All of these factors lead to you becoming an arrogant doctor someday. Read these two articles to help you understand how your ego could essentially ruin your future career in medicine.
Your ego dictates your level of self-esteem and self-importance. It helps to raise your confidence level when you’re uncertain about tasks and procedures related to your future medical career as a doctor. Unless tamed, it can easily have you putting yourself on a pedestal you don’t deserve because you simply haven’t earned it yet.
Becoming egotistical is a common mistake made by medical students. This self-centered way of thinking leads to becoming so self-absorbed that you forget you’re not a practicing physician yet. Currently, you’re just not as important as the doctors and nurses around you who’ve already earned their credentials.
Yes, you may be better than many other med students in your class. You may even be at the top of the class, according to USMLE test scores. But that still doesn’t make you more important than any other medical school student, intern, or resident.
To be successful as a doctor, you need a team of people around you to help you perfect your medical skills. You have to get your ego in check to create balanced relationships with the professionals around you, or they won’t want to work with, teach or train you.
5 Tips for Taming Your Ego for a Successful Medical Career
Taming your ego is the best way to create a network of people willing to mentor and work alongside you at hospitals, during clinical rotations, etc… Use these five tips for medical students to help you keep your self-absorbed attitude in check.
1. You Are Not as Important as You Think You Are
If not tamed, your ego can have you thinking you’re a very important person at the hospital or clinic where you intern or do clinical rotations. Yes, you may be good at what you do, which makes you valuable.
However, when you’re not at work, things still run just as smoothly. And your job still gets done.
2. You Are Not the Only Smart Person Around You
If you think the other medical students and professionals around you aren’t smart, your ego is seriously out of whack. They are also problem solvers, innovators, and educated professionals too. It would behoove you to remember that.
Try learning from intelligent doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals around you. Sharing ideas is a sign of true intelligence. And remember, your contributions may be helpful. But life will go on without you if needed.
3. Asking for Help When You Need It Is a Key to Success
As a medical student, there’s no way for you to know how to solve every problem and answer every question correctly. This is your opportunity to learn how to practice medicine by networking with the medical professionals around you.
A true leader knows how to ask for help when needed. Only an egotistical fool takes blind leaps with patients’ care because they’re too proud to request assistance. Taming your ego and admitting your limitations puts your patient’s care before your self-importance.
4. You Are No Busier Than the Next Medical Professional
When consulting with a patient, give the person your undivided attention. Never think you’re too busy to listen to patients attentively and treat them with empathy. A med student that’s too busy to pay attention to a talking patient is useless to that patient’s overall medical care.
Don’t bother complaining to other interns, residents, or other medical students about your busy schedule. It’s a waste of precious time trying to get sympathy from busy professionals with just as many tasks on their plates.
5. The Team as a Whole Is More Important Than You Are Alone
How much work you complete each day as an individual has nothing on what the entire medical team accomplishes as a whole. If you really want to be important, find your place on the team and learn from every single professional around you.
Teamwork makes the dream work in a clinical environment. There’s no one person who can get every job done without help. Learn all you can, including how to be more productive to your team. Attend meetings. Respond to requests. Help put out fires.
Remember, you’re not indispensable. You’re just a med school student hoping to practice medicine someday. Taming your ego shows you are open to learning all you can to become the best doctor you can be in the future.
Taming Your Ego for Life Balance & Career Success
Want a balanced life? Then, get control of your ego so you don’t turn away the physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals who may want to help you. It may make you uncomfortable at first.
But showing you’re a humble med student willing to learn is detrimental to your success as a future doctor. That means admitting when you need help.
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Learn what you need to know to pass these US medical exams MedSmarter. Get certified so you can continue your pursuit of happiness on your journey of becoming a doctor in the US. Click the link below for details.
