What's the game?

Do you ever ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing?

Do you ever think that there must be a better way of doing things?

Do you then decide that sometime in the future you'll need to think about it?

You do!- Fantastic, you are normal, i.e. average.

Most of us do question our decisions in clinical practice, it's right that we should. But how often does this reflection prompt you to do more than justification in a post hoc kind of way?

The next time you feel that there must be a better way of doing the task, handling the patient or dealing with a problem just stop. Take a mental snapshot of the scenario, and later that day instead of wasting 30 minutes watching the latest Scrubs episode just sit and think about what the problem really was, not just the immediate task, but how did that task come about what really was the underlying reason that events transpired in the way they did. Ask the why, until you reach answers outside of the need to demonstrate some CPD or reading of a particular research paper.

You will not always get answers to your questions, but at least you will really start to understand the problem.