Starter Post Reflection
Mistakes are a fact of life, just like death and taxes. No one is perfect all of the time. Unfortunately for doctors, their mistakes matter a whole lot more than an ordinary person's. If I forget to put the ice cream back in the freezer, it melts. If a doctor forgets to check the blood-oxygen concentration of a patient, someone might die. There's a lot more at stake when doctors make mistakes...but doctors do make mistakes frequently. When these mistakes are made, it is imperative that doctors and medical professionals learn from them. Most mistakes are harmless and everything is okay, but in cases where a patient dies from a mistake it becomes even more important that that be a learning experience so hopefully fewer patients will die in the future.
The "bad" doctors are ones that don't learn from their mistakes due to overconfidence, defensive behavior, asking no questions and having no fears. These things get in the way of progress because if one cannot admit that they made a mistake they certainly cannot learn from that mistake and often times questioning is a necessary step on the way to learning from one's mistakes. Asking yourself, "What did I do wrong? What could I have done better? What did I do well?" is a necessity. One of the best ways to learn from your mistakes is to consult with others, too. As Gawande described with the M&M, receiving feedback from others may help you recognize the errors that would have otherwise gone unnoticed by you. It is difficult to discuss your mistakes with others, though. No one wants to admit that they failed and no one wants to show their weaknesses to others, but overcoming this anxiety has incredible benefits.
In my own research, the instrument I was using for analysis malfunctioned because I used it improperly. I attempted to fix it on my own but I could not. I had to swallow my pride and ask for help because my understanding of the instrument was not as strong as the understanding of those I work with. My mistake was not a huge one (I only installed the sample line incorrectly), but the data I was collecting was compromised and had this continued there may have been greater impacts to the expensive instrument. Because of the mistake I made and the help I sought, I now know how to properly replace this line on my own. The mistake has not been repeated since this incident and my knowledge of the instrumentation I use has expanded. The scientific method is really just a form of learning from your mistakes. If an experiment fails, the next step is to ask why. What went wrong in the process? Was the mistake made in the planning of the experiment or the execution? What should be done next time to increase the chances of success? This is something I go through on a regular basis while doing my chemistry research.
In my personal life, reflection is and always has been about personal growth. We can't grow if we don't learn from our mistakes. If we don't learn from our mistakes, then we will remain stagnant as individuals and the mistakes we did not learn from will continue to happen again and again. It might be far-reaching to say this, but I truly believe that when doctors make mistakes, the lives of their patients are in jeopardy...when we make mistakes and do not learn from them, our own lives are jeopardized. Our lives are improved vastly by learning from the bad to prevent the bad from happening again. For example, during my first quarter freshman year, I spent a lot of time going to parties. I went to a part the night before my first college chemistry test and I remember getting a C- on that test. It was the worst I had ever done on a test. Clearly, going to that party was a mistake. I could have continued that lifestyle and my grades likely would have suffered, but I learned an important lesson. School is my top priority and should be treated as such. I no longer went to parties or even stayed up very late on school nights and I saw an improvement on my next exam. My grades have been pretty good ever since. If I had not learned from that initial mistake, I might be in a different place now.
The best thing, though, is that we don't have to learn from mistakes on our own. We can share our mistakes with other fallible human beings and reflect collaboratively to learn how to avoid making the same mistake again. There are so many times when I have done something stupid and my family and friends have been there to talk me through it. Even something simple like getting a problem wrong on an exam and asking a professor to explain the correct answer is a way to actively seek help to reflect on a mistake so that the same mistake will be prevented in the future. Really, we are making mistakes (and hopefully, learning from them) all the time. Making mistakes is a part of life, and learning from them is what makes us better people.
The "bad" doctors are ones that don't learn from their mistakes due to overconfidence, defensive behavior, asking no questions and having no fears. These things get in the way of progress because if one cannot admit that they made a mistake they certainly cannot learn from that mistake and often times questioning is a necessary step on the way to learning from one's mistakes. Asking yourself, "What did I do wrong? What could I have done better? What did I do well?" is a necessity. One of the best ways to learn from your mistakes is to consult with others, too. As Gawande described with the M&M, receiving feedback from others may help you recognize the errors that would have otherwise gone unnoticed by you. It is difficult to discuss your mistakes with others, though. No one wants to admit that they failed and no one wants to show their weaknesses to others, but overcoming this anxiety has incredible benefits.
In my own research, the instrument I was using for analysis malfunctioned because I used it improperly. I attempted to fix it on my own but I could not. I had to swallow my pride and ask for help because my understanding of the instrument was not as strong as the understanding of those I work with. My mistake was not a huge one (I only installed the sample line incorrectly), but the data I was collecting was compromised and had this continued there may have been greater impacts to the expensive instrument. Because of the mistake I made and the help I sought, I now know how to properly replace this line on my own. The mistake has not been repeated since this incident and my knowledge of the instrumentation I use has expanded. The scientific method is really just a form of learning from your mistakes. If an experiment fails, the next step is to ask why. What went wrong in the process? Was the mistake made in the planning of the experiment or the execution? What should be done next time to increase the chances of success? This is something I go through on a regular basis while doing my chemistry research.
In my personal life, reflection is and always has been about personal growth. We can't grow if we don't learn from our mistakes. If we don't learn from our mistakes, then we will remain stagnant as individuals and the mistakes we did not learn from will continue to happen again and again. It might be far-reaching to say this, but I truly believe that when doctors make mistakes, the lives of their patients are in jeopardy...when we make mistakes and do not learn from them, our own lives are jeopardized. Our lives are improved vastly by learning from the bad to prevent the bad from happening again. For example, during my first quarter freshman year, I spent a lot of time going to parties. I went to a part the night before my first college chemistry test and I remember getting a C- on that test. It was the worst I had ever done on a test. Clearly, going to that party was a mistake. I could have continued that lifestyle and my grades likely would have suffered, but I learned an important lesson. School is my top priority and should be treated as such. I no longer went to parties or even stayed up very late on school nights and I saw an improvement on my next exam. My grades have been pretty good ever since. If I had not learned from that initial mistake, I might be in a different place now.
The best thing, though, is that we don't have to learn from mistakes on our own. We can share our mistakes with other fallible human beings and reflect collaboratively to learn how to avoid making the same mistake again. There are so many times when I have done something stupid and my family and friends have been there to talk me through it. Even something simple like getting a problem wrong on an exam and asking a professor to explain the correct answer is a way to actively seek help to reflect on a mistake so that the same mistake will be prevented in the future. Really, we are making mistakes (and hopefully, learning from them) all the time. Making mistakes is a part of life, and learning from them is what makes us better people.
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