As I think you all know, I believe that there are very few situations in life, if any, that don't lend themselves to elucidation by referring to sports.
Take my current project, where a group of my classmates of the Class of 1967 at Harvard Medical School have started a Humanistic Medicine Initiative, to try to help the current students and trainees develop their knowledge and skill in the caring side of medicine (“caring,” as opposed to the “scientific” side.) Part of this is, how do we help them learn to communicate effectively with patients? I heard that the Kaiser system, which tries to attack every problem systematically, has been teaching a standardized system of communication to its new clinicians. For instance, how long do you wait before you jump into a patient's recitation of his or her story? The usual wait is somewhere under 10 seconds, I think, and Kaiser wants to up that to 40 seconds. Then they have standard ways to start, words to use. Will they succeed in this standardized approach? Maybe so, because maybe the level of current communication is so low there is no where to go but up.
Somewhat akin to that is the recent finding that patients like the empathy of AI better than they like the empathy of real doctors really communicating on their own.
I ran across a more intriguing and sophisticated effort than those, or at least one aiming at a higher level result, in a JAMA article that I put away to save, but which I now (typically) cannot find. I think this was about how to deliver bad news or regret, and how to do it with empathy. As it happens, the author of the article was a resident in medicine doing the learning, and his father was a specialist in medical communications. So the author was going to show his father how he had learned to do it. Piece of cake, he thought – I've been watching my father do this my whole life! I know this gig!
So he does it, he follows all the rules he has learned from watching his father, all the examples he has seen. Then he turns to his father and says, well, how did I do? He naturally expects an A.
Terrible, says the father.
What? Why? I did everything that you do!
That's the problem, says the father, you did me. Now you have to learn to do you.
Crushed, the son has learned that it's not so easy, because we are humans, we are all different, and we all have our own way.
I don't remember how the article went on from there – I'll know when I finally find it – but the point was clear, and it makes intuitive sense. Well done, well written.
So, as I said, there is always a sports analogy to be found. There will always be a way to illuminate the point through sports. I searched my mind, and what came to mind was hitting. There are many great hitters, and they share some characteristics in their swings, but they are all so different! You can watch a swing with the hitter being otherwise unidentifiable – no number or name on the back, no face to recognize -- and some of them you can get immediately right on the nose, and some you can make a good guess at, and there can be such a wild variety of swings, but some you can classify as good, some as bad, so can tell that some of them come from the same hitting coach (does the name Charley Lau ring a bell) and so resemble each other – but I guarantee you, every single one is different.
And it's such a stereotypic task! It's amazing that there is such a variety of approaches! The best hitters share some characteristics -- there are the basics -- and many bad hitters share the same weaknesses, but none are quite the same. And some will work for some people, and others will work for others, they can learn from each other, there are certain basics, but each one must fit the individuality of the batter.
And, I would add, some work best with some pitchers, and some work best with others. It's a combination. Some patients need one thing, some patients need another, and there are some hitters who can hit some pitchers, and others can hit others, etc., pairs of pitchers and batters that work and some that don't.
And then, think of how many different ways there are of shooting a basketball!
I won't go on, because either I've made my point or I haven't, you accept it now or you don't. Just like some people like what I write and others don't.
But to me, I made my point. Which is that sports is not just pointless games, but in fact, they encapsulate life, one way or another.
Which is a point to rebut my father, long gone now, but still I work to both please and rebut him – Dad, sports are not just a worthless waste of time! Sports are life itself!
Budd Shenkin
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