Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

The video Jason and Erin showed in their presentation on Monday is one that I have seen many times, in my HMP classes and is one of my favorite TED talks. It draws attention to a lot of points of improvement for our current healthcare system. Although it outlines how far we have come, it also shows the weaknesses. One of the biggest faults we have as a healthcare system is that it is not a system at all. Gawande explains that American healthcare workers have been trained and think as cowboys, not pit crews. We lack the skills to work together to prevent errors and reduce costs. 

In my job the past couple summers, the phrase "teamwork makes the dream work" was thrown around on an hourly basis. Although it sounds corny, I think it was one of the most important take aways I got from my job, and it can be applied to many different fields. I feel that a lot of emphasis is put on solo work, especially in medicine. I strongly agree with Gawande's idea to implement checklists, and to make sure that doctors rely on each other to catch mistakes. You can see that these two tactics have proven to be effective in preventing errors by the data presented in the video. I believe that the concept of a "pitcrew" can be used in many different areas in healthcare and a high value should be placed on team work.