Forums

BLUF: DR coughs constantly in meetings and it is extremely distracting and other people have mentioned it to me.

I have a DR that coughs a lot in meetings. He's a young (under 30) supervisor and other managers have mentioned it to me. It is distracting but it may be something he can't really help. He mentioned asthma at one point to me but I have never seen him with an inhaler. I once took tick marks of how many times he audibly, loudly coughed in an hour long meeting (yes, I was still able to pay attention to the meeting effectively) and he coughed (not cleared his throat, full cough) 47 times. He doesn't cough if he is speaking

Since it is distracting and others have noticed, should I give him normal feedback, or since it is health-related, let it slide?

kreed25's picture

Does this person have the same chronic cough outside of meetings? If not, then it is an approachable subject. He may just not be aware that he does this.  However, if he does have the persist cough outside of meetings it may be a medical related issue and one that you might want to talk with HR about prior to approaching him.