After a particularly long doctor’s appointment with our seven-year-old, the topic of his prescription (he has epilepsy and takes a medicine to control his seizures) came up.
The nurse practitioner came back in to say she had sent it to the pharmacy electronically.
My husband said, “We need it written in 500mL increments.”
She looked at him like who do you think you are, trying to tell me how to write a prescription.
I looked at my husband and tried to telepathically tell him, “Explain to her why you are making that request.” I may or may not have also thought “You idiot” too, but that’s beside the point.
You see, I knew why he was making this request. His request had good intentions, not meant to serve his ego, but to serve others. We get his medicine from the community pharmacy where my husband works. He’s in administration at the hospital. The medicine comes to the pharmacy in 250mL bottles. The way our son’s prescription was written last time required bottles to be split which is a real pain for the pharmacy staff. The dosage is so close to 500mL for a three-month supply (450mL I think) that, in his mind, it was easy and made logical sense to write the prescription at 500mL. It would save everyone time.
The nurse knew none of this.
But once he started to explain that really all he was trying to do was make life easier for the people he works with, her face relaxed and she simply said, “Sure, we can do that.”
If we had explained our why before we made the request, things would have been easier. It was fortunate that we could explain our way out of what looked like an ego trip.
On the flip side of this, the nurse only knew what she knew as well, and that was our request. Her defensive response was totally natural. It is what most of us do. Our brain goes into defense mode when we don’t have all the inputs we need to understand a situation.
However, what often derails us is making assumptions about people’s motives (i.e. my husband was on a power or control trip) when we don’t have the full context for communication or behaviors towards us. We don’t naturally respond by seeing people in a positive light as our first reaction (i.e. my husband is trying to help someone else out) when we don’t have all the information needed to understand a situation.
So the next time you make a request of someone, explain to them why you are making that request. If you are the recipient of a request without all the details, don’t assume the worst of the person or the situation. Ask clarifying questions to gain mutual understanding.
How do you explain the why and not assume the why?
