I’m a physician at an academic institution where I teach trainees and see patients. I just found out that my job expects me to make up any clinical time I missed because of educational activities – or else they will count my teaching time as vacation. (i.e. if I block a few patient appointment slots to give a medical student lecture – I am expected to make this up, even though that means hiring extra child care and doing it on my own time – while teaching is also an expectation of me).

Current model

C: My institution’s policy is that I must make up missed clinical time when I teach
T: That is completely unfair
F: Anger
A: vent to anyone who will listen, talk to supervisors about changing this, consider not teaching, consider not seeing the extra patients, consider quitting, spin off angry emails to the admin middle-man people who gave me this news.
R: I act unfair to myself (lots of time feeling bad because of my thoughts)

My question is – this circumstance is not something I want to feel good about. I genuinely think this policy contributes to academic doc burnout and needs to change. Is anger ever an effective place to take action from? I’ve heard Brooke talk about processing negative emotions that we don’t want to act from, but I wonder if there is ever utility of being angry (it sure feels motivating)…. or if I should focus on processing it now and then create a more positive emotion to act as an agent of change from (I can see a future IM something like T: this is a policy that I want to change, F: determined/motivated A: seek routes of change, study change mgmt, create a community of peers who feel the same, etc. R: change the policy) – but I can also see an IM that might be faster of T: this is so unfair F: anger A: something mean out of anger like furious letter to the public, lawsuit, talk to HR, etc. R: change the policy faster?) Curious on thoughts about this.