Curious Now #6: Surviving Psychological Contract Breaches

A nurse of Ned/Surg has been there for two years. She’s interested in moving into cardiac care—she’s always been interested in it—and as she sits in the break room, the clinical nurse specialist comes in to talk to her, and says, “Hey, we’re going to be able to get you some time in the CCU! We should be able to do this in the next couple of weeks. I know you’ve really been wanting to get some experience there, and we have a new onboarding program.” But days turn into weeks, and weeks turn into months, and she never seems to be scheduled for the CCU. So finally one day she asks outright, “What happened with that?” And the clinical nurse specialist kind of blinks in surprise and says, “You know, we’re just way too short staffed right now, I’m sure we’ll get to it eventually.” This example of personal learning deferred is one of the most common breaches to what we call the psychological contract—when I either implicitly or explicitly make an offer to you, and then don’t follow through on it the way you were expecting. This week we’re going to focus on getting you ready to survive these very common situations, whether you’ve experienced the breach, or caused it. This week is a great place to hop into Curious Now, with a new chapter on how we interact with other people when we need to work together, but the standards we hold haven’t been met. Coaching from Jenny Rudolph at www.harvardmedsim.org Curious Now on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72gzzWGegiXd9i2G6UJ0kP Curious Now on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-center-for-medical-simulation/id1279266822