It’s Complex!
Lisa Rosenbaum wrote in the New Yorker about the unintended (and obviously unexpected) consequence of putting limits on the length of shifts for resident doctors at hospitals. The intent was obvious: fewer hours would mean fewer sleep deprived residents, which would then translate into better decisions, fewer errors and better quality of care. But what really happened? “The number of times a patient was passed from one doctor to another increased; residents started to focus on the clock; learning opportunities decreased; and quality of care, despite intentions, decreased.” In Antifragile , Nassim Taleb described the term, “iatrogenics”: “In the case of tonsillectomies, the harm to the children undergoing unnecessary treatment is coupled with the trumpeted gain for some others. The name for such net loss, the (usually bitten or delayed) damage from treatment in excess of the benefits, is iatrogenics, literally, “caused by the healer,” intros being a healer in Greek.” Of c...