COLLABORATE UNIFY HEAL
An Honest Look at Collaboration Under Pressure
by Aaron R. Kuzel, DO, MBA
Every article about teamwork in medicine wants to end with a life saved. The resuscitation bay humming like a well-oiled machine, a code that goes right because of closed loop communication and the specialist who picks up the phone on the first ring. Those moments are real, and those successes are worth writing about. But, if we are honest, good collaboration in the emergency department, if not the hospital, isn’ t built on individual shining moments. It’ s built upon repeated efforts to maintain an imperfect process to hold up under pressure. We’ d learn more by studying our failures than our highlight reels. When systems and processes work in the spirit of collaboration, however, this duty and goal improve exponentially.
It is easy to observe in these articles what goes right, but where, in my opinion, these articles fall short is tackling the challenges and struggling with the failures in the journey to become a high functioning system. It’ s easy for Disney or Apple to pontificate when they make small adjustments that result in service line improvements. They already have a dedicated culture and infrastructure that was built to survive stress. It’ s a different thing entirely to walk into a system that’ s failing – overcrowded, understaffed, running on federal mandates instead of margin, and yet we are attempting to right it in real time. Emergency departments don’ t get Disney’ s or Apple’ s luxury of testing their systems on a good day. It is important that we shift our focus from studying success in these healthcare articles, to shift our focus to our shortcomings, as these moments teach us the most about what teamwork under pressure actually requires.
8 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE