Here’s the idea from week 3 of the 200 words project from “To Sell is Human” by Dan Pink.
The skill of a radiologist lies in finding abnormalities that the patient and physician aren’t looking for, such as unexpected cysts.
A group of radiologists were provided with reports including the patient’s photographs for 3 months in a row. They were then randomly asked to screen some of the reports from the previous 3 months, this time with no photographs. Radiologists screen a few 100 reports a day and would find it very hard, if not impossible, to remember which reports had already been screened.
The results showed that they were far less meticulous and less accurate without photos on the report. A reminder of the fact that the person on the report is a human being made a big difference to their accuracy.
This practice has been adopted in top laboratories since and is why our photographs are taken when our blood samples are analyzed. Reminding ourselves that our customers/clients/human are human goes a long way in improving the quality of our work.
‘Make it personal – A great radiologist said that he trained himself to look at every scan as if he was looking at his father’s.’ | Dan Pink
A Learning a Day 