This is Lab Medicine Rounds, a curated podcast for physicians,
laboratory professionals and students. I'm your host, Justin Kreuter,
the bow tie bandit of blood, a transfusion medicine pathologist at Mayo Clinic.
Today we're rounding with Dr. Nour Al-Mozain,
a hematopathologist and transfusion medicine consultant at King Faisal's
Specialist Hospital in Riyad Saudi Arabia to talk and help us
talk about how do we reach out to colleagues for help.
Thanks for joining us today, Dr. Al-Mozain.
Thank you, Dr. Kreuter, for inviting me.
It really feels special to be a guest at my favorite podcast.
. We're glad to have you. Grateful to have you. I mean,
I think this topic of how do we reach out to colleagues is one of
themaybe as we're in training as part of the hidden curriculum that isn't
exactly explicitly talked about.
And I've seen different approaches people have taken and I've always
admired your approach.
Maybe you can get us started with what are a few of the reasons why you have
reached out to colleagues for advice?
Oh, thank you. You like my way in approaching the advice? Actually,
there're not a few, there're a bunch of reasons why I do seek advice.
I deeply inside myself,
I strongly believe that the world is more complex than I can see by my own
eyes.
I always have this strong desire to see things from multiple different
angles.
I always
want to know what other things about things.
And I have multi-perspective approach to things.
And in generalit is embedded in my mindset to.
I strongly believe in a proverb, Arabic proverb,
I'll say that translationin Englishif you're
only guided by your books,
you'll be more wrong than right and on multiple
levelsaccording to what type of guidance you're receiving,
you'll develop professionally, personally, spiritually.
Wow. So I, I really, you know,
for our target audience for this podcast, right? I mean, this really,
I thinkresonates for physicians and practicereaching out
to, to colleagues, those of usin the laboratory as professionals.
We always have to understand what is the clinical significance of what we're
dealing with.
And then for students too being able to see this in our colleagues,
and I think that's what this podcast is calling a little attention to for the
learners that listen to pay particular attention
when colleagues ask each other for advice.
So what are a few of the challenges that you've had to navigate while,
while reaching out to try to find this different perspective?
I imaginea couple of challenges can come up from time to time.
Yes, of course.
Dr. Justin actuallythank you for identifying this as a challenging
process because many people assume that this is a passiveprocess,
but not, in reality, it's not.
I'll say thatthe first challenge is you
need to deeply understand yourself what you want to get from
this advice and what you need to precisely identify
the problem, recognize it,
be aware of your blind spots and
knowledge gap,
acknowledge your limitation and solving
certain problems. And on the other side,
you need to be psychologically and emotionally
prepared to be open to receiving the advice.
Andthat's a bit tricky because we are humans.
We feel strong about our opinions and how we
feel and we need to be open to accept
the advice in times when it contradicts
what we see or our views
or our desires.
The second challenge would be, in my view,
is identifying the right person or the people around you who can
guide you through certain
problem. And because it's a challenging it is
a very sophisticated process in which you
need to build and sustain relationship
and trust with them.
Wow. I hear you.
So when you dive into the
problem, and you mentioned the idea,
this concept of being aware of our blind spot
that's really a big challenge probably for a lot of us. I know,
especially myself for the first several years in practice,
I was just constantly building on my strengths and my interests and then one
day I kind of woke up and realized that I was,
I was missing a whole aspect that I really needed to focus on.
How do you work on
maintaining awareness of where your blind spots are?
So this is not an easy process.
It comes with
practice. And the more you grow,
the more you realize that world is not black and
white, and there are much more to it. I wouldn't say 50 shades of gray,
I would say five hundreds. And
it is you would identify them by knowing your limitation and actually
defining your knowledge, the gaps, and your knowledge and experience.
I see.
So that's something that kind of comes with the practice that you're Yeah.
You're developing.
It's a self skill. Yeah.
Is there something kind of in your training or a point that you can kind of
really put your finger on to say, you know,
this really kind of set me on the right course to always be mindful of
my blind spots?
Well,
I don't think there is something in a training course or a
guidance that will tell you that, look,
this is how you identify your blind spots,
but it really comes with practice and it comes
of you becomingmore understanding of yourself.
Mm-hmm. and more aware of your, I mean,
what you know and what you don't know.
Mm-hmm. . Yeah. And one of the things you,
another thing you brought up was, you know,
finding the right people to mm-hmm. to reach out to.
And what I also heard in your answer there was this concept of networking
and you're probably doing that I imagine
with conferences and the like,
and are there how are you building this kind of
network of colleagues that you can reach out to?
Probably the first thing is not to be shy or not to be afraid
to be stigmatized of
being less knowledgeable.
You have to accept the idea that you are less knowledgeable
than others andnot necessarily your
inferior to others,
but because you are aware that there are certain
peoples that they have,
there are certain people with certain expertise and
you need to connect with them to gain some experience.
Yeah. You know,
there's this concept now of brave learning environments and yeah
I hear a lot of bravery in your answer to go into something.
And I mean, that's really, when we're looking for advice for something,
we're looking for advice from somebody who's more knowledgeablehat
really is important for us to, to be brave in those situations.
For sure. Yes. Turning back to the advice you get,
I imagine sometimes when you go for advice,
and I imagine over time you've gotten better because you've been more targeted
in with your practice,
but I imagine sometimes the advice could be helpful and sometimes it maybe is
not as as helpful. And I'm kind of curious,
how do you set yourself up for success in getting a helpful answer?
The first thing is, do you need to identify the challenges?
You need to as I mentioned earlier,
just to identify what are your blind spots and to deal with that and navigate
through that finding the right person is
also the next thing
on how to get the right advice.
And sometimes you're in a situation,
you're reaching to a person who you used to get an advice,
but the topic you're reaching out for is a conflict of interest
for them. So,
it it is your role here to identify that
and probably not to seek that advice from that certain person
because of this certain conflict of interest just in
just to maintain this relationship.
The other thing is not to seek an advice for self-validation or for
opinion validation.
Because I do think this has happened
repeatedly in a row with the same person.
And the other person or the,
the person who's giving an advice repeatedly felt that he's not
heard or he's not listened to, that would create trust issues.
And that will, in the long run,
damage the relationship between both of you.
I knew you were the right person to ask for on this topic. Thank you.
Because this concept of, I thinkyou know, that's another interesting thing,
this idea of conflicts of interest.
A lot of the time I see the,
in many cases, the experts in a field, right? Especially in,
when you get into subspecialty work,
the the experts in the field will often be, you know,
involved inresearch work with various pharmaceutical
companies and, and they might have that conflict of interest.
So you've just added another layer of sophistication,
thoughtfulness, you know, intentionas well.
And I like your idea about not seeking out advice for
opinion validation that seems
morelike
you knowit's using the network with you know, it's,
it's not really necessary to, to use it.
So I really appreciate that. Now, you know,
we have a mixed audience listening to us,
and I'm kind of curious you know,
what advice do you have for early career healthcare professionals about
asking for advice? We've heard a little bit about your process,
we've heard a little bit about pitfalls,
and then gratefully to hear about kind of the next
levelthoughts that you have going into this.
What sort of advice do you have for people that are just getting started?
My advice is if you don't have a mentor or a person in your life was
giving you an adviceit's time to
find one. Definitely seek advice can be a tremendously
helpful resource.
You're never too late or too old to ask for advice.
Whatever you reach on your professional or social
life,
it'll definitely help on your professional
and social bredth and developing your
leadership skills.
So
I mean, having an advice would,
would let you overcome a lot of pitfalls
and spend, I mean,
to save more of, more energy and time and
probably focus on how to leave an impact on
things that you are doing.
It's brilliant.
I really appreciate how you connected this concept of how we seek
advice to things that a lot of us as young professionals in the field are
interested in, such as developing ourselves as
leadersmovingand making progress in
our local environments.
And I think this is advice that probably all three of our listeners
can reallycan really think about and take to heart whether we are
clinicians in practice, laboratory professionals, or students.
Sure, sure.
No one succeeds alone with success by the people around us who help
us in achieving our goals.
We've been rounding with Dr. Al Mozain.
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk about how do we seek advice
with intentionality. How do we move beyond, as your proverb said,
move beyond just that book learning to appreciate the different perspectives.
Thanks for joining us today.
Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here with you today.
And thank you to our listeners. Thank you for joining us today.
We invite you to share your thoughts and suggestions via email.
Please direct any suggestions to mcleducation@mayo.edu and
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