Getting To B
Often, we detour on the way from A to B. We under-simplify and over-analyze to the point of exception paralysis, where contingency planning is a goal and not a means to an end.
If you played the game Mouse Trap as a kid you know what I'm talking about. A complex machine is built involving gears, a boot, a bathtub, and a ball bearing rolling down a ramp all to drop a cage on a mouse. This kind of laborious, comical approach to perform a simple task is called a
Rube Goldberg machine, named after the
cartoonist who invented them.
But it isn't funny when you've walked to a reagent refrigerator ten times, moved a keyboard back and forth twenty times, or keyed in your password fifty times. Getting from A to B can be a maze of wallpaper, emails, procedure updates, telephone calls, crowded workstations, noise, and convoluted backtracking. And to avoid errors, systems are often made more complicated and less efficient.
How do we just get to B?
I'll share a story. In a previous position, the hospital redesigned the entrance to put a phlebotomy station beside patient registration, both opposite a patient waiting area. The only problem was that the phlebotomist shut inside the station didn't know who was next in queue. I wanted a small window between the station and registration so clerks could just hand the paperwork through. This proposal went to committee after committee, always with complicated reasons why it wouldn't work: we don't know if it's a firewall, we'll cut wiring, it has to be designed by an architect, there isn't money in the budget, we would hear patients talking, on and on. Individuals with no knowledge of the laboratory made suggestions: faxing, intercom, close circuit television, slipping paper under the door, on and on. In the meantime, phlebotomists felt stupid walking out every few minutes to see if there were patients. Finally, an exasperated maintenance worker grabbed a reciprocating saw and bzzzzzz cut a hole in the sheetrock.
Getting to B can be that easy. Please share your stories.