Life's Little Lesson

This was a nice summer morning. Sapna woke up early today. She had her global leader visiting from Germany. This was a momentous day for her. Her manager Emilia was travelling all the way from Germany to have key meetings with Sapna and Sapna’s team.

As soon as Sapna walked out of the bathroom, her phone rang. Her maid was on the other side informing her that she would be unable to come to work today. She gave a reason that her sister is not keeping well, and she needed to go outstation to see her. Sapna gets frustrated by the anxious thought that her maid is not coming on this important day when she desperately needed to leave early for the office, Sapna shouted “You always do this Rani, I am fed up with your sudden leaves” and hung up the phone.

After few odd minutes her maid called again and informed that she has lost her ailing sister. Sapna was shocked to hear that. Sapna’s husband watching all these said to her “you should not have reacted the way you did. She had a genuine problem.” Sapna although feeling indeed guilty and ashamed did not want to accept the same to her husband and mumbled "Her sister did not die because of my reaction"

Sapna was in the office; she was delighted to see everything was in place for Emilia’s visit. She gratefully thanked her efficient team. Emilia reached in the office at afternoon. 1 PM she was with her in a conference room to discuss business area performance and key priorities for the next half of the year. While they had barely initiated the discussion, Sapna received a call, it was her son’s school. She intentionally ignored. They called again. Sensing something important, she excused herself out of conference room to take the call. Other side was the school’s principal informing that her son suffered an unfortunate accident during the sport and needed to rush to the hospital. Sapna entered the conference room terrified with the news still trying to determine what she should do; her husband went out of station today for a business trip. Emilia asked if everything was ok. She narrated what happened to her son. Emilia urged her to attend the hospital immediately and not think about her visit and things needed to be done at the office as this can planned to be done over a phone calls as well later.

Three of Sapna’s colleagues accompanied her to the hospital and left only after her son was stable.

In the night, she got text from Emilia inquiring about her son’s health. Emilia was at the airport to catch her flight back to Germany. She got calls and messages from several of her team members wishing well for her son.

She thought about her organization and felt grateful to work in such a caring, employee friendly environment. She thought about her team members and how they willingly helped her today. She thought about Emilia and felt fortunate that she was her boss, so very much understanding and flexible. Subsequently, she thought about what happened to her maid Rani in the morning. Uncontrollable tears rolled down her cheeks. She has undoubtedly learnt a Life’s Little Lesson today.

Life’s Little Lesson – Complaint vs Feedback

My mother was admitted to a hospital for her treatment for lung infection that she caught, unfortunately. She was there for a week almost. My father used to stay at the night with her, and I used to come in the morning and stay in the day.

She was quite critical, when was admitted and was recovering well now, and we were elated about that. One day before the discharge, I remember when I reached the hospital in the morning even before I got could perch on the chair in the ward meant for attendant… something happened… something which scared the hell out of us. The Nurse observing my mother had given a medicine to her orally which supposed be inhaled. I was qualified to find out as I was administrating this to her every day at home …and then I came to know from my father that she did the same in the previous night as well. 

We were genuinely dismayed, more so because she has just started recovering from a critical illness and this mistake from the nurse could develop another problem.

The nurse acknowledged her mistake of not knowing the capsule needed to be broken and inhaled operating a device. She was nervous, dying with guilt and afraid of the consequences.

I rushed the doctor to check what could be probable effect of this. Thanks goodness, she said it would not have any adverse effect on her health other than a very distance possibility of mild nausea.

I was still frustrated how could a nurse who deals with life could make a mistake like this. I decided to complain to make sure an action is taken against her.

But when I got the chance, I did not do that.

My mother was doing well anyway with absolutely no issues.

So, I rather provided them a detailed feedback as I later realized that this was not the problem with the nurse only. The complete process was broken. The hospital was responsible for what happened not just the nurse. Doctors and Nurses’ supervisors needed to provide clear instructions to the nurses in case method of treatment is unobvious and nurses to double check in case of any doubt. Someone who is overseeing the administration of the hospital was bound to make sure process in place and followed. A random periodic audit to ensure there is no lapses.

I mentioned the same to medical superintendent and appealed to them in the feedback to assume a collective responsibility of the incident, learn a lesson and fix the whole process. This will make sure that this does not happen in the future.

If I had blamed the nurse only at that time that would have been easy for them. She would have been a scapegoat. They would have probably taken action against her, however nothing would have changed. Another day, another nurse and the same or some other mistake.

When we are in position of providing a feedback (as a client, as a partner or even as an employer) how do we react, what is the intent?

Getting our problems rectified?

Improvement in the services or products?

Overall more pleasurable experiences going forward?

Or getting a particular person punished to satisfy our ego?

There is a difference between complaint and feedback.

A complaint is always driven by negative emotions, however the intent of a feedback is constructive which leads to future improvements.