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Dr. Meenal Agarwal & Associates

Dr. Meenal Agarwal & Associates

Home » Ep 18 – Eyes On – Kindness in Healthcare – Transcript

Ep 18 – Eyes On – Kindness in Healthcare – Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Dr. Meenal Agarwal 0:00

This is a call to change. We want to make this shift and make this change in our healthcare environment. This is Dr. Meenal, and welcome to Uncover Your Eyes, where we uncover reality. As a mom and eye doctor, I want to know it all. Kindness. Kindness is a quality that is about being generous and being considerate. It’s a simple quality, but not so simple. If we are going to raise a future generation of healthcare providers. We need to teach them kindness, and we need to ensure that we were not bringing up an entitled generation, because the way things are going right now, that’s where we’re headed, an entitled generation of both patients and healthcare providers, both parties, need to learn kindness and need to be raised with kindness in order for us to break this cycle and break our future health care system that will not be built on kindness if things continue the way they’re going. Recently, I was on vacation, and we were in a pool, and there was a bunch of young girls, probably around age 10 to 12, and one of them actually laughed at a young boy who was overweight and swimming. My first instinct, and I didn’t know what to say, but my first instinct was to look at the girl because I was nearby and say, if that was your younger brother, would you have laughed? Obviously, she rolled her eyes at me being young and not caring. But I turned around and I saw that one of the girls parents, or moms, was there, and she gave me a look as well. And that really sat with me, thinking, not only is the child able to make fun of somebody, but she’s able to make fun of someone in front of them, a mom not really telling her that there’s any consequences of your words. That’s an example of the entitled generation that we are going to raise. There is this old concept of killing people with kindness. Personally, I don’t believe in it. I feel by killing people with kindness, we are setting a precedence that the other party does not need to be kind, and it’s okay to be the way they are, and we will shift our behaviors in order to kill them with kindness. I think in fact, they need to see what the consequences are of them not being kind and how others will not treat them with kindness. If they’re not being kind, they need to be held accountable for their personality, their actions, and so if the other party can actually learn to be kinder, that’s probably the better way to raise a fulfilled, kind society. But can we start by teaching ourselves kindness before we teach our children instead? You know, our children sometimes see us yelling at their teachers or getting upset with their teachers, before asking our children what happened and why their teachers are upset with them. We need to start looking at how we’re raising our children and what their actions are meaning towards others. Recently at school, my daughter had an incident where, you know, a child was making fun of her. So, you know, I was I was called into the class, and it was interesting. The way the teacher said to me that that child was still learning to be kind. I really loved that concept. It hit me hard that the teachers actually believe that every child is kind, but some are still learning it. Well, I guess we’re forever learning kindness, but some are not at the same level as others in terms of kindness. But she did not say to me that that child was unkind or mean or rude ever since then. You know, that’s a concept that I always say to my children now, if they come home saying, you know, so and so didn’t play with me or or was rude to me, I say, well, they’re just learning how to be kind still. So as parents, that’s our responsibility to teach our children kindness, so that we raise this generation of kind healthcare providers and patients. So it’s not that your child has to be a healthcare provider, but they will be a patient at some point, and in order for our healthcare system to work in the future and people to not. Be afraid to go to their healthcare providers, and for healthcare providers to not feel burnt out and feel like things are affecting their their patients are affecting their well being or their mental health, we need to build a kinder environment. It’s not so simple, though, like I said, and also as parents, we are so quick to blame others, rather than our own children or ourselves even. And I remember when I was a child, my parents, anytime I would come home saying somebody was being mean, my parents would say, What did you do? Times have changed. Times have really changed. Nowadays, we don’t say that to our children. We’re like, who did what, and, you know, why did that happen? And I need to go talk to the teacher. I can’t tell you the amount of times where I feel that, you know, I’ve been called into the classroom because parents have complained on my children or anything, and it’s always been inaccurate, because parents have not really talk to their children about what really happened. That same concept is happening in healthcare. I see providers that don’t want to work anymore. They’re feeling burnt out. Their mental health is being affected because they are seeing so many patients who are, you know, verbally abusive or just not kind towards their healthcare providers. There was a time when I started practicing many years ago, and you know, healthcare providers, people were thankful coming in to see us. Nowadays, it’s they’re not thankful. Everything should go by their schedule, their time, their words and their diagnosis. Times have changed, but in order for us to build a kinder environment, we really, really need to make this shift such that we are teaching our children. Of course, it starts with ourselves, but you know, we might be too late with us, so teaching our children kindness and how to be considerate and generous towards others. To teach our children kindness, one of my favorite ways to teach kindness is really obviously leading by example, you know, as parents, but also by showing the flip side, showing how it would feel to be unkind. It’s important that people children see the flip side of it and see how it feels to be unkind. So doing role playing, you know, asking our children how it you know, would How would it feel if someone said that to you, or how would it feel if someone you know called you overweight? How would it feel if someone made fun of your appearance? How would you feel if someone made fun of you know, the way you ate, the way you talked, the way you sat, the way you walked? That’s really the the best way to teach our children kindness is is to show that it can hurt when you’re unkind, and is that something you really want to demonstrate or show to others, and even when you’re not in the best mood or feeling like you’re at your best, in your best spirits, wanting to be super kind to others, there’s no reason to be unkind to others. It’s you want to step back, think about it, and come back when you’re ready to be kinder. Please share this podcast. This is a call to change. We want to make this shift and make this change in our healthcare environment, our healthcare system. We need more people speaking about kindness in our healthcare system, and speaking about wanting this change from both our patients and our healthcare providers. So tell me, is kindness really on its way out? Thank you, listeners and viewers, for tuning in. If you want to catch more episodes of Uncover Your Eyes, make sure to Follow or Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and on YouTube. To learn more about me, follow me on Instagram @Dr.MeenalAgarwal Until next time, keep those eyes uncovered!