The only reason I’m writing this post is that everyone else had something to say or write about COVID, so I didn’t want to miss the crowd!
Those of us who worked in QI know how difficult it is to convince others about the need to improve a service or a process in a hospital (even if backed up by data), let alone initiating the change. At the same time, evidence shows that some successful transformations in a hospital or an entire health care system around the world, did occur, and many were driven by the sense of urgency, fueled by a crises.
During the current pandemic, we have witnessed some significant changes or improvements of systems of care, policies, processes, and to some extent, mindsets, all driven by high risks in such a risk averse industry, and the need to do something to prevent the spread immediately. These changes continues to happen at all levels, global, national, local, individuals, and society in large.
Urgency is a powerful catalyst for any change, and hence improvement. This could be triggered by financial down turns, catastrophic incidents, political mandates, or pandemics.
Pandemics through out history have resulted in big changes in healthcare, and this is very evident in the current COVID one which has given permission to health care professionals to change the norms, break the rules, and even innovate. Getting used to healthcare dynamics (or no dynamics for that matter), I’ve never imagined that change could be occur so quickly at such scale, collectively, and without a blueprint to start with.
The morale of the story, we should utilize that power and try to find out where is the urgency in the improvement, and how to make it visible for everyone involved.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste” – Churchill
