I was recently talking to a friend and colleague who commented that a common heuristic or implicit cognitive bias is to divide the world into “us” and “them”. Using that rubric, growing up Korean American in the US meant being asked, Where are you from? and even, when I would answer that I was born in Minnesota, No, where are you really from? Being ethnically Korean (at a time when South Korea wasn’t high in the world’s consciousness) meant people in the US saw me as “Chinese” or “Japanese” but never “Korean” and not really “American”. Even so, most of the time, I felt like America represented an “us” for me, with Korea, somewhere I had never even visited, being a foreign land populated by “them”. Once we moved to South Korea, I was young enough to be intrepid and in no way expected to be told handily and readily that I did not fit in, that I looked Korean but it was basically deceitful because I was actually a “them” to individuals born in Korea who spoke Korean as a first language. I learned that the concept of “us” and “them” is wholly fictitious, a mental figment often based on very little information. And in the midst of all that, I came to love Korea and eventually both the Korean and American parts of me.
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This childhood experience of “us” and “them” continues to influence me to try to find the connection that creates a “we” rather than “me”. As a physician, given the increasing pressures in healthcare, it sometimes feels like my workday is divided up into multiple different isolating groups – physicians vs. patients, physicians vs. administrators, academic vs. private practice physicians, physician colleague vs. physician colleague (within the same department or across specialties, particularly if any common “turf” might be involved), physicians vs. nurses, physicians vs. staff. The list could go on. These pressures and conflicts are real, with media stories of doctors being physically attacked by patients, literature on the ills of the medical-industrial complex, lists of differences between academia and private practice (although there are certainly commonalities), arguments over what specialty is best to treat a given disease, and ultimately an overarching distrust that we have each other’s best outcome as a shared priority. All of these situations of seeing one another as an other creates stress, each party on opposing sides of a mental match, vying for the upper hand.
Is there any solution? My experience of the World Cup suggests yes.
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SoMeDocs recently published an article by Dr. Devina Wadwha titled, “The World Cup Reminded Me I Belonged to Two Countries”. The article ends with, “Before we are physicians, Canadians, French citizens, immigrants, neighbors, or rivals, we are human beings looking for a place to belong.” The article touches on the shared emotion, joy, and agony of World Cup soccer games, in which “us” and “them” is determined by the team you are rooting for. I also loved the frenzy of the World Cup, and even more, I enjoyed my ability to easily switch to a new “us”, for one game being 100% in for the US, another 100% in for South Korea, and another 100% in for either team, cheering for sportsmanship, strategy, and communal sharing of the beautiful game. The World Cup creates a unique situation where collectively the world seems to pause and hold space for a goal, a match, a team lifting the golden trophy.
Ultimately, the World Cup shows, as did my childhood experience of being Korean and American, that the lines between “us” and “them” can be blurred, instantly, throughout a two- to three-hour match, or over a lifetime. I believe that having a mindset of “we are on the same team” can increase the ability to have shared perspectives toward reaching common goals. Because in healthcare, for example, physicians, patients, administrators, nurses, and staff all want the same thing – the best outcome for the patient. This is an “us” worth fighting for.
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In healthcare, for example, physicians, patients, administrators, nurses, and staff all want the same thing – the best outcome for the patient. This is an “us” worth fighting for.
