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Do something in your power to make a difference

Lean Medicine May 22, 2019

It’s a small detail. If you are accompanying someone down a corridor as a healthcare professional- don’t stride ahead. Ideally walk alongside the person or let them lead the way if they know where you are headed. If they are wheeling a buggy and carrying a bag offer to help by wheeling the buggy.  Just try it. You might like how they respond. Apart from that you can learn so much about the person even before the consultation begins:

So instead of a doctor assessing a patient’s blood pressure, body mass index, chronic conditions, hospitalization and smoking history and use of mobility aids to estimate survival, a lab assistant could simply time the patient walking a few meters and predict just as accurately the person’s likelihood of living five or 10 more years—as well as a median life expectancy. Scientific American

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Lean Medicine May 22, 2019

Is normal too thin?

Lean Medicine March 18, 2019

Try this experiment. If you are tending to overweight ( Body Mass Index (BMI) 25 or over) then try to get to BMI 18.5 -24.9.  If you succeed people will decide you have lost ‘too much weight’  even when your BMI is in the middle of the normal range. If normal was defined as ‘what is most common’ then to have a ‘normal’ BMI is unusual and we may have become blind to normal so that what we perceive as ‘normal’ is not ideal. Rates of overweight and obesity are now at 60-70%.

In an Australian study on the public perception of body size the authors report that:

Overweight participants were also most likely to incorrectly identify themselves as a healthy weight (67 per cent, p<0.001), compared to 12 per cent of obese participants . The majority (89 per cent) of normal weight participants accurately identified themselves as being a healthy weight. Flanagan et al

Therefore it is not surprising that when people are challenged about their weight in healthcare they are reluctant to identify the issue as a problem.

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Lean Medicine March 18, 2019

What do you notice?

Lean Medicine March 15, 2019

Before making any changes that might improve outcomes where you work you have to notice things that don’t look quite right or that hint at a solution. I know someone who notices the tiniest details even when she is out shopping. She generates a huge number of ideas about how things could be improved sometimes with the smallest tweaks. Here’s an example. As a result she is the most successful person I know. You’d be lucky to have her on your side. I know I am. What did you notice about your office, clinic, shop or hospital today?

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Lean Medicine March 15, 2019