Dysfunctional work and learning environments:

Abstract

The creation and protection of ideal work and learning environments is garnering attention, and the absence of well-crafted mandates leaves room for hostile workplaces that have led to loss of life. Hierarchical social systems such as the police force, armed forces, and in medical training and workplaces are prone to a culture that aids and abets unhealthy, counterproductive and expensive behaviours often under the guise of routine 'chain-ofcommand' action. Individuals who occupy the lowest rungs have demanded and rightly deserve protection of their human dignity from each level of the hierarchy. The challenge in healthcare requires consequential, actionable codified procedures with external oversight, across silos of care, making leaders duty bound at every level, to reward (and penalize) validated feedback from anyone in their system.Dysfunctional Work and Learning Environments -Global Case Studies, was the lecture by Mr. Olufunso Adedeji, Consultant Colorectal Surgeon, University Hospital of North Durham, UK. He declared that Mr. George Floyd, the African American killed by the knee of a law enforcement officer in May 2020 in Minneapolis, United States, died because of abuse of power by an officer, in his workplace, who owed him a duty of care. The events that occurred laid bare the consequence of dysfunctional environments coupled with ineffective laws.He explained that in the United States, where more than 30,000 people were killed by the Police between 1990 and 2018, rising to greater that 1,000 deaths per year between 2015 and 2021, during which more than 200 victims had toy guns and more than 400 had no weapons, and yet, from 2005 to 2019, only four police officers have been convicted of murder. Mr. Floyd's killer was empowered by his certainty that he would legally get away with murder, as he nonchalantly and publicly knelt on Mr. Floyd's neck for 9 min and 29 sec. He wondered when ineffective laws power to transform the future. Dr. Boluwatife Ikwunne, 2019 MBBS graduate, with distinction in Psychiatry and Rhodes Scholar, was recognized, and the provost made the case for engineering the environment where medical students can and must thrive. The availability of a counselling service for medical students was announced, as but one step aimed at the theme of improved environments in medicine, and ultimately the task of nation building.