This month, I wanted to touch on that ubiquitous topic of failure. This often takes the form of not passing tests, or not matching, or failing clinically with poor patient outcomes. It’s hard, emotionally draining and can be difficult to surmount.
I was a preliminary general surgery resident for a year, after not matching the first go round. That was a tough year, with the emotional ups and downs. What’s worse, you don’t know what the next step will be. What if you don’t match again? There is a bias against preliminary residents, who are sometimes thought to be defective. How do you keep alive the dream of becoming a vascular surgeon?
What about when things go wrong with patient care? In my training, I’ve seen patients have poor outcomes following “minor” operations. How does one not internalize this as a personal failure? And if the outcome was truly your fault, how do you emerge stronger from it?
Let’s take the example of tests. What if you’re a poor test taker but love vascular surgery? How do you make sense of this? How do you move forward towards your dream?
I don’t have the answers, but I do know that one constant in life is that those who dare to be great and do amazing things, will face failure. Vascular surgery training is hard, and sometimes unforgiving. Failure, at some point, is inevitable. In many ways, it is necessary for our maturity and progression toward our goals.
It’s fine to be sad, even angry, after failure. This is normal and expected. The harder part is picking yourself up and not wallowing in self pity. Maybe this means talking to family, loved ones, a therapist who is outside of your work, or some other neutral friend. Look for the helpers. They are the ones that care about you.
How do you pick yourself up? There will be people who will criticize and blame with no input or insight that is meaningful. Avoid them. And if you can’t avoid them, ignore them. The easiest thing after failure is to wallow in it and give up. Rather, use it as a catalyst. Aim to be better. Sometimes, that means changing a routine and taking time to listen to loved ones.
Sometimes failure can mean a new direction. If that’s your story, analyze it and, if it comes to that, embrace it. This is very difficult to do, particularly after significant effort has been put in towards a particular goal. At the end of the day, being excellent at what you’re naturally good at will lead to unique expertise.
This is not an exhaustive list of how to think through failure, of course. There are books and mentors out there for that. That said, as trainees at different stages of learning, we must re-frame the notion of failure—and start to see it as normal process toward becoming great at what we do.
