Ear
drops for the rear?
A Robert Cialdini wrote the following in
his book Influence: Science and Practice:
“Errors in the medicine patients receive can occur for a variety of reasons.
However, in their book Medication Errors: Causes and Prevention (1981), Temple
University professors of pharmacy Michael Cohen and Neil Davis attribute much
of the problem to the mindless deference given to the ‘boss’ of a
patient’s case: the attending physician. According to Cohen, ‘in
case after case, patients, nurses, pharmacists, and other physicians do not question
the prescription’. Take, for example, the strange case of the ‘rectal
earache’ reported by Cohen and Davis. A physician ordered ear drops to
be administered to the right ear of a patient suffering pain and infection there.
Instead of writing out completely the location ‘Right ear’ on the
prescription, the doctor abbreviated it so that the instructions read ‘place
in R ear’. Upon receiving the prescription, the duty nurse promptly put
the required number of ear drops into the patient’s anus.
“Obviously, rectal treatment of an earache made no sense, but neither the
patient nor the nurse questioned it. The important lesson of this story is that
in many situations in which a legitimate authority has spoken, what would otherwise
make sense is irrelevant. In these instances, we don’t consider the situation
as a whole but attend and respond to only one aspect of it.”
The point Cialdini makes is that in many cases, people simply carry out orders
from their bosses even though they do not appear to make sense.
The lesson for all of us is: THINK before doing anything. If the order from the
boss does not make sense, either we are not understanding the order correctly,
or the boss is giving a wrong order. To simply carry out the order will be the
wrong thing to do.
When we come to work, we not only come with eyes and ears and arms and legs.
We also come with our brains. Use them.
And bosses: Be willing to use your ears more. Listen, for you may be wrong. Your
people have brains. Allow them to use their brains. And to speak out their ideas.
THINK!
You may be wrong... or... your boss may be wrong.
Lim
Siong Guan Head, Civil Service |
