Shawn Whatley, Author at shawn whatley md

Comment: Fear the Slippery Slope | Nat’l Post | Suicide

Ms. Kay mentions a topic feared by media and public in her article:

Barbara Kay: Fear the slippery slope | National Post.

4,000 people take their lives every year in Canada, and we don’t like talking about it. “We might encourage others,” they say. I’m not sure whether this feeling is based on evidence or emotion.

Physician assisted suicide forces us to discuss the suicide epidemic in Canada and many other things besides.

A slippery slope exists when no meaningful stop could halt the progression from one end to the other. The burden of evidence lies with those who insist there is no slide. So far, all the evidence supports the slope and our movement along it.

Thank you, Ms. Kay, for having the courage to say so.

How to be Great Without Being Gifted: Knowledge Integration

Some say you achieve greatness, or excellence, by finding your unique talent and pouring life into it. Malcolm Gladwell’s writes about people who master their talent with 10,000 hours of practice in Outliers.

One talent, sport, pastime, or ability. Gifted people with tones of time.

For the rest of us, excellence is less obvious.

We can all have it, but unique greatness shows up invisibly to us. It grows out of a life of enthusiastic passion poured into a unique combination of interests particular to our individuality.

Consider your interests in quilting and guacamole, or petunias and meteorology: we combine interests unlike anyone else. If you think of more, say porcelain, hydrology, glass blowing and poetry, you should expect very few people in the whole world to be passionate about all of them at once.

If you take a unique mix of ideas and add decades of enthusiastic exploration, you end up a world expert. YOU become a world expert at the unique integration of knowledge that’s been your life’s passion.

You: a World Expert.

We all have the time. We all have interests. The only decision remains whether we will spend our time passionately pursuing all that captures our interest around us.

What’s your expertise? How can you share it?

How to Fix Healthcare: Let Leaders Lead

Everyone knows Canadian healthcare cannot continue without significant change. No one debates the need for it.

People Look at Two Things:

Inputs: funding, expenses, cost cutting, efficiency, policy change, contract negotiations, etc.

Outputs: quality, performance, results patients get from the system.

Inputs get most attention, but more sophisticated observers have started focussing on outputs. A few inside the system talk about ways to remove waste (LEAN, Gap analysis, etc.).

No one talks about control inside the system.

Funding Should Follow Governance

People make the imminent demise of our bloated healthcare system an issue of funding or spending, but it’s neither. Whether money comes from taxes collected by the government or ‘taxes’ collected by insurance companies, the issue is not about money.

The debate must shift from how money comes in to who’s in control of how money gets spent.

Everyone demands accountability from the system, but no one gives those in the system the freedom or authority to truly change outcomes. There are too many self-interested outside stakeholders trying to control the system all at the same time. They all think they know what’s best for patient care, but very few actually provide care.

Authorities make major decisions outside the system and then expect those within the system to operate after all the rules have been set; all the room to lead has been removed.

For example: the government negotiates contracts with nurses and then tells hospitals to be accountable to quality and efficiency within a contract that has zero productivity incentive.

We can still rescue publicly funded healthcare if we look at pockets of innovation where providers are given the chance to structure creative incentives that encourage clinicians to work differently.

We need to give the professionals inside the system a chance to show what can be done to improve patient access, quality, and service. You can’t demand accountability without giving people freedom to control and deliver what’s being asked of them.