234: Gaming Isn't Brain Surgery
- Thread starter Rich Retractor
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Great article, scary for me as I'm a third year medical student.
Yeah I think I'm going to become a General Practitioner with my own practice now, at least I'll control my hours.
Yeah I think I'm going to become a General Practitioner with my own practice now, at least I'll control my hours.
Great Article.
I have always had a question concerning the medical industry and I am wondering if perhaps you can help?
Why are Doctors & Nurses worked to such a degree? Why do hospitals short staff themselves to the point that people work 38 hour shifts and don't have time to eat?
One would think that when dealing with the constant strain of life or death decisions, Doctors and Nurses both would be given the time to rest and recuperate to be 100%
I know that there is a Nurseing Shortage, due to high stress, high education requirements and low pay compared to workload when compared to doctors, but why does there seem to be such a shortage of Doctors?
I have always had a question concerning the medical industry and I am wondering if perhaps you can help?
Why are Doctors & Nurses worked to such a degree? Why do hospitals short staff themselves to the point that people work 38 hour shifts and don't have time to eat?
One would think that when dealing with the constant strain of life or death decisions, Doctors and Nurses both would be given the time to rest and recuperate to be 100%
I know that there is a Nurseing Shortage, due to high stress, high education requirements and low pay compared to workload when compared to doctors, but why does there seem to be such a shortage of Doctors?
The hectic schedule of many occupations, creates a need for instant responses, and prohibits people from doing research or thinking of creative solutions to the immediate problem at hand, thus decreasing their chance of finding the actual optimal solution. Exploring your problem space takes time. The final ?Eureka!? moment is just that, a moment. However, describing the problem you are trying to solve based on different solution spaces and dimensions, interpolating and extrapolating on each of those, and then formulating a final solution all take time. Sometimes, your brain might even need new inputs, nudges in the right direction that serve as inspiration for a new approach, like the proverbial Newton?s apple. Obviously the timing of these guiding events is not under your control, and it is very likely that you will miss them when they occur if you are trying to handle too many other tasks at that same moment.
From personal experience, I have learned that creative thinking and multitasking under pressure are two states of mind that are impossible to combine. When you are multitasking under time pressure, you are always trying to achieve the most obvious and immediate solution that springs to mind. If you are well-read, experienced, and knowledgeable, the best solution you will achieve will be a minor deviation from the standard text-book solution. You will go for the local optima! On the other hand, if you are given time, and you think creatively, you will be able to come up with solutions that are much closer to the global optimum. Any thinking machine needs time to simulate multiple possible solutions before homing in on a ?great? solution, and humans are no exception.
While I deeply respect you for your dedication, I don?t think the system you are working in, has the possibility to offer the best possible help to your patients. While ?good enough? is certainly better than none, and in some cases the problem at hand dictates immediate action, I can?t help wonder what kind of collective effect the onset of such an ?instant action? strategy to solve problems will have on the people who constantly engage in it. We know that we are training our brains to perform in a certain way whenever we make use of them. How then, will a lifetime of making decisions under time and resource pressures as critical as those in an emergency room.
I think that certain types of games, especially those that allow you to pause and plan before carrying out actions, can help people in lines of work similar to yours to re-train their decision-making process, and that this mental change, is in fact at the core of the pleasure you can derive from playing such games, not just as a way to escape the reality of the world as you start to perceive it, but also as a new way of doing things. Maybe, we should all pay more attention to how our minds work, and maybe this will help us understand what sort of games we SHOULD play.
From personal experience, I have learned that creative thinking and multitasking under pressure are two states of mind that are impossible to combine. When you are multitasking under time pressure, you are always trying to achieve the most obvious and immediate solution that springs to mind. If you are well-read, experienced, and knowledgeable, the best solution you will achieve will be a minor deviation from the standard text-book solution. You will go for the local optima! On the other hand, if you are given time, and you think creatively, you will be able to come up with solutions that are much closer to the global optimum. Any thinking machine needs time to simulate multiple possible solutions before homing in on a ?great? solution, and humans are no exception.
While I deeply respect you for your dedication, I don?t think the system you are working in, has the possibility to offer the best possible help to your patients. While ?good enough? is certainly better than none, and in some cases the problem at hand dictates immediate action, I can?t help wonder what kind of collective effect the onset of such an ?instant action? strategy to solve problems will have on the people who constantly engage in it. We know that we are training our brains to perform in a certain way whenever we make use of them. How then, will a lifetime of making decisions under time and resource pressures as critical as those in an emergency room.
I think that certain types of games, especially those that allow you to pause and plan before carrying out actions, can help people in lines of work similar to yours to re-train their decision-making process, and that this mental change, is in fact at the core of the pleasure you can derive from playing such games, not just as a way to escape the reality of the world as you start to perceive it, but also as a new way of doing things. Maybe, we should all pay more attention to how our minds work, and maybe this will help us understand what sort of games we SHOULD play.
Wow i loved this article.
Though if everything goes as planned i might begin to lead a life where my career does this to me.
Lets hope i keep enough time for my little indulgences.
Though if everything goes as planned i might begin to lead a life where my career does this to me.
Lets hope i keep enough time for my little indulgences.
