ER Docs Learn from a Formula One Team
Larry Osborne, Innovation’s Dirty Little Secret (Zondervan, 2013), pp 130-131
What could a team of medical doctors possibly learn about practicing medicine from a Formula One racing team? If the doctors remain teachable, maybe they could learn a lot. That’s what happened at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. After completing a twelve-hour emergency transplant, the head doctor watched a Formula One race. As a car pulled into the pit, he noted that the crew changed the tires, filled it with fuel, cleared the air intakes, and sent it off in seven seconds.
It struck him that it often took thirty minutes for his team of doctors and nurses to untangle and unplug all the wires and tubes and transfer a patient from surgery to ICU. He wondered if a racing team could teach a hospital how to run an emergency room.
Imagine the pushback from the trained medical staff when the McLaren and Ferrari racing teams showed up to advise them on how to improve their emergency services. After all, what did they know about surgery or patient care? Nothing. But what did they know about speeding up complex processes? Everything.
As a result, after visiting with the Formula One racing team, the hospital staff initiated major changes, including better training, new procedures, a step-by-step checklist covering each stage of the handover, and a diagram so that everyone knew their exact physical position as well as their precise task. It almost halved handover errors.
The hospital team’s problems were solved by a group of people who knew nothing about the practice of emergency room medicine. But the Formula One team’s expertise allowed them to easily spot what the hospital tribe had missed. And the medical team had the humility and teachability to learn from the outsiders.
Gentleness has several adjectives used to understand it. Acting in a manner that is mild or even-tempered, meekness, humility, consideration, and even courtesy. In the above illustration, we see consideration and courtesy in laying aside one’s earned credentials for possible benefit to others through a seemingly foreign partnership. And depending on one’s ego, a partnership that is deemed less-than-desirable in terms of education and social status. There is gentleness, humility and meekness displayed from powerful and learned people. The teachable spirit of the hospital staff and even the willingness of the Formula One team to engage resulted in life saving new practices. Both groups enjoyed seeing their cooperation enhance other’s lives and perhaps their very own if they or loved ones ever have the need to go through an emergency room afterwards! They laid down their authority and existing knowledge. It is unusual.
As Christ followers, we have been gifted with God’s power within us through His Holy Spirit. We can yield to His power, allowing it to emerge as fruit from us. We are enabled and gifted, and ultimately invited to have faith. To accept His grace and grow His fruit.
The Different Faces of Love
Missionary Dr. Kenneth Moyner, quoted by John Stott, “A Vision for Holiness,”
Joy is love exalting and peace is love at rest.
Patience, love enduring in every trial and test.
Gentleness, love yielding to all that is not sin.
Goodness, love in actions that flow from Christ within.
Faith is love’s eyes opened, the loving Christ to see.
Meekness, love not fighting but bowed at Calvary.
Temperance, love in harness and under Christ’s control.
The Christ is love in person, and love, Christ in the soul.
Preaching Today, Tape No. 94.
But the mentality behind the fruit of the Spirit is the mentality of faith depending upon grace.
John Piper
Faith, depending on the free gift of grace, grows this fruit of the Spirit. I believe God, I embrace His grace for the broken me and this grace strengthens me to lean on Him, trust His definition of who I am in Him which enables me to yield and not seek power and control though through my flesh I might attempt without Him.
Gentleness. Love yielding. It is quite the opposite of weakness. Meekness or gentleness is the power and strength created from submitting to God’s will. Abandoning self-reliance for God-reliance. Gentle, humble, yielded, mild, even-tempered.
Join us this Sunday and let’s deepen our understanding of Supernatural Gentleness together! If you cannot be with us in person, feel free to download the Bible study materials for your personal use by following one of these links: PowerPoint Slides, PDF File.
You can also find the video of this session on our YouTube channel soon after the meeting concludes. And lastly, you could follow this link to download other studies in this series: Supernatural Fruit if you happened to miss one of our prior studies.
I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you safe, now, and always.
Yours in Christ,
Eric Glover
The Gospels Class
Brentwood Baptist Church
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