This happened to me two days ago, in a workshop on inter-professionalism and conflict resolution, with the word “objective”. Which, in hindsight, was kind of obvious, and I should have known to avoid it. The man leading the discussion was a hospital chaplain–a very charismatic man and a great storyteller, but with a predictably different intellectual background than mine. It wouldn’t have been that hard to avoid the word. I was describing what ties different health care professionals together–the fact that, y’know, together they’re taking care of the same patient, who exists as a real entity and whose needs aren’t affected by what the different professionals think they are. I just forgot, for a moment, that people tend to have baggage attached to the word “objective”, since to me it seems like such a non-controversial term. In general, not impressed with myself, since I did know better.
This happened to me two days ago, in a workshop on inter-professionalism and conflict resolution, with the word “objective”. Which, in hindsight, was kind of obvious, and I should have known to avoid it. The man leading the discussion was a hospital chaplain–a very charismatic man and a great storyteller, but with a predictably different intellectual background than mine. It wouldn’t have been that hard to avoid the word. I was describing what ties different health care professionals together–the fact that, y’know, together they’re taking care of the same patient, who exists as a real entity and whose needs aren’t affected by what the different professionals think they are. I just forgot, for a moment, that people tend to have baggage attached to the word “objective”, since to me it seems like such a non-controversial term. In general, not impressed with myself, since I did know better.