Doctors make mistakes. Can we talk about that?
Every doctor makes mistakes, and every doctor knows this. Yet the mantra of traditional medical culture is that doctors must be perfect. I think this culture is changing, but perhaps not fast enough.
LITFL’s Tessa Davis recently had an MJA Insight article published on this topic, ‘Making Mistakes‘. In it she mentions a TED talk by Brian Goldman called ‘Doctors make mistakes. Can we talk about that?‘. It is well worth watching:
Let’s continue to make the culture of medicine more open and develop a healthy attitude to errors. It is the best way for us to understand why errors happen, the best way for us to learn from them and the best way to prevent them in the future.
Chris is an Intensivist and ECMO specialist at the Alfred ICU in Melbourne. He is also a Clinical Adjunct Associate Professor at Monash University. He is a co-founder of the Australia and New Zealand Clinician Educator Network (ANZCEN) and is the Lead for the ANZCEN Clinician Educator Incubator programme. He is on the Board of Directors for the Intensive Care Foundation and is a First Part Examiner for the College of Intensive Care Medicine. He is an internationally recognised Clinician Educator with a passion for helping clinicians learn and for improving the clinical performance of individuals and collectives.
After finishing his medical degree at the University of Auckland, he continued post-graduate training in New Zealand as well as Australia’s Northern Territory, Perth and Melbourne. He has completed fellowship training in both intensive care medicine and emergency medicine, as well as post-graduate training in biochemistry, clinical toxicology, clinical epidemiology, and health professional education.
He is actively involved in in using translational simulation to improve patient care and the design of processes and systems at Alfred Health. He coordinates the Alfred ICU’s education and simulation programmes and runs the unit’s education website, INTENSIVE. He created the ‘Critically Ill Airway’ course and teaches on numerous courses around the world. He is one of the founders of the FOAM movement (Free Open-Access Medical education) and is co-creator of litfl.com, the RAGE podcast, the Resuscitology course, and the SMACC conference.
His one great achievement is being the father of three amazing children.
On Twitter, he is @precordialthump.
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