Example of my checklist traits3/17/2023 Sure, we’ve figured out ways to off-load memory storage to books and computers so we can know more we just haven’t figured out a good way to overcome our evolved biases, cognitive flaws, and intrinsic forgetfulness. The crux of this problem is while the world around us is becoming more and more complex, we’re still stuck with a brain that hasn’t changed much in 100,000 years. And just as in medicine, you’ve likely seen projects delayed or even fail not because of lack of know-how, but due to head-scratching ineptitude. If you work for a big corporation, you’re likely collaborating with a whole host of people to complete a project. More and more of our work requires coordinating different teams to get a task done. It exists across almost every domain of life, be it business or science or even just getting things done around the house or on your car. This isn’t a problem unique to medicine, of course. The problem was ultimately one of miscommunication - a basic thing you think would be a given, seeing as how hospitals can transplant human faces and whatnot. I have an acquaintance who ended up in the hospital for two weeks because he got the wrong heart medicine. There are multiple streams of information to remember and manage.Īnd the tragic thing is it’s often the “stupid” simple stuff that gets people killed or keeps them in the hospital for longer than they needed to be. The problem is that because medicine is more sophisticated and specialized, applying that knowledge correctly across several teams is harder. Knowledge abounds among our healthcare practitioners. It’s not ignorance or ill-intent that causes these failures. For example, 30% of patients who suffer a stroke receive incomplete or inappropriate care from their doctors, as do 45% of patients with asthma, and 60% of patients with pneumonia. All these people have the know-how to deliver top-notch healthcare, and yet studies show that failures are common, most often due to plain old ineptitude. Nurses, nurse technicians, radiologists, dieticians, oncologists, cardiologists, and so on and so forth. Now when you go to the hospital, you can have several teams taking care of you. There wasn’t much specialization when you went to the hospital, there was usually one doctor and a few general nurses overseeing your care. Before the mid-20th century, medicine was pretty simple. Medicine is a great example of where our increased knowledge has made things better, but also more complex, with more possibilities for snafus. And as complexity goes up, so do the opportunities for failure. Why is there so often this mismatch between potential and application?Īs our knowledge about the world increases, so too does its complexity. In fact, we are often the victim, and the architect, of head-slapping displays of incompetence when it comes to delivering what’s been promised, or forgetting routine things that have no business being overlooked. In the modern age, we know more than ever before, and the information has never been so readily available.Īnd yet individuals and organizations often fail to deliver on the promise of all this knowledge.
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