Seize the Day
There is a dog park near my house that we take our dog to whenever we get a chance. There is a dog that frequents the park, a brown Labrador by the name of Gracie. Gracie’s favorite activity is fetching tennis balls; she dutifully catches the ball (usually in midair) and brings it back to her owner. When she gets back to her owner, she stands in front of him waiting for her order: “Drop it, Gracie.” As soon as Gracie hears the order, she drops the ball immediately. But she won’t drop the ball until ordered to do so—even though, by keeping the ball, she is that much further away from her next favorite activity. It seems like, to do the best for herself, she should come back and drop the ball, which would bring her that much closer to the one thing she loves best.
But she doesn’t. She waits dutifully for someone else to tell her when to drop the ball.
And interestingly, Gracie will not just drop it for anyone. When others at the park want to play with Gracie, and follow the lead of Gracie’s owner, and say “Drop it, Gracie,” she will look at the visitor, and then at her owner, looking for the approval that it really is in fact OK for her to drop it. Even after an approving look, she will hesitatingly drop the ball, and only after the stranger is a safe distance away, in case she needs to retrieve it sooner than later.
Many of us in the healthcare industry often wait for someone else to tell us when to start doing new things, but rarely do we expect, do we hear, or do we initiate the order to stop doing something. We need to think deeply about all the things we do that are useless Pulaskis, and about how to radically change the industry in which we work. Because this inching along is not going fast enough, and there is little evidence that we have made much progress in the last decade. So if you find yourself lugging around a Pulaski (or two), don’t just think about how to drop it, or when to drop it, or whether to drop it on certain days of the week. Just drop it, Gracie.
Dr. Scheurer is a hospitalist and chief quality officer at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. She is physician editor of The Hospitalist. Email her at [email protected].