(Pause)..........You are right! Lessons learned from a WRHA Hero

This week, one of my dear friends and former colleague, John Igloria, was recognized as a WRHA Hero.  He is a part of a team supervising operations at St. Boniface Hospital. 

I have to admit when I saw the pictures of the team and the recognition, I looked at John and started laughing.  If you know John, you know that he is the reason that the selfie stick was invented.  With John, everything is an occasion and if you are with him, he always wanting to take a selfie together.  I get it.  He is a handsome man with a smile any model would envy.  So, it was a little funny seeing pictures of him not smiling and almost looking down.  That really is the mark of a true hero.  Humble and a little embarrassed to be honoured. 

I want to tell you why John has been a hero of mine.

First of all, John taught me a lot about dignity.  It seems funny just typing that out.  When you work in healthcare, you treat people with dignity.  What is there to learn?  Frankly, it is not a simple question.  Anyone who works in healthcare knows that it is not as simple as believing in the science.  I wish we could change the narrative right now.  I wish it could be about "best practices" based on research and data.  But, that is another entry. 

The point is that healthcare isn't as black and white as some may think.  If you are working in healthcare, you are dealing with complex ethical issues every single shift. 

So, back to dignity.  The first week that I started working with John, I learned a lot about dignity by watching him.  I learned that dignity is one of those things that the more you extend dignity to others, the more your own dignity is elevated. 

When John and I had our first ethical disagreement (less than a week being colleagues), he already had a lot of credibility with me.  We disagreed in a meeting.  John followed me into my office, shut the door, raised his voice and spoke to me in a sharp tone.  What happened next surprised me.  I let his words sink in and then I said, "You are right." 

The next day, we had another ethical disagreement.  This time, when we got into my office and shut the door, I raised my voice and spoke sharply.  He let the words sink in and then said, "You are right." 

Another thing that happens in healthcare is that everyone is so enthusiastic and passionate about helping that sometimes you literally step on someone else's toes. 

The first time John stepped on my toes, we went into my office and shut the door.  I spoke passionately about what happened from my perspective.  John paused and then said, "I am sorry."  A couple of hours later, we were back behind closed doors.  This time I had stepped on his toes.  When this passionately pointed out, it was my turn to say, "I am sorry." 

Well, we kept disagreeing.  But, we stopped raising our voices when talking to each other and without noticing, we stopped having disagreements behind closed doors.  We had our respectful discussions in the open.  Very quickly, we stopped disagreeing but we never stopped having different perspectives.  We actually started questioning ourselves when our perspectives matched and wondered if that meant there was something we didn't consider. 

We added another phrase to our regular discussions.  "I don't know."

Yes, John Igloria is intelligent, confident, ethical, dedicated, efficient, sincere, diligent, and compassionate.  He is a hero. 

But, what makes him a true hero to me is that he can say, "I was wrong."  "I am sorry" and "I don't know." 

Watch this guy.  I kind of think you may be hearing his name a lot in the future.