Follow your dreams?
We are all dreamers
Dreams are part of everyone’s conversation, but do we really understand what they mean? We are encouraged to follow our dreams; when people achieve public success they often say ‘this is what I always dreamed of’ as though their dreams had been the predictors of their future. But do we really follow our dreams?
I've had a recurring dream from childhood where I'm with a group of people trying to catch a train or a plane and my colleagues are dawdling and being distracted. I'm getting more and more anxious and concerned that we will not reach our destination in time. Interestingly that dream never finishes so I do not know whether we ever catch the train or the plane.
People appearing on talent shows or accepting Olympic medals seem to have a different dream - from the age of five, they apparently dreamed of being on stage singing in front of thousands of people, or alternatively on the podium with the Olympic gold medal, with the flag and the National Anthem. I’ve never had those specific types of dream; yesterday, apparently, I woke my wife up at 2am to tell her I needed to complete the concreting (I’ve never done any concreting) and last night I dreamed I was intercepting a group of Vietnamese child traffickers one of whom was heavily armed but seemed very frightened of me for some reason and let me take his gun off him.
So what does following a dream really mean, given that our dreams are mostly nonsense or in last night’s case probably related to the book on people trafficking that I was reading just before I went to sleep. Our dreams are actually our aspirations, our conscious and unconscious motivators towards success - whether that be personally, professionally or in a sporting arena. But I'm not sure that our actual dreams are formed the way we say they are - I knew from early teens that I wanted to be a doctor but had never envisaged the career outcome that transpired, indeed in many respects I couldn't possibly have done. There are so many twists and turns along the personal and professional paths we follow that it is impossible to envisage where you will be at any point. We all have dreams, but they cannot be as specific as people make out.
What are our actual dreams?
Generally our dreams are fairly mundane. Most of us want good relationships and to be good at what we do. Most of us also want some recognition for our successes. Most of us want to go to work knowing that we are able to do a good job. If that is in healthcare it is about being able to interact with people at their point of need and making things better for them - either curing whatever they came with or at least helping them in their the distress.
Can we dream in the NHS?
I fear that the NHS in its current state is stifling the dreams of its staff. They no longer come to work expecting to be successful but arrive knowing that there will be too much for them to do, that they won't be able to do it as well as they could, that they will be distracted and deflected by staff absences or difficulties in providing cover in emergency situations. They know that the planned work for today may not get done because either there will not be beds to admit the patients or when they are admitted, emergency work will take precedence. Overall, for many staff the NHS has stopped becoming the place of dreams and the grim reality of failure is replacing their aspirations.
I dream of a future when the cuts in funding over the last decade or so have all been reversed. I dream of a time when there are proper conversations about the public so that we can agree to pay for what we want from the NHS, rather than constantly being told we cannot afford it. But if we are going to stick with the NHS, and I believe with every bone in my body that we should, then we need to pay for it.
And that means two things - first of all having a clear understanding of the benefits we already receive from the much increased spending on healthcare over the years. In a previous post here I outlined the changes in treatment of coronary heart disease over my lifetime. It is a condition that, at a personal level, took my father from me when he was 68 but one which I've successfully navigated over the eight years since I had major heart surgery, something that wasn't available to him 40 years ago. We now use expensive anti-cancer drugs to make leukaemia a curable condition and to provide high rates of survival for breast cancer and bowel cancer. We have screening programmes that detect these conditions early so that they can be treated. None of these were available on the NHS when it was formed in 1948, but if we want benefits we have to be aware that they cost money and be prepared to pay for it by relatively modest increases in taxation rather than being told we need to reduce taxation to a point where we cannot afford anything.
Second, we need to value the NHS staff more. For the NHS to succeed, we need to embrace their dreams. We need to support their aspirations to do the best they can, and to have time to get alongside the patients that they see every day. When the system grinds down upon them, or when they raise concerns, we don’t react with criticism or with disciplinary measures and suspensions. We re-emphasise their dreams and aspirations and enable them to be the best they can be at what they do. The cost of not embracing their dreams is that staff become disillusioned, they withdraw and don't function properly, and in some cases either leave the NHS for work overseas or give up healthcare altogether.
So what is the future?
While strongly advocating for proper funding of healthcare and the need to manage it better, I'm also passionate about helping staff who find that their dreams and aspirations are being sacrificed on the altar of austerity. If you're one of them then I would love to talk to you. If you are experiencing the stress of an impossible workload, critical patients, poor staffing and lack of appreciation or if you feel that work is no longer fulfilling your personal dreams and aspirations, why not speak to an Executive Coach to help you understand why you feel how you do?
The first step could be to book a free no obligation 30 minute on-line conversation with me here. If I am not the right Coach for you, I will recommend somebody else who will be.
Please check my website and sign up to my mailing list if you want to receive more posts like this directly to your inbox.