Reflections: Starting out on a Journey

Yesterday, we came full circle with our Telluride Experience with a case review of Lewis Blackman. It made me reflect on how our thinking has changed from immediately blaming one individual, to identifying problems and suggesting solutions. It is within our nature to have a visceral reaction to these emotional outcomes, but as Kamron emphasized, the importance of Heart, Head, Heart, I am starting to see just how brilliant that idea is. It is important to feel in medicine, it is important to maintain our emotions while providing care, but to allow ourselves space to grieve, to feel happiness, to feel anger, to feel motivated, to feel human. I think this entire Telluride Experience has been an entire exercise in just that, experiencing the pain of losing a patient to preventable harms, to feeling the inspiration to make change, to feeling anger towards a broken system, to feeling what it means to establish human connections as we did each and every moment while out on the mountain. I am eternally grateful for the people, the stories, the wisdom that congregated so perfectly this past week. I am sure we will all meet again in the future as Telluride alumni, and I look forward to that day. Thank you to everyone who participated, everyone who supported this experience and everyone who was touched and will be affected by the steps we’ve taken to better the care of our fellow human beings.