When our first kid was born, my experience in the hospital was a rush—I was anxious, exhausted, overstimulated. My attention span was short, and my short term memory was shot.
Names of nurses and doctors? Forgotten. A play-by-play commentary later requested by family? Impossible.
So I was delighted that the experience of accompanying my wife to the birth of our second son found me more receptive and less scattered.
I could actually pay attention to what was going on, and one thing I noticed was the fanatic thoroughness of the hospital staff.
Questions were asked of my wife, then asked again. And again. And again.
I was tempted to roll my eyes at what seemed like bureaucratic overkill—but the insistent question-asking and note-taking and patient-history-telling is rooted in a deliberate, coordinated attempt to eliminate the possibility of mistakes in an environment where mistakes can have serious consequences.
The regimens I witnessed—whether it was the oddity of my wife being asked her name and DOB by a nurse who damn well already knew the answers, or the spectacle of three separate people counting the number of instruments present in the room—had the aspect of theater to them, but it was theater with the goal of short-circuiting one of our worst impulses: making assumptions.
Assumptions are short cuts that promise to make life easier. And sometimes they do! And sometimes they don’t.
When it’s life and death, it’s comforting to see people in charge forgo thar risk and choose instead to make none at all.
Taylor Coe 