Return to Table of Contents -- A Listing of Our Articles Click Here: View Contents		Second chances to be nice? My graduate students proved that we do get them!		My professional healthcare life started out teaching in a university. Among our graduate students were numerous psych majors. Several of them got together to do a little research project (that actually inspired a “Candid Camera” episode, I’m told.) They did a study of human nature using flat tires. What they did was stage a flat tire, using a perfectly good car as bait. They jacked it up, pulled out the spare, and had a student standing there by the side of the road. The student tried to wave people down for help, and only something like one in a hundred cars stopped. The experiment had a second component, though: About a mile down the road, they set up another car, also jacked up with a “flat” tire, and with someone trying to flag down passing motorists for help. In this case, though, something like one car in thirty stopped and offered assistance! What happened here? The grad students theorized that people zoomed past the first motorist in “trouble” and began feeling guilty. They said things to themselves like, “I should have stopped for that broken-down car. Darn. Oh well, too late to turn around now. But, I promise myself to stop next time I see somebody in need….” And, as “fate” would have it, there was a “next time” about a minute later! Well, as we go through our day on nursing units, in the cafeteria, inter-departmental meetings, or just see some bewildered patient family member lost in the hallway, we do have a chance to help. If we see a call light over some other nurse’s room, poke your head in anyway If there is a woman sitting alone in the cafeteria, struggling to hold back the tears, go sit with her. Her husband may never have had surgery before and you may be able to quiet her terror Or, just this once, don’t tell the hopelessly lost visitor to “go left at the next hallway, turn right at the linen closet, make a sharp left at the linen closet, take the third elevator past the freight elevator on the right and go to the third floor, then turn right when you get out and go about four or five doorways, then turn right at the nursing station….” Instead, take the person to their destination. If you’re a minute late for a meeting, everyone will understand – and you’ll have an opportunity to plant the idea of being nice in their heads, too. If we’ve already blown an opportunity to be nice today, don’t worry! In life, as in my students’ experiment, we do get second chances to reach out to others. Try it, it’s fun!

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