Smacc

Numbers people, give me the NUMBERS! We need CONCRETE data points and percentages...! Go buy another machine to deliver the numbers and data points. We need it to be delivered by gadgets, gadgets that go ping and pong...more and more gadgets. Let’s plot it on graphs and write it into a protocol to then be memorised verbatim in training and dutifully regurgitated in medical exams. That makes us excellent clinicians right? Worthy of more numbers and a couple of extra letters behind our names. Medicine is obsessed with numbers! The glorified science of modern medicine. A fictitious safety net. We are often discouraged from relying on our brains to make decisions, especially in emergency situations. Criticism of human error and the human factors which lead to error are in abundance. What if I told you, your decision-making is far more complex than that? That, how I deal with an emergency also involve guts, prayers and yes, sometimes tricks. Does that make me reckless? A cowboy (girl) or a savant? Or am I just nu