When I worked in an emergency setting at a district hospital many years ago, I was asked by a younger colleague “How do you get people to listen to your orders and execute them?”. She was referencing to the fact that whenever I put up an order for a blood investigation to be drawn out or a medicine to be infused, it get’s done right away.

I have no idea myself.

The easy answer would be perhaps I communicated my intentions well. Or the involved team member had a high degree of accountability and responsibility resulting in them carrying out the order anyway regardless who asked for it. However, there is admittedly an element more subtle than the ones mentioned that could exert an influence over the situation.

Rapport.

I am a petite lady to begin with. It makes people guess on first encounter whether I’d turn out to be an Edna, the teapot lady in Beauty & the Beast or a speck in Totoro. Coming across as being too warm and polite (for a petite lady) gives an idea that you’re submissive and easily manipulated or trampled over. Too distant makes people uncomfortable to work with you and creates that communication gap which may impair patient care. So I try to put myself out as someone in between. Mesra enough to facilitate another person’s intention to ask for help or consult but setting the boundaries as to what topics we can talk or joke about.

I find these boundaries hardly exist in male-male interactions. They can coexist to jam together and still exhibit good working ethics with each other. That is some psychology I still need to study and perhaps apply in female-female or female-male interaction. I cannot afford to do that. To me, once I relax the boundaries, that is when the other party feels it is OK to not oblige to my requests.

In fact I experienced that on several occasions especially with male colleagues with a bigger body composition. The ones who would tower over you when both of you stand next to each other. Hence, to save myself from a headache I’d tend to just keep a social distance from these people. Meaning I don’t laugh at a joke, share a gossip or anything along those lines. It gets things done and at the same time hinders me from situations where I have to do difficult favours. Most often it involves things like prescribing a relative’s medication list cause the relative missed an appointment, giving out medical certificates (MC) to ‘husband’s for regular checkups because they just do not want to apply for their annual leave. Despite being good natured about it, these favours still came with a gentle advice and empathetic gesture from my side. I’d prescribed the medications for a month and have these colleagues remind their relatives to come for a proper checkup. As for the MC situation, I think I’ve only seen that ‘husband’ once because of the honest remark I made about giving it out . Soon enough, the husband was brought in to see a different doctor the next visit. I felt that the burden of ethical dilemma was relieved off my shoulders.

Rapport does not mean obliging to every single request, on the grounds of wanting to be accepted. Or being cool. It is also about setting boundaries that each party is comfortable with.