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Mentoring in Orthopaedics

Over 3,000 years ago, Odysseus entrusted his friend Mentor to educate and guide his son Telemachos when he left to fight in the Trojan War (Homer. Odyssey, Book II). Thus, was the birth of the word ‘mentor,’ which has evolved to mean trusted advisor, friend, teacher, and wise person. I have had the tremendous opportunity to mentor dozens of undergraduate…

You Get What You Celebrate

It is a well-known business principle that “you get what you measure.” Any of us involved in pay-for-performance and complying with the various hospital metrics can relate to that. But recently I heard an interesting variation on this theme. On his podcast “The Tim Ferriss Show”, Tim Ferriss interviewed Frank Blake, former CEO of Home Depot. Blake’s version was “You…

Do you have an action plan?

My last JHS Focus post introduced the Waterline model as a guide to providing clarity regarding the root causes of team conflict and/or underperformance. I suggested that, more often than not, a system or process issue may be the basis for the problem even though we, as emotionally driven team members, may attribute underperformance to an individual or to an…

Learning from Colleagues

I am the only hand surgeon in my practice. While I talk with my partners often about shoulder and elbow cases and provide advice for them when they are initially managing hand and wrist patients, I have no one in my practice to bounce ideas off of when it comes to hand surgery. I think often of my upbringing in…

How can we move the needle on an under-performing team?

Over the past several years I have actively cultivated my appreciation of what interferes with optimal team performance, and spent a considerable amount of time investigating possible solutions. I had the privilege recently to lead a workshop on team development with the Wake Forest Orthopaedic residents, and it became very clear to me that encountering conflict on teams during the…

Conflict on your Team: Dismissed, Deplored or Discussed?

I attended the annual meeting of Team STEPPS in Cleveland in June. STEPPS stands for Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety. The initiative has been developed by the Department of Defense, and superbly practiced within most, if not all, army health centers. For any one not familiar with its key principles, it’s worth checking out the Agency…

Collaboration in Science

On July 4, 2012, scientists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider announced they had found the Higgs Boson – a fundamental particle underpinning the Standard Model of particle physics. The existence of this particle had been theorized by Peter Higgs in the 1960s but was never “found” until the CERN experiments. This was a big deal for particle physics. The Standard…

Gray-Haired Consult

Don’t get me wrong.  I have a smart watch, an iPhone and an iPad, and my emails, photos and passwords are all synced.  I have more digital textbooks than I could ever read and I’m a regular Hand-e visitor.  But despite having even more technology at my fingertips, my first two years in practice have imparted a profound appreciation for…

The Value of Camaraderie

I am very lucky to have a group of 50 hand surgeons, all of similar vintage out of fellowship, who are part of a travelling hand club. Multiple such clubs exist. We meet for drinks and discussion at the ASSH Annual Meeting, often at AAHS, PRS and AAOS meetings, and then have an “away” meeting on a yearly basis. We…