We Recruit For Attitude And Train For

Over Time I Learned That There Are Two Very Different Satisfactions That You Can Have In Your Life. One Is The Satisfaction Of Becoming Skilled At Something. It Almost Doesn't Matter What The Terrain Is. There Is A Deep, Soul-feeding Resonance In Mastery Itself, Whether In Teaching, Writing A Complicated Software Program, Coaching A Baseball Team, Or Marshalling A Group Of People To Start A New Business.

Once You Start To Ask Patients About Their Priorities, You Discover What They're Living For. Once You Uncover That, It Helps You, As A Doctor, Decide What To Fight For. And When We Do That, We Often End Up Identifying Limits To The Kind Of Care That People Want. One's Assumption Is That These People Are Going To Live Shorter Lives, But What We're Doing Is Protecting Quality Of Life. In Doing So, You Sometimes End Up Helping People Live Longer. Certainly, You Help People Live Better Days And With More Purpose In Their Lives.

Good Checklists, On The Other Hand Are Precise. They Are Efficient, To The Point, And Easy To Use Even In The Most Difficult Situations. They Do Not Try To Spell Out Everything--a Checklist Cannot Fly A Plane. Instead, They Provide Reminders Of Only The Most Critical And Important Steps--the Ones That Even The Highly Skilled Professional Using Them Could Miss. Good Checklists Are, Above All, Practical.

Culture Matters. Of Course, If Physicians Are Rewarded Or Penalized For Their Service And Results, The Culture Will Change. But The Key Values We Doctors Are Being Pressed To Embrace Are Humility, Teamwork, And Discipline.

The Big Thing That's Happened Is, In The Time Since The Affordable Care Act Has Been Going On, Our Medical Science Has Been Advancing. We Have Now Genomic Data. We Have The Power Of Big Data About What Your Living Patterns Are, What's Happening In Your Body. Even Your Smartphone Can Collect Data About Your Walking Or Your Pulse Or Other Things That Could Be Incredibly Meaningful In Being Able To Predict Whether You Have Disease Coming In The Future And Help Avert Those Problems.