My definition of stress is when someone is dying during a cardiac arrest.
That is real stress.
Apart from that when no one is dying, I don’t really get that stress. Cool je. That’s one of the transferable skills from clinical medicine that I was able to bring to the corporate world. Therefore I am normally quite chill at work. I still get stressed, of course, I am human after all but tak la super stress.
The second transferable skill is about active listening. When I was taking the medical history of a patient, I would have a list of questions to ask the patient but at the same time I knew depending on the answers that would be given that I might have to probe deeper and deeper into the symptoms. When they say they have difficulty breathing, mesti kena tanya whether it’s worse at night when lying down to sleep because this might be due to pulmonary oedema. This skill is really useful in the corporate world in all sorts of situations especially when meeting someone for the first time. Active listening and asking questions with curiosity can really help build rapport faster.
The third one is about putting people at ease. When I was doing renal medicine, I inserted tons of jugular dialysis line. Tutup mata pun boleh buat. It is a relatively simple procedure once you know how to do it but it is quite stressful for the patients because someone is about to put a big plastic tube into their neck. So to calm them, I always keep talking to them about their life, their family, their work just to take their mind off from the procedure. So I think this skill has helped me get along with people because I can more or less borak about anything.
As we move through our careers we learn many new skills. So keep gathering them and transfer them effectively into your new more better role.
