How to Succeed at Failing, Part 2: Life and Death (Update)

如何从失败中成功,第二部分:生死(更新)

Freakonomics Radio

2025-05-14

53 分钟
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In medicine, failure can be catastrophic. It can also produce discoveries that save millions of lives. Tales from the front line, the lab, and the I.T. department.   SOURCES:Amy Edmondson, professor of leadership management at Harvard Business School.Carole Hemmelgarn, co-founder of Patients for Patient Safety U.S. and director of the Clinical Quality, Safety & Leadership Master’s program at Georgetown University.Gary Klein, cognitive psychologist and pioneer in the field of naturalistic decision making.Robert Langer, institute professor and head of the Langer Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.John Van Reenen, professor at the London School of Economics.  RESOURCES:Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well, by Amy Edmondson (2023).“Reconsidering the Application of Systems Thinking in Healthcare: The RaDonda Vaught Case,” by Connor Lusk, Elise DeForest, Gabriel Segarra, David M. Neyens, James H. Abernathy III, and Ken Catchpole (British Journal of Anaesthesia, 2022)."Estimates of preventable hospital deaths are too high, new study shows," by Bill Hathaway (Yale News, 2020).“Dispelling the Myth That Organizations Learn From Failure,” by Jeffrey Ray (SSRN, 2016).“A New, Evidence-Based Estimate of Patient Harms Associated With Hospital Care,” by John T. James (Journal of Patient Safety, 2013).To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, by the National Academy of Sciences (1999).“Polymers for the Sustained Release of Proteins and Other Macromolecules,” by Robert Langer and Judah Folkman (Nature, 1976).The Innovation and Diffusion Podcast, by John Van Reenen and Ruveyda Gozen.  EXTRAS:"The Curious, Brilliant, Vanishing Mr. Feynman," series by Freakonomics Radio (2024).“Will a Covid-19 Vaccine Change the Future of Medical Research?” by Freakonomics Radio (2020).“Bad Medicine, Part 3: Death by Diagnosis,” by Freakonomics Radio (2016).
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  • Hey there, Stephen Dubner.

  • We are replaying a series we made in 2023 called How to Succeed at Failing.

  • This is the second episode.

  • We have updated all facts and figures as necessary.

  • As always, thanks for listening.

  • In early 2007, Carol Hemmelgarn's life was forever changed.

  • By a failure, a tragic medical failure.

  • At the time, she was working for Pfizer, the huge U.S. pharmaceutical firm.

  • So she was familiar with the health care system.

  • But what changed her life wasn't a professional failure.

  • This was personal.

  • My nine-year-old daughter, Alyssa, was diagnosed with leukemia, ALL, on a Monday afternoon.

  • And she died 10 days later.

  • In this day and age of health care, children don't die of leukemia in nine days.

  • She died from multiple medical errors.

  • She got a hospital-acquired infection, which we know today can be prevented.

  • She was labeled.

  • And when you attach labels to patients, a bias is formed,

  • and it's often difficult to look beyond that bias.

  • So one of the failures in my daughter's care is that she was labeled with anxiety.