Medical Innovation and Why We Should Embrace Change
Change can be difficult to accept. A lot of the time, innovation is met with both appreciation and trepidation, as new ideas suddenly take precedence over the tried and tested. This should be especially true for medical innovation.
The complexities of medical equipment and procedures surely provide little acceptance to alteration, and yet change is something routinely embraced in the medical arena.
It was only last year that a new surgery retractor, which is a tool that has been used since the origin of medicinal practice, won its creator a Queen’s Award for Innovation.
Whilst surgery retractors have been around in various iterations for many, many years, this new tool does more to prevent interruptions, cut the high risks of infection by minimizing the number of surgical personnel required in any given surgery, and increase the control of the surgeon during operations.
It is a game changing device in a landscape which many didn’t realize needed to be changed.
The Face of Change
Thoughts must go out to the doctors, then. They will be at the forefront of any changes to be introduced into the industry, and in such high-pressure environments as hospitals and surgeries, change to their already embedded system will undoubtedly take time to accept.
Doctors survive through routine and when that routine is altered, whether it be an alteration of equipment, entirely new equipment, or a change to the system which they have trained and practiced to work inside, then they must learn to adapt and survive once more.
So How Do They Survive?
Doctors and physicians know more than anyone that change inside the medical industry is unavoidable and necessary.
Even if they center around equipment or systems that had already been proven to be fit for practice.
In a job which regularly deals with life-or-death situations, it is fair to say that they have built the confidence to adapt and maneuver around events which are not necessarily part of the plan.
If a routine surgery goes wrong, for instance, then they must perform under pressure, communicate with colleagues about how best to deal with the situation, and then have the confidence to do what is necessary.
It is no different with greater and widespread change. Communication and confidence are the key in embracing it.
The Healthcare System Will Continue to Change for the Better
With new technological advancements happening every year, the healthcare system has evolved into something that looks very different to what it was even thirty or forty years ago.
The reason this should not be a cause for concern is because, in an environment as testing and pressured as hospitals and clinics, any advancement introduced is done so to provide ease and efficiency where it wasn’t before.
This will be crucial in patients’ experiences, and for the doctors too, especially in a post-pandemic world where hospitals must learn once more how to go back to a normal routine.
The scars of the past two years will undeniably linger on the skin of their foundations, and so now is a better time than any to make their lives easier in order to better ours.