Most people know Dr. Sanjay Gupta from his media work as the chief medical correspondent for CNN and a special correspondent for CBS. He is often called upon to make complex things simple and simple things complex for a global TV audience. He is also a practicing neurosurgeon, on the faculty of the Emory University School of Medicine (operating Mondays and every other Friday) and in addition to his two best-selling books of health advice, he can add one more thing to his CV: successful novelist.
Dr. Gupta has just penned his first novel, set at fictional Chelsea General, where doctors meet for a weekly morbidity and mortality (M&M) meetings. Drawn from his own notes over 20 years of attending these sessions, he wanted people to realize that doctors need to step back and analyze their own mistakes in order to not make them again. In a recent interview about the book in Macleans, Dr. Gupta notes the following:
"Medicine moves forward because people learn form their mistakes, that that means that mistakes happen. But the worst crime of all would be that it continues to happen because no one learned from it. What I am always struck by is when something has gone wrong and when everyone sort of knows that a mistake has happened but hardly ever does anyone really have a completely candid meeting, not to be punitive, but to hold each other accountable and to say `Look, can we all agree that this was a mistake? And can we all figure out a way not to let that happen again?' I think that if we did that, if we applied what we know as surgeons and from M&M's to all sorts of different facets of our society, I just think things would run so much better, and there wouldn't be so much dabbling around the edges with regard to these issues" (Interview, Macleans, Apr 23, 2012, p. 16).
Oftentimes organizations and leaders move with such speed and such a focus on the future, they don't have time for assessment (more on that in another post and forthcoming article). But the real tragedy occurs when, for fear of looking weak or admitting to doing something foolish or letting others know that they made the wrong call, a leader avoids accountability altogether.
Avoiding medical malpractice lawsuits is understandable and I am certainly not advocating making the contents of your M&M meetings public knowledge or hanging someone out to dry for an innocent mistake. What I am advocating, however, is that I believe it is one of the primary jobs of a leader to ensure that they take responsibility for their own actions and the actions of those whom they lead. If they never present at or worse, never call an M&M meeting, they will miss the learning that can only come with you dissect the cadaver - both metaphorically and sometimes, even physically.
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