Citation

Cristancho SM. Perspect. Med. Educ. 2024; 13(1): 332-335.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, Ubiquity Press)

DOI

10.5334/pme.1399

PMID

38855533

PMCID

PMC11160406

Abstract

It's been a year since I had the hunch that I needed new glasses. Things had been getting blurry, but I refused to have my eyes checked. "It's clear enough" was the story I kept telling myself. Looking back, that hesitancy reflects my human tendency to resist change. I loved my current glasses, and I hated the idea of having to adjust to a new pair. But then I fell while running: that blurry thing I thought was a tree leaf was in fact a rock. That fall ruined my months of biathlon training, so I had enough with blurriness. I went to the optometrist. And if you have ever done one of these appointments, you know how it goes: they get you down to the blurriest you can handle by changing the set of lenses, and then they bring you back to a level of crisp clarity. I am not fond of my new glasses (yet), but I love the clarity they afford me while running.

What does getting new glasses have to do with healthcare? It has to do with the analogies we have become accustomed to as we think about healthcare work. Those analogies can get blurry and may need reassessment and change to refocus us. Case in point, the aviation analogy.

Language: en

Keywords

Humans; *Aviation/trends