Real ER: The Bronx

Last night as I was jumping back and forth between a ball game and car building show I stumbled onto a show called Real ER: The Bronx.  As the name implies its a documentary style show of life in the ER at a hospital in The Bronx.

Regan was in the other room studying for her final exam in her EMT class and recognized the sounds and dialogue and came in to see what I was watching.  She was captivated.  I asked her if I was going to cause her to fail her exam.  "Probably" was her response as she settled in to watch (She took the exam today and passed).

As patients were brought into the ER, I'd ask Regan what she knew about their conditions.  I was amazed at how much she knew.  She sounded like a doctor to me.  There was one patient with a collapsed lung and they were inserting a tube into his chest, through the ribs to fix the lung.  They used used words I didn't understand, but she did, and so did all the supporting medical staff that was treating this patient who had been stabbed and was going to die if the staff treat his wound properly.

As I watched the show I saw up to 10-12 people working together to diagnose and treat the patients.  They used a common language.  One they had learned as they grew into medical professionals.  One that was clear and consistent.  One that took a very complex, high stress, situation and simplified it.

Imagine if I stepped onto the scene in that ER.  Could I figure out that the guy had been stabbed and had a collapsed lung?  Probably eventually.  Could I figure out that he needed a tube inserted to revive the lung?  Probably eventually.  I'm very confident that the patient would have been dead for days, maybe weeks before I could solve the problem.  And that was just one case that evening.

Application??  What is our common language?  Everyday we have as many cases come into our store as they do in that ER.  3,000 customers.  30+ team members.  IT.  Fryers.  Corporate.  Food Safety.  Reports...

As leaders, how are we diagnosing each case?  With our own personal language and systems?  With added drama?  Or, with a common language and common tools?  Professionally?

Can a doctor... I mean leader, step in and take the case you've been working on and smoothly proceed?  Or, would there be excessive time spent explaining things?

We have this common language.  We have these common tools.

Values
Toolbox (ESRC, SBI, 3 for 3, 4 Disciplines of Execution...)
Checklists (lots of checklists in the world of medicine)
@CFA
Podcasts

Are you like the doctors in this show that understand their role is to see the next patient, diagnose and begin treating them as efficiently as possible?  Or, are you like me walking into that ER and trying to solve it my way, eventually losing the patient, even if I eventually figured it out, just too slowly?

As leaders, we must control the systems and language we use.  The more consistent we are, the more effectively we will execute our Mission.  Be Remarkable.     

Even if you get uneasy with blood, I encourage you to google the show or find it on TV, or any other documentary of life in the ER.  Pay attention to how professional the medical staff remains.  Pay attention to what they say.  How they say it.  We think our environment can be high stress.  Maybe we are creating a good bit of the stress in how we respond to the cases that are coming in.  What if we approached the cases with the same professional urgency that is demonstrated in this show?  Think stress would be higher or lower?  It's easy to wish others would do this but we can only control one person.  Ourselves.  Let's each do our part to create this professional urgency in our culture.