While researching primary care physicians who work in urban community health centers in the Dayton and Cincinnati area, I heard the Sound of the Genuine in most of the physicians that I interviewed. When all is stripped away, these individuals thrive in a working environment that they choose to be in. They hear the genuine within themselves to offer their humanity, a contribution to the thread of common good regardless of pay or status. I believe that hearing the Sound of the Genuine helps them to navigate tough mental or psychological friction. A couple of local physicians, referring to patients within their respective practices whose racial identities they did not share, said the phrase “these are my people”, speaking to the deep connection they held with their patients, regardless of race.
Our culture has a way of manipulating and guiding our thoughts away from the sound of our genuineness as social status, the chase of financial gains, and the pursuit of climbing the corporate ladder cloud what and who we really are. What if we, as healthcare professionals, can change the paradigm to enable us to use the self as a therapeutic tool, utilizing not only our knowledge of treating a patient’s illness, but listening to the genuineness of our patient’s frailty, adjusting to the relationship of their, and ultimately, our own meaning-making of humanity?
I believe that I heard the Sound of the Genuine over the course of this research. In my view, I do not perceive success merely by obtaining my PhD, or being called “Dr. Eric Charlton.” These are mere titles that do not define the core of what I stand for or who I represent. I also think that we all hear it within ourselves, although we may hear it at different times in our lives. Others may hear it, but their minds are so cluttered with so much static that they bypass it.
Dr. Eric Charlton is the Principal Consultant for Charlton • Charlton & Associates.
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