The High Reliability Emergency Department – Reluctance to Simplify
patersoner
Posted on January 25, 2013
“The First approach’d the Elephant, And happening to fall against his broad and sturdy side, at once began to bawl: “God bless me! but the Elephant is very like a wall!” – Indian Parable Last post I focused on how HROs embrace a preoccupation with failure and what that means for those in the emergency department. This post will focus on the next principle on our list which is: Reluctance to Simplify. This topic highlights both a strength of emergency medicine and reveals a great potential weakness. One strength is caring for patients in that rich, complex gray area of diagnostic uncertainty and need for immediate treatment. However, as we develop more sophisticated “boxes” for patients (Supertracks, STEMI and trauma codes, other protocol-driven care) it becomes easier to over-simplify the patient and their condition. We…