Being A Team Player

My closest colleague at work is a Chinese guy. He has a BSVM from a Chinese university, which is educationally equivalent to a DVM. He has not completed the (difficult and expensive) program that would certify him to practice as a DVM in the U.S. But he has the same job title as me, and in the 18-month gap when they were looking to fill my position that also included the 6 or so months that they had to wait for me to finish vet school, he conducted nearly all of the non-poultry necropsies that came through the lab. And for the last three months of that period, he had to do the poultry necropsies too. (For the record, he doesn't like working with birds, which is fine by me as I really like doing avian necropsies.)

Since I started working in July, I have completed over 150 necropsies in multiple species. I split each week's cases with my colleague. Using those numbers, by my back-of-the-envelope-calculation, he likely handled over 500 necropsies during the period that he was on his own. This gave him an incredible breadth and depth of experience, and a deep understanding of pathology of disease.

I find working with him to be quite enjoyable. He's got a dry sense of humor and a keen eye for detail. He and I have different styles on the necropsy floor (one time he put the entire head of a cat in formalin for reasons I still haven't been able to discern), but our styles are compatible so we work very well together. We discuss our active cases every day. We trade cases. We ask each other to look over necropsy reports before they get sent out. We argue about differentials (the director is particularly amused by this as we can get rather excited and loud). We cite papers at each other. We call the other one down to necropsy if we have a particularly interesting finding. I was able to ramp up my own performance very quickly by relying on him for advice, which he shared freely. He is professional, courteous, smart, thinks outside the box, and is happy to indulge in black humor when we need to blow off steam. What's not to like about having a colleague like that?

All of this is an introduction to what I really wanted to rant about. I have learned that my predecessors did not regard my colleague in the same way that I do. When one of the pathologists took him on the necropsy floor to teach him the basics, the other two pathologists ran to the director clutching their pearls, aghast and appalled, complaining that he was transgressing a sacred space. It's of a piece with those two refusing to share any details of their cases with anyone else. I also suspect microaggressive racism lurking around the edges of their behavior, but that is only my opinion. In short, my colleague was dismissed, overlooked, and treated quite unprofessionally.

In contrast, I have come to rely on my colleague. And the feeling is mutual! He tells me often how much he enjoys working with me, that he and I make a great team, that he has my back as I take over as supervisor of our section of the lab. He has no interest in being a visible leader himself, but without a doubt he leads by his actions.

The director has told me several times about a police K9 case from a few years ago that was handled quite poorly by one of the aforementioned pearl-clutchers. I don't have all the details but the necropsy wasn't done promptly, the necropsied body was kept for months instead of being released, and the report was treated like it contained state secrets. The mishandling and delays resulted in bad publicity for the lab.

Yesterday, on Christmas Eve, around noon, I got a call from the police chief of a small Arkansas town about 75 miles from Little Rock. A police K9 had been found dead and they wanted to bring him in for a necropsy. I don't typically have to work nights or weekends or holidays, but there are a few rare exceptions, and police K9s are one. The chief and I worked out details of timing. And the very next person that I called was my colleague. "I know you are on vacation, and it's a holiday on top of that, but I need your help," I told him. He said, "Absolutely, we are a team. When do I need to be there?" My second call was to the director to assure him that we had this case well in hand.

I ran the necropsy and my colleague acted as my tech, fetching things, taking pictures, managing my necropsy table. The gross findings were definitive, and we were able to determine a cause of death, document it properly, and get the two police officers back on their way home in about an hour. The director will be over the moon. As I drove home, I reflected on how much I have learned from my colleague in the past few months. Our job is unusual and can be physically and emotionally difficult at times. We are going to be more successful if we work together.

I am ashamed that my colleague was treated so poorly in the past, and even though I know that it wasn't my fault or my doing, and that I can't make up for years of poor treatment, I am reaping the benefits of choosing to treat him with the respect and professionalism that he is due.