Tag: Nhs

The NHS is in trouble.

How much trouble?

Well…how long is a piece of string?

At a micro level, you’ve got the frustration of Medics who are overworked, inadequately supported, and silently struggling with depression and suicide.

And at a macro level, you’ve got the usual suspects of: hospital closures, huge waiting times, poor allocation of resources…not to mention the role of Brexit in exacerbating these issues.

So the question is: what can we do to fix things? How can we make things better?

Answer: ask a genius outside the NHS to help us fix it.

A genius like…Albert Einstein.

Even though he’s been dead for over 60 years, his brilliance has lived on, through online memes featuring statements like:

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

However, if you had to pick just ONE of Einstein’s many brilliant insights and apply it to fixing the NHS, I believe it would be this one:

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Think crazy

If you were to sum up the history of human innovation in just 5 words, it would look like this:

Today’s brilliance was yesterday’s bonkers.

Switching from horses to cars…crazy.

Flying through the air in a metallic aircraft…crazy.

Running a mile in under 4 minutes…crazy.

Convincing Doctors to wash their hands with soap…crazy.

Women voting, a black President of the USA, the telephone, the Internet, driverless cars, space travel to Mars…

Today’s brilliance was yesterday’s bonkers.

This means that the cure for cancer, or AIDS or cystic fibrosis could be hiding in plain sight…disguised as a ludicrously impractical “mad hatter”.

This means that the solution to that extremely complex situation that you’re dealing with is probably much simpler than you dare to imagine.

This means that the key to solving the global healthcare challenges facing humanity…is simply empowering and encouraging each of us to think and look like one of “the crazy ones”.

Get some sleep, do some aerobic exercise, and think differently for 10 minutes each morning.

That’s how practical this idea is.

Given humanity’s excellent track record in seeing a brilliant innovation and quickly dismissing it as crazy, ridiculous or impossible…it stands to reason that we should be more intentional about exploring today’s crazy in order to discover tomorrow’s normal.

In other words, make time each day to think differently…to think crazy.

How do we do that, particularly in a highly regulated, litigation-rife industry such as healthcare?

Or even more importantly, how do you become more intentional about exploring the ideas and interests that you’ve earmarked as impractical, impossible or “for when I have time”?

Yes, you.

That’s the real question.

Because when we talk about “the NHS”, we’re really talking about the people who make up the NHS…people like you and me.

And if we will dare to think differently, dare to look like a fool, dare to ask a silly question today in order to discover a brilliant answer tomorrow…then we will not only transform the NHS, but also the lives of generations to come.

Image: @hughmacleod