Mmh, maybe something to ponder for the beginning of a new year? I’ve just recently stumbled across this catchy phrase. I do not know who came up with it, but it must have been someone pretty clever. So, I’ve decided to unabashedly make this my motto, henceforth.
This really resonates with me. As a medical professional this is our highest tenet: “Do no harm!”, and so it should be. We’ve sworn an oath after all, and this underpins everything we do as health care professionals. We want to provide a benefit, not harm.
And yet… This seems a bit narrow and incomplete. Let’s look at this a bit more broadly. There is a real risk that doing no harm could be reduced to doing no physical harm, doing no harm to others. What about harm to self? Or it could be misconstrued as a justification to take shit, where no shit needs to be taken, to play nice when nice-play isn’t helpful, to not do anything before risk harming someone (which of course in and of itself can be the most harmful thing of all).
So, I’d like to advocate for the second bit. I strongly believe in doing no harm to others or to self. So, doing no harm as a standalone is incomplete. There needs to be an addendum. We need to add the ‘take no shit’ bit. This is about boundaries and respect. What this really means is that we subscribe to the first bit by being helpful, supportive, respectful, kind, competent, careful AND we maintain our boundaries. We let people know what is and is not acceptable to us, we make this clear, we advocate for our own boundaries and we enforce them if necessary. Knowing, communicating and maintaining your boundaries in essence is respecting, standing up for, and not harming ourselves. Once this baseline has been established, then we can start thinking about how a benefit can be added within the (therapeutic) relationship. A benefit where both parties come out of the encounter better than they were before. But that’s a topic for another day.
You’ve probably worked out by now that this applies to interacting with anyone, really, and goes beyond the medical context. It applies to patients, to colleagues, friends, family, you name it.
To sum to up, if I were to rephrase my motto in a broader sense, it means giving and asserting respect, interacting with care and honouring the integrity of self and others. It’s about minding boundaries.