Hi
I work in a mental health setting, as part of a multi disciplinary team (MDT: therapists, psychiatrists, nurses, assistant psychologists etc). Recently, in a joint appointment (me/senior-psychotherapist/female, and my colleague/psychiatrist/male) we saw a 13yo patient (girl) urgently who had been just discharged from hospital having been very unstable (DV trauma, EUPD, autism, to name a few of her diagnoses), with her dad. I was told by the psychiatrist where to sit, not to say anything. And so, as I sat and listened to the psychiatrist doing all talking, towards the end of the appointment, he turned to patient and said ‘if your therapist doesn’t listen to you, tell me and I’ll give her a slap!’, to which we all nervously half-laughed, and I added ‘he means he’ll tell me off’, which intended as a recovery on my part, also felt demeaning. I don’t think this is professional conduct, there’s being informal and funny, but not these words - and not in this context.
This is bothering me. I don’t like to rock the boat, but I’m not the only one who feels there is a power differential, this particular psychiatrist seems to say jabby things to a lot of the team and he is constantly putting ‘less senior’ colleagues through the mill during meetings, some of us feel undermined, incompetent and subdued when he’s done talking, to the extent that in mdt meetings the rest of the team (bar the psychiatrist, team manager, clinical lead) feel intimidated and usually stay silent while this psychiatrist lectures, dismissing other’s views. He often makes references to analogies such as ‘the general needs loyalty from his soldiers’. As I see it, I work in a team not in a regiment! The senior team seem to pander to him, I guess he has a large caseload of people who are medicated.
I’m sitting with this annoyance, aibu? Happy for your thoughts…