EP34 - Experience With Conflict in Medicine from the International Perspective with Dr. Raed Albar

In every operating room, in every ward, in every clinic, and every team meeting, a silent battle brews. Conflict, negotiation, identity. Welcome to the Scalpel and Sword podcast, where I, Dr. Lee Sharma, physician and conflict analyst, Explore the hidden negotiations behind modern medicine. Let's trade burnout for boundaries and learn the art of healing with precision and power. You've spent years making careful decisions with lasting impact. When it comes to investing, the same principle applies. Lightstone Direct gives you access to institutional-quality real estate investments. With decades of proven experience behind them. Invest directly, no middlemen, and a $12 billion plus AUM real estate firm in your corner. Visit lightstonedirect.com. All investments involve risk. Please visit lightstonedirect.com for a full list of disclosures. Hello, my peaceful warriors. Welcome to the Scalpel and Sword podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Lee Sharma, physician and conflict analyst. And I am so excited to have on the podcast today, Dr. Raed Albar. He is a physician in Saudi Arabia and he just finished his PhD in healthcare education. And we have to give a big shout out to Kimberly Best, who's a dear friend of the podcast and has been a guest on the podcast in the past. For making this introduction. Dr. Albar, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Lee Sharma. I'm happy to be here.

When Kimberly introduced us, she said that you had read one of her LinkedIn posts and that prompted you to reach out to her and make that connection. What was in that post and what intrigued you so much about it that you wanted to reach out to Kim?

No, throughout my readings in my PhD work, I realized that conflict is not just about individuals, it's about teams and entire systems. And I've seen this while I was conducting my scoping review in this, 480 articles. Most healthcare professionals are attributing conflict to system. The problem with the healthcare system, the understaffing and the high workload and the stress. Management, and also some of them attributed some of their personal stress that they bring from their home life into the workplace. They consider this part of the system that conflict is arising because of this, not just because of lacking of skills, although that's still a problem, but that's not the only problem. It's a combined problem. Individuals, probably that's level 1, level 2, the team, and level 3, I would say. The entire healthcare system.

I think you're so right about that. I think we do have this tendency, and I do think there is a systemic nature to conflict, but it's not the whole story. And I think one of the things that has happened, especially in terms of burnout in the United States, that I think is evolving, thankfully, is that burnout for so long was attributed as a personal characteristic. If you're burned out, that's on you. So the solutions to burnout were primarily individual, in terms of looking at individual solutions rather than looking at a systemic solution. But I think you can move that focus too far, right, into a systemic realm. You can actually, instead of considering it as a symbiotic relationship, looking at it as too much systemic. So the idea of looking at it as more interconnected is really important.

I agree. And we as humans developing the skills of conflict intelligence or conflict management skills or any human skills, that's still an important aspect of developing and working in healthcare, probably in any workplace. But then when we develop the skills, still when there is an external pressure, that high pressure, it becomes very difficult to apply these skills because of the stress. It's like I have the skills. I know how to deal with conflict, but now I am too exhausted to actually work through the conflict because of the system. So I think it's like both of them, they work together, like from leadership point of view and also from individual point of view, they need to work together. It's not like something that only the leaders should work on themselves to improve the system without developing the skills. That doesn't work.

Right.

And also working on our individual skills. Without the leadership support, also that will be still lots of deficiencies, I would say.

Wow. That's a brilliant observation. And it's so real that, you know, we can practice and we can study and we can learn how to manage conflict. We can learn about systems theory, but if you're running on zero sleep, you've just admitted your 20th patient, you literally do not have the mental, spiritual, or physical capacity to apply anything that you might've learned in that situation. And that's such a great insight. That's such a great insight. And I think that's something that we don't talk about as much, that we train people and we want people to have this skillset and this education. And yet we don't think about the fact that when we're asking them to employ something really new, because that takes, you know, some mental really focus to do that. If we're mentally just, we're burned and Tired. We can't do that. What is your specialty?

I am a clinician by training, so I finished my MD or my MBBS degree. Then I worked one year as a hematopathologist, and I didn't find myself there. So I decided to move into academia. I then finished my master's in medical education, and now recently I just finished my PhD also in the same area.

Congratulations. That's so amazing. My mom's a pathologist, so I get that. She practiced for 30 years and she definitely found herself in that job. She was a brilliant pathologist, but I always say she actually started out her first year in, in fellowship training. She was an OB-GYN like I am, and she discovered really quickly she didn't like obstetrics. She was very passionate about women's health, but she didn't like OB. So I think there's a lot to say about the fact that you started on a path and you realized really quickly that wasn't authentic for you. But you have found something that is authentic. I love that.

And it wasn't an easy decision, you know, because you spend so many years in medical schools and then you decided to leave the clinical practice. Everyone is attacking you that, why are you doing this? But then I had to choose. It wasn't an easy decision, but then after I left, I was a bit lost. What did I want to do? Then after my first Teaching session, I was teaching communication skills. Just, this is it.

Oh, I love that. So instantaneously you knew you found your home when you were teaching. You knew that was what you were meant to do.

Exactly. Especially because I like the human skills. Like I've been reading about human skills since forever, like the emotional intelligence, body language, nonverbal communication, and personality. I then saw that when I was teaching just basic communication skills, Like nothing. Wow. It's just basic communication skills. I found it. That's it.

And you found a way, which I think is brilliant, to take your medical education and your love of teaching, and you brought these together into your perfect job.

Yes. I would say that not so many people find what they love and then go and practice it and it becomes a daily job for them. That's not everyone's job, right? Everyone's dream. But I found it like, it was a different feeling. I don't know how to describe that, but it was something that I never experienced before. That's why I started then. I said, since I finished medical school, difficult to go into any other arena. I tried to mold my expertise in medicine into the medical education and education psychology altogether.

Yes, but people going through the medical education process, You know, medical students, residents, fellows, attendings, they need you. They need somebody who's going to give them those skills because, and I don't know what it's like in Saudi Arabia, but in the United States, we don't naturally get that kind of education in medical school. And I think we're getting better about it. I think we're getting better about trying to help people build those emotional intelligence skills. I think we are recognizing that we need those things, not just as clinicians, but as human beings. I think that's getting better, but like I graduated from medical school in 1993, and it's definitely not something that was ever taught to me. So I'm like you; I kind of went back and did this training when I was already in practice. I was already an attending when I went back and did this because I kind of like you got into private practice and realized I was really unhappy. It's like I don't like what I'm doing, and then I realized it wasn't so much that I didn't like practicing medicine; I didn't have a lot of the skills. skills to deal with conflict, to deal with my colleagues, to deal with the things that I came up with in my daily life. And it was literally just sapping my joy. And when I realized that I could learn these skills, I was able to go back and go, oh, okay, so this is what's happening in my life and this is what I can use to actually make my clinical practice more joyous. And so I think it's really been that for me. And that's why I love being able to share this kind of information. Not just with clinicians, with everybody, because these are skills that we all need. One of the things that you mentioned earlier that I want to talk about, because I thought it was really cool and it was in an email because you, Kimberly, and I had an email chain going and you sent us an article from Professor Peter Coleman. And this is an article that's talking about something called conflict intelligence. What is conflict intelligence?

That's an interesting question because I never knew this term existed before. I knew emotional intelligence, but conflict intelligence was something new. I learned about it like 2 years ago. According to him, it's a set of skills for us to engage in conflict constructively and effectively. I mean, the whole idea came from that conflict is inevitable. We're always going to have conflict.

Right.

No matter what. So at least let's learn how to engage in it without the distress of it. In another word, I would say conflict is not just negative. If I look at it as a learning opportunity, at least that's the first step in emotional intelligence, I would say. And also according to him, there are 4 competencies in conflict intelligence. One of them is self-awareness. and self-regulation. Another one is engaging in conflict constructively. Now that you can see, this is at the individual level, not at a team level or at the grand scheme of the healthcare system. So that's why when he talked about conflict intelligence, he always linked it to system intelligence, or there's another name for it.

System wisdom. Systemic wisdom is what he calls it in the paper.

So conflict intelligence on its own, It's an individual kind of skills or competencies, but then we need to learn more about the teams as a whole, and then the organization as a whole to be able to implement the conflict intelligence effectively, so to speak.

So it's such interesting, and I love how you draw this parallel between the idea of emotional intelligence and conflict intelligence because it's a very similar dynamic. In terms of having that self-awareness, we have to know who we are in the conflict. We have to know what we bring to it and then being able to engage in that conflict effectively. And I would love to know what you think about this. I think one of the biggest things that we see in the U.S. is that a large number of people in general, but especially physicians, we are conflict avoidant. We're scared of it. And a lot of times I think that happens because people think automatically conflict is bad. Rather than seeing it as inevitable and an opportunity for growth and for change and for self-awareness and insight, we look at it as something really, really bad. And as a result, we're scared of it and we run away from that. Is that something you encountered as well?

Yes, I encountered, and I was one of these healthcare professionals. That's how I got into conflict, which is a different story. But I, I realized also from my experience and also from my readings That the healthcare providers avoid conflicts because of the systemic pressures that because they're exhausted, burned out, and they don't want to deal with it. But there's another aspect of that is they really care about their teamwork, about the workflow that they want to maintain the professional relationship. They don't want to sabotage it. But I think that's my opinion that they're doing this because also they're lacking the skills of engaging with. Constructively that they think that okay, if I speak up and something bad will happen, so let's just leave it. As long as the patient is safe, nothing major is happening. Let's keep it that way. And then I also read a lot of the consequences that happens that does not happen to the patient because I mean there is a very strict system or so many layers that. The healthcare professionals take good care of in documentation, for example. So the patient does not get the very severe consequences, but the severity happens on the professional's wellbeing and also on the team dynamic.

Wow. Oh my gosh. There's so much insight there in terms of what physicians are experiencing. And I think it's really interesting that you talk about in terms of engaging in conflict. That there's definitely a priority that you see that if clinicians don't feel like there's direct patient danger, the tendency is going to be to let it go because that's the priority, right? So even though it may really be affecting me professionally, it may be really infecting me emotionally or mentally, if the patient's okay, I'm going to let it go. I don't want to engage in that process. And that's really sad, right? Because while that heart orientation towards the patient is what we all want to and aspire to be. That's really not good. We're devaluing ourselves in that system by not engaging in the conflict.

Although it's sad, it's noble that they actually care so much for the patient. But then if you don't take care of yourself, you would reach a point that you wouldn't even care about the patient. It would become just doing the minimum so you don't get sued. And that's it. It's not going to be like a true care. You don't care of yourself. And I think it always starts from within. The story always starts from you. Then after that, you can give. If you don't give yourself, it'll be difficult for you to give others.

Yeah. And like, if you have somebody who's conflict avoidant, you have a physician or you have somebody in medicine who's conflict avoidant, they're kind of just dealing with it and dealing with it. And it's like, is my patient's okay? I'm not gonna talk about it. But there's, like you said, a cumulative effect to that, that it grows and grows and grows and then gets to the point that literally the patient, the clinician can't bear it. And unfortunately, sometimes if you don't intervene before then, I think there's one of two things that can happen. I think a bystander or a colleague can pick up on that and say to their colleague, hey, I'd like to help you work through this. Let's, You know, we can actually go get some conflict education, go get some coaching, go through some classes and learn how to manage this. Because I don't want you to get to a point that you feel so broken you can't come to work, or you feel like you're doing the bare minimum, like you said, to get by. But there's actually a worse possibility, right? That we can let conflict go unresolved and build and build and build, and then the wake-up call. Is that something bad happens to a patient and that becomes your entry into the system. And so what we hope we can do is help people understand, like you said, become self-reflective about their part in the process and who they are in the process and actually develop these skills before it gets to the point of breaking.

I agree. Although the skills are not difficult to develop, it's probably just one thing. If you just listen to the other points of view. It can go a long way because from psychological point of view, everyone wants to be listened to. And even in a fast-paced environment like healthcare, we know everyone is competent because no one incompetent would be there, but they want to be valued. So the strict hierarchical structure of the healthcare sometimes reduce that psychological safety, so to speak.

Yeah.

So they don't feel like they're valued. They don't feel like they're listened to. And then it becomes a fertile land for conflict.

That's so brilliant because that's such a simple thing, right? The act of listening. That's such a simple thing that we can do. I think putting it that way is so powerful, Red, because a lot of people think about learning conflict intelligence as something that's this very big, difficult topic. Like it's such a big, difficult topic and it's really scary. And I don't know how I want to do it. And I'm already scared of conflict and I don't want anybody to get mad at me. And so I think I'm just going to sit here and not do it. And yet when they're listening to you, it's like, it's really an easy place to start. The active listening, actually giving that person the benefit of your time and attention. And in that they feel important, not only in this collective space, but they start to feel safe in that space. That's a really good place to start. Is that something as you're teaching, you know, now that you have gotten your PhD and you're going to be teaching more, is that something that you want to be intentional about teaching your students?

Yes, definitely. When I conduct my intervention study in my PhD, I try to create like a structured system, kind of a structured approach to conflict. So, because sometimes people want there to be something that is structured, they follow it. Step by step, although even any communication does not happen that way, but at least it makes people feel comfortable when they engage in conflict. So the first step that I teach is that you must be the better person. You go and reach out and say that you care about this professional relationship and let's do something about it. That's how you reach out. Then the next step is that instead of you expressing your frustration, Let them speak. Tell them that, okay, I'm here to listen to you. Tell me what was going on in your head. What happened? Then they will start talking and speaking. Okay, this happened and that happened. And I felt this way and I felt that way. And when you listen to that and then you rephrase what was said to you and you get the approval. If the other person said, yes, this is what I meant. You get the approval. That means that you were listening. And if they see that you listen to them. I think generally people, even if they're angry or frustrated, they will calm down. After that, this is where the third step happens. Okay, now I listen to you, listen to me. That's the third step. I would express myself. Okay, this happened. This is how I felt. These were my thoughts and so on. So now I listen to you, you listen to me. Okay. At least now we are in a common ground. Now let's create a solution. Let's make it like me and you against the problem. It's not like me against you anymore. Let's create a solution. Okay. I have 3 solutions, A, B, and C. And what are your solutions? Okay. You have A, B, and C. Say, okay, let's pick one of them. What are the upsides of A and what are the downsides of A? What are the upsides of B? What are the downsides of B? What are the upsides of C? What are the downsides of C? When you start weighing these things together, most likely you're going to agree on something. Very rarely that you wouldn't agree. And even if you reach and all solutions are valid, at least I listen to you and you listen to me. Now we're not gonna be fighting anymore about this. Okay, let's get our superior, the head of the department, who pick the best solution. Even if they pick other person's side, not my side, I wouldn't be angry because we are listening together. We agreed that we're gonna consult someone else and whatever that solution is. We're gonna go for it, but at least I listen to you, you listen to me. That's like the key element. I listen to you, you listen to me. It becomes easier to come up with a solution.

Wow. Okay. So there's so much I wanna talk about because that's brilliant. I mean, what you just described, this roadmap that you have laid out in terms of managing professional conflict, it's gold. I love this. So, because the very first part of this was One person reaching out to the other person saying, I value our relationship. Let's talk. I mean, that, this is the entry. It's not, I'm mad at you, even though you probably are. It's, I value this relationship. Let's talk. But then the next thing you said, because this is the tendency when we want to sit down with somebody, we have been building up all these arguments. We've thought about this. We have thought about all these things that this person has done or all of the conflict situations we've been in with this person. And we want to talk about it. They're here in front of us and we want to just let it out. And yet, as soon as we do that, what we start to create in the other person is not a place to respond. We are forcing them to defend. And once people get in that space of defending, it's really hard to get people out of it. So I also love the fact that after someone has reached out to the other individual, which of course that's Huge part of the steps is the next thing is that you give the other person the mic. They get the mic first. And so right off the jump, now they're getting a chance to speak. You are giving them the space to speak. And in doing that, like you said, you're practicing that listening and they're going to feel heard. And once they start to feel heard, especially because you included in that the reflective answering that you You state back to them, this is what I'm hearing you say. And when you start to do that, all of a sudden it's like, oh my gosh, this person really does understand. They do get it because they can say back to me exactly what my concerns are. And I think at that point is when you start to get buy-in. When you get that buy-in from the individual, it's like, oh, okay, I feel heard now. This is great. They are going to be more likely to listen to you. And you do, I think sometimes have to say, I would like a chance to say what I'm feeling. I would like a chance to verbalize that and, you know, kind of set those rules. Just like I gave you the mic and let you talk, I'm going to take the mic now and I'm going to talk. And I think that's important. And then the third step in terms of working out these solutions, A, B, and C. I also really like it that each party in this process you're describing has an A, B, and a C. They have their potential solutions, their potentials, and then you get the chance to go back and look at each one and go, these are the pros and cons. This is what makes this one valid or not so valid. And then when you do that again, you're much more likely to agree on something. But also, I like it that you have a step 4. There is the possibility that it may not be resolved. And then we bring in a third party. And I think that's gotten easier. I think as we have more awareness of conflict in medicine, We have people like Kim Best. We have people who are in healthcare, but are also trained in mediation, able to have a professional come in. And I think you're also seeing more and more people who work in academic medicine and work in medicine in general, who see so much benefit to having these skills in conflict intelligence and conflict resolution that they themselves have gone on and gotten degrees in mediation. They've pursued graduate training because they want to bring that skillset back into the medical realm.

I agree. And also all my training now in conflict, because I got the certification to be a conflict coach and conflict mediator, it was from the business sector rather than from the medicine. And I wanted to bring this back to the academic medicine and also in the healthcare environment. I'm starting to now reach out to hospitals and some leaders Everyone is saying that we need this, and we know that this is an issue. But this is life. This is how life happens. We learn by trial and error. Okay, now we had a conflict. I didn't deal with it perfectly. Next time, I'm gonna deal with it fine. But then because it's a trial and error, and there is no probably self-reflection about it, it doesn't work well. Especially that healthcare is a fast-paced environment, and then. The conflicts just arise. It's like all of a sudden, it's not like it's planned. It's not like I'm anticipating that conflict will happen. It just happened.

Yeah.

So that's why it's trial and error. And the healthcare providers that I interviewed, they said, we never received any, even informal training. We received some leadership training. Okay. But leadership training is about, okay, when to submit an OVR or when to complain about bullying, for example. But it's not like conflict intelligence, so to speak. And one of the physicians said that, you know, we have the skills or the steps of how to deliver bad news to the patient. We have the steps and we do this and it works perfectly, but we never had anything regarding to conflict, like to follow steps. And, and they told me that I think that would be brilliant if we can have such training. I know how valuable this is, but we need to get it in the healthcare. And by the way, because the healthcare system, I mean, you know how pressurized it is and it's a fast-paced environment. They're always in a hurry and they're always under stress. That's the thing that I am trying to figure out how to do it. Like, how can I implement such training to people who need the training, but they don't find the time to even practice that skill?

First and foremost, the fact that you have approached people in healthcare, both in academics and clinical medicine where you are, and they are receptive to this and recognize the need for it is massive. That's wonderful. I mean, they clearly can see that this is so needed. And I think we are getting to that point in the United States as well. People understand how important it is for us to have this kind of education and training and taking that next step of being able to apply it in our daily practice. And I think that trickles over into our personal lives as well, that when we have an understanding of managing conflict, I think that affects every part of our lives. And that's why it's such a valuable piece of information. And you add the extra step, and I think this is something that's also becoming more recognized to be important, is that process of self-reflection, going through that understanding of yourself. I mean, that's never something that we were ever encouraged to do in medical education in the United States. Um, I think we're understanding how important it is. And I also think that the younger people coming through the system that I see that are in medical school and residency, they are much more aware than we ever were of how important it is to have these kinds of skills going through a professional career. So I love it that they're already starting with that. And people like you that are actively reaching out and bringing this kind of education to the medical community. I mean, it's wonderful. And I love how you break this down in such a way that it doesn't seem so scary the way you're presenting it. I think just the word conflict scares people. And a lot of times the reticence of, I don't know that I can do this. And, you know, being able to practice that and being able to actually rehearse those, you know, what does that conversation sound like? Can I practice this with a friend? Can I practice this in the mirror at home? You know, can I actually learn what to say if I'm ever in this situation? That even if I'm exhausted, the words hopefully will come out, at least a starting point will come out. And I think that's a big part of what you're talking about. What we need to do as a next step here in the United States is we need to help people understand how to apply this while they're in this high-pressure situation. Right.

And one of the things that I've read about, but I don't know also how can I implement. Undergrads or students who are in their preclinical year, so they still haven't been in the hospital yet. How valid is conflict management in healthcare is going to be for them? Now, then I was revising this with myself. Okay, so I can teach them conflict resolution, conflict management in life. Let's say with their colleagues in this school, not in the hospital. Then after that, at least I see that. And these skills are transferable. So if they practice that with their colleagues at the university or college, they would at least be, if not fully prepared, at least I would say 70% to that. Yeah. They can deal with conflict in healthcare when the stakes are high, when the pressure is high. And at least that's one of the studies that I've read that they were doing this kind of conflict management, they said that the nursing students who were in clinical placement, their conflict management skills were better than medical students who were still in their preclinical years. So that's my dilemma is that when do I want to teach conflict management in the preclinical or in the clinic? Something that I'm thinking about and still figuring this out.

Oh yeah, no, definitely. And as you were talking about that, In my head, it's like I saw conflict in the preclinicals, people who were being very competitive for getting grades and GPAs and things like that. I saw it again when I was a 3rd and 4th year medical student, people trying to get recommendations and wanting to one-up the person on the wards with them because they wanted a better letter of recommendation. One of my best friends in medical school, who's also an OB-GYN in Kentucky, he and I both knew when we were third years wanted to go into OB. And I think early in our fourth year, we were on a gynecology rotation. We were both trying to get residencies and get good letters. And we became very hypercompetitive with each other to the point that it was really affecting our friendship. And we were rounding one afternoon, you know, we're done with surgeries, we're on the wards. And literally, and I don't remember who started it, but one of us said, we can't let this go on. And we went and sat down. In an empty patient room and we just talked for half an hour and said, this is not who we are. This is not our relationship. We're both going to get OB-GYN residencies. We're both going to have good, blessed careers. But, you know, I think about that now. Neither one of us had the skills to manage conflict. I mean, we didn't know what we were doing. We were just 2 friends that knew we were in a conflict situation and knew we had to resolve it. And I think about how much differently it would have gone if we had some skills, if we had that. Conflict intelligence that we could have addressed it way sooner. And thankfully it never affected our friendship. We're still great friends, but you know, I think about those kinds of things that do arise even in preclinical years. And if you're able to present this and you know what, the conversation may change. That educational platform might look different in preclinical years. And then when they're in their clinical years and they're interacting with Nurses, residents, fellows, attendings, when they're first getting to know what that patient-physician relationship looks like, that's going to be a very different skill set you're going to be able to give to them.

Yes. Maybe not that much different. That's still the skills are the same, but the environment is different and they need to implement it. They're not going to implement it from the start, like perfectly, but they're going to have some hiccups, but at least they have it, you know, they have that sense because they get the training before getting into the clinical unit and they've tried it before, like. Probably in a simulation environment, for example, they had it. So it's not going to be perfect at the start. And also because humans are complex, even if you have the skills and they use all the steps, it's not always going to be successful. Let's put a random number. Let's say 80% is going to be successful, but there are still some 20% of people that are very stubborn and they're aggressive. They're easily irritable. So you're going to find these people that you do all your best and it doesn't work. You're going to find such people, but at least you're going to be more resilient because you know that you have the skills, you're confident in applying the skills, and you know that it didn't work with that specific person, but it worked with 9 other people. So you wouldn't be frustrated.

Absolutely. And then also too, they have you as a resource as they are doing this multiple times over and over. They can always come back to you and say, hey, Dr. Albar, I did this and I feel like I could do this better. And so they have you as a resource as well.

Yes, I think that's why conflict coaching is important. Like it's a one-on-one coaching because you have someone that is giving you a specific scenario that they're going through and you start navigating through the scenario, what they did and what they didn't, and start brainstorming some ideas on how to navigate this new conflict with that specific person who is very difficult. For example, it becomes more effective because it becomes a one-on-one discussion. At least that's my opinion on contract coaching.

No, I 100% agree with you. Raya, this has been an amazing conversation. You're so generous with your time. I know it's actually really in the middle of the night where you are. So I thank you very much for making the time to do this. If people wanted to reach out to you, if they had questions about your research Or if they just wanted to interact with you, how would they do that?

I have a LinkedIn account with my name, just Rydel Albar, and they would find me if they know my picture, they would know that it's me. That's the only place that I am in the media. I don't have social media. So at least LinkedIn would be good. And if you want me to share even my email and you can share it with the audience, that would be fine. I'm always happy to listen to people.

I love it. And we will share both of those in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here. This has been an amazing conversation. I'm so excited and I want to keep in touch with you as you continue to implement these things where you are and continue to teach. And especially as you're introducing this in the educational system in Saudi Arabia, I hope you'll continue to reach out and anytime you want to come back on the podcast and share your experiences, we'd love to have you.

Thank you, Lee. Thank you very much. It was a really fruitful and enjoyable discussion. My first time in a podcast. It was lovely talking to you. Thank you very much, Lee.

Thank you. I really appreciate it. And to all of our peaceful warriors who have joined us today on The Scalpel and Sword, until next time, be at peace. Every episode is an invitation to speak, to negotiate, to choose. I'm Dr. Lee Sharma. Join the dialogue by subscribing to Scalpel and Sword. Until next time, peaceful warriors, may your choices be sharp and your voice be even sharper. This podcast is a reflection of lived experience and research in conflict resolution. The Scalpel and Sword is not intended as medical or legal guidance. For personal matters, please consult a qualified professional.