#ThinkfullyHabit: Sit back
Martin Elliott, medical director of Britain's largest children's hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital, and his team had been grappling with how to make improvements in surgery outcomes. Surgery can take several hours, require teams of up to 25 people and involve complex handovers of patients from operating theatre to intensive care. There's a lot going on.
When the stakes are so high, sitting back to relax is the last thing you’d expect to be helpful when trying to make such important improvements. However, it turns out that sitting back may be a necessary part of the process.
“There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither. ”
WHY?
Taking a break can be the first step to loosening the brain’s focus and allowing it to bring ideas together in new ways. Breakthrough moments are most likely to come about when we’re not trying too hard and when resting after intense work.
It’s no coincidence that Martin Elliott’s breakthrough happened one Sunday, after a particularly gruelling stint in surgery, when he went from the operating theatre into the staff room and slumped, exhausted in front of the TV. Formula One racing was on; he recounts, “the racing was good and mind emptying after such a lot of work.” As he watched the race, a car came into the pits and the camera went in close on the pitstop. In a flash, he suddenly realised there were striking similarities between what happens in pitstops and what his team does in patient handovers. To improve outcomes of surgery they needed to improve how they did their handovers.
Professor Elliott and his team went on to have discussions with the McLaren racing team and then Ferrari, who they went on to work with for the next nine months, to create new handover procedures. As a result, they reduced errors in surgery by 40%. The methods developed by Prof Elliott and his team subsequently became international standard practice.
What's helpful is to recognise when and where the breakthrough came about - it was during a break after an intense period of focussed work, at a time when a key issue had been recognised and not resolved. The brain thrives on this combination of intensity and rest - it also needs to know what it's trying to resolve. The rest allows us to be open to new, less fixed ideas which may cross our path and to make fresh connections to what it's been trying to resolve. This is what allowed Martin Elliott to spot the connection between F1 and heart surgery. It’s what can help you make breakthroughs even if you’re not a surgeon and don’t like F1 racing! That's the bit that's probably worth sitting up for.
REFERENCES:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/formula-1-and-its-contributions-to-healthcare
A Hospital Races To Learn Lessons Of Ferrari Pit Stop, Gautam Naik, The Wall Street Journal, 2006