The Decision Maker's Dilemma - Advice from a STEMI Coordinator

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Shane Elmore for writing today's blog post. Shane served as Pulsara's Vice President for Clinical Innovation and Development from 2013-2022. You can connect with him on LinkedIn. 

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For some people and organizations, the process of making a decision can be a very challenging thing. If your facility is like the hospital I used to work in as a STEMI coordinator, you talk about the decision at hand in your committees, you have meetings before the “big” meeting, and then you have still more meetings after.

Not only is this process tiring, but for many teams I’ve worked with at least, there is also usually very little analysis of what the impact of the decision will actually be before a conclusion is made. Instead, people focus on throwing out options. “Should we do this?” “I like it but what if we do that instead?” Eventually we get tired of weighing all the options, and simply pick one and run with it - forgoing the necessary evaluation of the new decision from every angle.

It’s only now, after the decision has been made, that you and your team spend every ounce of energy you have second guessing whether it was the right one. This is human nature I suppose, but it doesn’t have to be this way! Do yourself and your team a favor, and instead focus all of that stress and analysis on anticipating the outcome before the decision is made.

But here's the really important part:

After you pick a course of action, refocus your energy on supporting the new decision. Rather than worrying that you should have made a different decision than the one you did, spend your time making the decision you chose become the right one. You will be amazed at how much this practice reduces anxiety for you and your team.

P.S. This works in our personal lives too … but that’s a topic for another day!