baseball

Do Clinicians Need Spring Training?

Submitted by Steven Lewis on December 6, 2011 - 18:29
Topics: 
MASH
baseball
coaching
practice

Baseball has spring training and no one is exempt from the drills, the repetitions, the fine tuning, the repetition. It is not just a rite of spring; it is fundamental to the pursuit of excellence. Baseball assumes that skills are impermanent, mastery is fleeting, coaching is essential, and practice never ends. Health care assumes that skills once achieved are permanent, mastery comes with time, coaching is unnecessary, and practice is for students. Baseball has it right.

Coming to Terms with Performance Data: My Hero, Duke Snider, Was Not As Good As Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays

Submitted by Steven Lewis on October 18, 2011 - 06:45
Topics: 
MASH
baseball
performance
indicators

Emotional attachments often lead people to overstate the ability and performance of people close to them. Duke Snider, the great Brooklyn Dodger center fielder, was my first sports hero. I thought he was the greatest. He was excellent, but he was only the third best center fielder in New York, after Mantle and Mays (or Mays and Mantle). Coming to grips with the incontrovertible statistical evidence on the relative performance of one's heroes is part of growing up. It's the same in health care: viewing performance through rose-tinted glasses can be harmful to one's health.