What If We Studied Success As Carefully As We Study Problems?

In medicine, we spend a great deal of time studying problems.

We study complications.

We study what went wrong.

And rightly so.

There is much to learn from those things.

But I sometimes wonder:

What if we studied success as carefully as we study problems?

My son Alex survived injuries that many people do not survive.

His spinal cord was nearly severed above C1.

His brainstem was injured.

He spent about 7 weeks in a coma.

He depends on a ventilator and diaphragm pacer.

Yet more than twenty-one years later, he is healthy, engaged, living in the community, and directing his own life.

That reality raises a question.

Not:

“Why is he so complex?”

But:

“Why is he doing so well?”

That is a different question.

And different questions often lead to different discoveries.

Perhaps we would learn more about:

• continuity of care,
• individualized support,
• community living,
• physiologic stability,
• caregiver knowledge,
• autonomy,
• and long-term outcomes.

Perhaps we would discover that some of the things helping people succeed are not always the things we measure.

Perhaps we would learn that preserving stability can sometimes be as important as creating change.

Perhaps we would learn that listening carefully to individuals who live inside these realities every day has value…. 24/7/365…Alex does not get a vacation from the realities he faces. 

Perhaps we would discover that success leaves clues too.

Because every successful outcome has a story behind it…sometimes, lots of stories. 😉

Stories of decisions, adjustments, and of  adaptations…like using a deer stand harness to hold Alex up over a treadmill to do locomotor training because I could not get him to a spinal cord rehab facility.

Ample stories of lessons learned.

A story of what worked, how it worked, and why. 

Maybe those stories deserve more attention.

Maybe success deserves to be studied too.

Because sometimes the most important lessons are not found in asking:

“What went wrong?”

Sometimes they are found in asking:

“What went right?”

#TheGoalIsLife

#ButGod