Lessons learned from the National Champions

All physicians have failures. The best physicians learn from those failures. They become better physicians and work on continuous improvement. Everyone who knows me well knows that I have had a 52 year obsession with UVa basketball. While I love all the sports teams, basketball is my true love. Better wordsmiths than me would have a difficult time explaining my joy in Monday night’s championship game. You can imagine my dark place after last year’s loss in the first round. So what does this have to do with medicine. Maybe nothing, but we can learn important lessons from literature, music and sports. In this case I will likely stretch the lessons, but in my post game euphoria, please indulge me. Lesson #1 – do not let a failure define you, rather let it motivate you. Focusing on diagnostic errors (which we all make), learn from those errors. Every diagnostic error happens for a reason, explore the reasons and own them. Perhaps you (like Virginia) will need to modify some procedures. Lesson #2 – pay attention to the details. Virginia’s coach, Tony Bennett, stresses playing each possession without regard to future possessions. Stay in the moment, analyze where you are, without regard to what you were thinking yesterday. Has the patient gone down the path expected? Does the diagnosis still make sense. Lesson #3 – do not be scared to change your approach. Learn from your mistakes and try not to repeat them. Lesson #4 – e...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs