Learning to Tell the Bleeding Time

Despite being released in 1950s, the film Doctor in the House still comes in handy when helping students think about communicating with different generations. There’s a scene when the senior consultant, ‘Sir Lancelot Spratt’ (James Robertson Justice) is conducting his daily tour of the wards. Like a whirlwind, he goes from bed to bed pursued all the while by a bunch of nervous medical students – hapless targets for his increasingly irate question-and-answer routine. At one point, as he prods a patient’s abdomen while demanding an on-the-spot diagnosis from a student, Sir Lancelot suddenly glares up at the patient and barks “Don’t worry, my man. This is absolutely nothing to do with you!”

Best of all is the scene where Sir Lancelot is trying to explain the concept of the ‘bleeding time’ – the time it takes during an operation for a patient to bleed. Jabbing an angry finger at a petrified student, Sir Lancelot yells,

“YOU! WHAT’S THE BLEEDING TIME?”

“Ten past ten, sir.”

Learning to communicate with different generations can be a challenge, even for the most confident junior doctor, which most aren't. It’s even more difficult when the age difference between patient and doctor runs into decades. How can you be taken seriously when your patient is older than your parents? Not even a white coat and a shiny new stethoscope can make up for such a chasm-like gulf in ages.

That’s why I find using the film clip useful: even though it’s meant to be funny, it demonstrates how communication styles can differ between generations. Even in the Fifties, Sir Lancelot might have been far-fetched but clearly there was enough about him to make him recognisable to audiences. Perhaps there still is.

Particularly noticeable today is how he's addressed by his students as ‘Sir’. Students today expect to call everyone by their first names: lecturers, professors, vice-chancellors, chief executives. Should the Archbishop of Canterbury ever pop into the student union bar for a swift one I'm sure even His Grace would soon find himself on first name terms with the bar staff.   

But what’s good for the bar is definitely not good for the Bar, if you take my point. Even now, the professions can be sticklers for formality, particularly in the work environment. While on the ward, Baby Boomer and Generation X consultants can still insist on being addressed by formal titles - as indeed do some older patients. After sixty years, the ghost of Sir Lancelot still prowls the corridors of hospitals.

All these codes and conventions can be a minefield for new graduates. That’s why learning to communicate effectively with all generations is a technique all students need to acquire, regardless of their career path. It doesn’t help them that there are so many generations to learn to navigate. In fact, in many organisations you can now find at least five different generations, each with its own aspirations, preferences and priorities. People from different generations don’t just flock together, they communicate using different media: Boomers and Generation X are still wedded to email; Generation Y and Millennials have ditched email and colonised social media.  

The problem for younger generations is that much of this inter-generational acclimatisation has to be carried out in real-time, with real-life consequences. The chances of getting it wrong have never been greater.

Time for Radical Candour

Ex-Google leader Kim Scott recently published a book called ‘Radical Candour’ in which she stressed the importance of taking the trouble, personally and directly, to have difficult and candid conversations with younger members of her team. For her, taking time to care about the development of younger colleagues, while being ready to challenge them directly, are the characteristics of a leader. The alternative is what she calls ‘ruinous empathy.’ And as the name implies, that’s no good to anyone.

A hospital consultant once told me about the first time he’d had to tell a family that their elderly relative had died. Trying his best to cushion the blow, he informed them that the aged one had “gone to a better place.” To his surprise, the family looked relieved. Only later did it dawn on him that they’d assumed he’d meant the relative had been transferred to a private hospital.

Somehow I can’t imagine Sir Lancelot making the same mistake. 

This article first appeared in the 'Student Employer' magazine from the Institute of Student Employers (Issue 7, Spring 2019).

Copyright Paul Redmond 2019