Bullying comes in all shapes and sizes
This weekend I’ve been busy running a weekend workshop for RANZCP trainees sitting their college essay exams. Coaching and training doctors has been my love for 15 years now — I’ve always said that as a psychiatrist I can help one person at a time, but as a coach and mentor I can help trainees become psychiatrists who can go on and help many.
I’ve facilitated workshops many times and have a style that receives postive feedback, and I always leave the workshops feeling a great deal of satisfaction for all the work and effort I put into the day. This time around I’m beginning a new partnership with BluePrint Medical, a niche medical recruitment agency so that we can collaborate to deliver ongoing training and professional development to doctors who are part of their locum workforce and away from their training posts.
I have been targeted in the past for developing initiatives that are entreprenerial, and in spiteful ways, but I was not prepared for the attack I received, indirectly and facelessly on the eve of the workshop this weekend. I was informed by the team at BluePrint Medical that they had received a letter from the Examinations Committee at RANZCP, making accusations that I was purporting to be a RANZCP examiner when I wasn’t.
Now this would have been of concern if I had actually done that. As per their letter I am an RANZCP examiner, and I have never stated I am an examiner for the written exams. It transpired that the RANZCP examiantions committee had met to talk about me, without my knowledge, as they were concerned somebody may mistake that I was what I said I was, when I was, or wasn’t, or something like that. To understand the context, here is the letter:
The devil is always in the detail. Over the weekend, I have been able to gather more details, completely on the back foot, whilst running two intensive full day workshops with mock exams. I had to go into damage control with my new business partners who were extremely understanding, but there was a potential they may have been put off by the letter and cancel the workshops. I had to make up ground unsure of how I lost it in the first place.
What I was able to glean was that an RANZCP committee consisting of my colleagues decided to have a meeting about me without my knowledge about a matter that by their own admission didn’t exist. It seems that they were raising an issue about me but not telling me, deciding instead to raise it with a company that I have a business relationship with. They addressed the letter to Dr Wheeler, who doesn’t exist; Ms Wheeler is a staff member at BluePrint Medical and has never sat a medical exam in her life. A per me, the alleged complainant who was found guilty by a group of peers, I was relegated to “cc” in a letter written about me.
Now the RANZCP has had its issues with its execution of exams and the treatment of many trainees trying to make it to consultancy. That’s all public knowledge. To have a meeting about an issue that doesn’t exist may not be the best use of their time, or my college fees.
If I was asked about this issue, in a professional way, I would have provided this explanation;
- I am an RANZCP examiner
- I have never said I was an MEQ/CEQ essay examiner
- I did not mislead BluePrint Medical to believe I was an RANZCP MEQ/CEQ essay examiner
- In 15 years I have never stated that the RANZCP endorse my programs or workshops because they don’t.
I have decided to write about this because I wish to examine the broader factors at play here. Like the trainees I have coached all weekend, we are members of a college, who can, like any institution, decide if we are in the fold or not. The same institution that can represent our collective views, values, and beliefs can also turn on us at any time.
Colleges like all institutions are made up of people. Most are well meaning and altruistic. Most exercise decency and professionalism in their manner and conduct towards others. Few abuse their roles in colleges or institutions to wield behaviour that in any other setting would be seen for what it is — common garden variety bullying. Psychiatrists, who should know better, can be just like everybody else and resort to such tactics.
This is the first part of the process. The next step arises when the person who feels aggrieved tries to defend themselves, or simply seek clarification. Then the next level of abuse begins, the attempts to hide behind behaviours using terms such as “governance” or in this case “an exercise in impression management”. I have been since told I am over-reacting, and there is “nothing to see here”. I don’t feel I am over-reacting when a committee within my college meet to talk about me without my knowledge, then write to a business partner about me, without my consent, on official college letterhead, asserting I have been dishonorable in my behaviour.
The third part of all of this is when you discover that in fact the committee did not believe there was a problem with me, but one psychiatrist who I had come across in a workplace setting decided she would take task about my abilities to offer coaching and training programs. One member of a committee who could hide behind her title and create a power imbalance because all of a sudden the dispute was between me and the whole “College”. A person who decided to misuse their position on a committee to intimidate me to stop doing what I do. A person who admitted they were part of this when I confronted the. Do I know this for a fact? My hunch is this is correct, but I have not been afforded any transparency or right of recourse. So I’ll stick with my hunch.
All weekend I coached and supported trainees desperate to pass their exams. Some had been caught up in exam disasters during the COVID-19 pandemic, many remained angry that they were unable to get through. One who was told they were successful, only to be contacted days later to tell them they weren’t and this was due to a clerical error. All who were keen to move through and help do something about the critical workforce shortage. It saddens me that they have this “us and them” approach to the College we all belong to. But unfortunately, I can sympathise with what that feels like.
Institutions don’t like people that don’t fit the mould. One of the most common ways to manage that is to make the outlier look defective and exclude them as much as they can. I’ve been a victim of that, as many of us have, but understandably, we are too frightened to speak up about our experience. I have supported doctors who have been bullied or victimised using vehicles such as AHPRA, who investigate anonymous vexations complaints made by work colleagues. The problem is endemic in our profession and highlights the sinister side nobody talks about — that we can be so cruel and spiteful towards those we work alongside, invariably doing it a way that is anonymous, or hidden behind “the Committee” or “the College”.
I am not downcast by all of this however. I am so buoyed by the experience I have had this weekend. I have put my heart and soul into helping a dedicated group of my colleagues get through to the other side. I consider myself to be very fortunate to call them colleagues for years to come. They demonstrated the ability to be extremely motivated to do what it takes to get there, to help patients with mental illness a a time when we are desperately short of people who can.
I have created the first partnership with a locom consultancy to deliver professional development and training to a huge part of our psychiatry workforce.
In the meantime, I will pick myself up after yet another attempt to try and stop me from doing what I love and advocating for trainees. I have so many plans to keep creating workshops and initiatives to ensure I can help trainees as much as possible. Oh, and remove myself immediately from the precious pool of examiners for the RANZCP, so that I don’t cause another “impression management” situation that ties up a meeting that would be best utilised to address trainee issues with completing the College exams.
