“Personal Best: Top Athletes and Singers Have Coaches. Should You?”, 2011-10-26 (; backlinks; similar):
[Meditation by doctor interested in medical improvement/progress (elsewhere, checklists). In tennis, he had improved his performance enormously after just minutes of coaching from a young man who pointed out his errors. Coaches are used in many areas and often spot problems that highly-competent trained professionals continue to make. A good coach is emotionally supportive, careful, speaks with credibility so they are not reflexively dismissed, brings an independent eye to highlight blind spots, and always finds a way they can push themselves to improve and deliberately practice.
Gawande, having noticed his surgery success rates plateaued, considers a ‘medical coach’. Doctors are intensively taught up until they become full-fledged doctors, at which point they are cut loose to act as little gods in their domains, with no supervision. Yet, they are almost surely not perfect, and their skills may degrade over time. In domains far less important, like entertainment (arts/athletics), no individual believes they are perfect and they use personal coaches to constantly critique themselves, spot errors that untrained eyes would not, and strive for improvement. Why don’t we do the same thing in important things like surgeries? Why not coaches for doctors? Does the mystique of doctors intimidate themselves (and patients) away from acknowledging error and fallibility and improving?
Gawande talks a former medical professor into coaching him. Gawande, while proud of his surgical technique, is surprised how many flaws his coach notes, and embarrassed; he had become used to working on his own, with no accountability or external critique. Other doctors made fun of the idea of coaching (coaching for thee, not for me). But he worked on his errors, and feels positive about his improvements and the possibility of breaking out of his plateau.]