You Can't Make A Recipe For Something

At Times, In Medicine, You Feel You Are Inside A Colossal And Impossibly Complex Machine Whose Gears Will Turn For You Only According To Their Own Arbitrary Rhythm. The Notion That Human Caring, The Effort To Do Better For People, Might Make A Difference Can Seem Hopelessly Naive. But It Isn't.

You Want To Ensure People Can Do It Right 99 Percent Of Time. When We Have To Fire One Of Our Surgical Trainees, It Is Never Because They Dont Have The Physical Skills But Because They Dont Have The Moral Skills - To Practise And Admit Failure.

No Matter What Measures Are Taken, Doctors Will Sometimes Falter, And It Isn't Reasonable To Ask That We Achieve Perfection. What Is Reasonable Is To Ask That We Never Cease To Aim For It.

What Is Needed, However, Isn't Just That People Working Together Be Nice To Each Other. It Is Discipline. Discipline Is Hard--harder Than Trustworthiness And Skill And Perhaps Even Than Selflessness. We Are By Nature Flawed And Inconstant Creatures. We Can't Even Keep From Snacking Between Meals. We Are Not Built For Discipline. We Are Built For Novelty And Excitement, Not For Careful Attention To Detail. Discipline Is Something We Have To Work At.

People Underestimate The Importance Of Dilligence As A Virtue. No Doubt It Has Something To Do With How Supremely Mundane It Seems. It Is Defined As "the Constant And Earnest Effort To Accomplish What Is Undertaken."... Understood, However, As The Prerequisite Of Great Accomplishment, Diligence Stands As One Of The Most Difficult Challenges Facing Any Group Of People Who Take On Tasks Of Risk And Consequence. It Sets A High, Seemingly Impossible, Expectation For Performance And Human Behavior.