Worthwhile Activity and Worthwhile Outcomes

摘要

We are all inundated with a wide variety of professional tasks, some of which we believe have a positive impact on the medical care environment, and some perhaps whose impact we are not so sure about. We all address these tasks under a condition of limited resources, conflicting demands, and in some cases at risk of our jobs being outsourced to a vendor who will do less.. .for less.We may or may not apply effort proportional to outcome, and we may confuse internal outcomes (all work completed on time), with external outcomes (measurable contribution to the organization).There is perhaps no clearer example of this dilemma than in the area of preventive maintenance and/or safety and functionality inspections. The great debate here is how much effort should be applied to which equipment and at what frequency; and how much of the planned work must actually be accomplished. What is often lost in this debate is remembering to ask ourselves why, exactly, we are doing what we are doing. Global responses here are often not real answers. For example, saying we do it "to assure the safety of the medical equipment", or "to enhance health care" have a noble sound, but lack a real connection between the effort and the outcome. On the other hand saying we do it because JCAHO makes us may be true, but this is hardly intellectually satisfying.