Today was my first full day with the conference. Themes that we encountered included shared decision making, transparency, and once again what I view as a central point in the conference of physician infallibility. What I witnessed during the discussion regarding shared decision making and transparency was consensus that it is important, but an uncomfortable open-ended nature to definitions. Discussions around what exactly informed consent means, how to evaluate for medical literacy, and what truly constitutes as shared decision making resonate with me. In situations where literacy make it impossible to truly present all factors in a disease process and management decision (especially in the setting of language barriers), can you ever truly achieve a shared decision? I can tell a patient that anaphylaxis is a risk of a medication, but can they ever truly understand what it means to go into anaphylaxis, go into respiratory arrest, to die? When we weigh risks and benefits, how well are we putting these into perspective for patients?
John Nance was engaging and convincing. His case for teamwork and removing hierarchy made me wonder how it could be applied to outpatient care. Outpatient medicine is often done in the silo of a physician with his/her patient, and mistakes happen all of the time. They range from true medical errors to large errors by the entire profession (ie opioid epidemic). Can this airline model be applied to standardize how we care for patients in the clinic?