As the 2022-2023 NFL regular season ended and the playoffs systematically eliminated the pool of Super Bowl hopefuls from fourteen to two teams, I thought of the lessons I have learned from football and their parallels to nursing.
Watching football is "must see tv” for me. I have always admired the talent, dedication, and
commitment it takes to be an athlete that succeeds at the highest levels. However, despite their natural and cultivated talents, even the best players can make costly mistakes on the field. At the end of a game, it takes a certain level of professionalism to talk about the mistakes that may have contributed to a team loss.
In the nail-biting division final between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Kansas City Chiefs, a late hit on the Chiefs quarterback by a Bengals defensive player resulted in a costly penalty that ultimately cemented the win for the Chiefs. When the game was over, the defensive player was seen on the bench, crying and dejected because as he stated later, he had “let down his team”. But as the rest of the losing team went to their locker room, one of his teammates stopped and knelt down in front of him; reassuring him that it was ok, this was not his fault, he would learn from the bitter taste of defeat, and they would come back stronger next year.
I admired the interaction and thought about how sometimes we are not always supportive of a colleague who has made a mistake. How do we respond if an error is made? Do we point the finger in blame, or do we say, “what can we do to prevent this from happening again?” This error was not about one person, because under different circumstances anyone could have made the same error. This teammate illustrated coaching at its best. He didn’t berate his colleague; he didn’t give him the silent treatment or whisper behind his back. He stood with him, shouldered the loss with him and let him know that, together, they would not make the same mistake twice.
Medical error is the 3rd leading cause of death in the U.S. 1 How we handle the mistakes of
members on our team can impact if the error will re-occur, if the individual wants to remain on the team or if the lessons learned from the error provide an opportunity to permanently fix the problem. Just culture is the concept that counterbalances the tightrope between honest reporting and accountability in a supportive learning environment. 1 If we are to continue to learn from mistakes and improve outcomes, we must create an environment that is conducive to acknowledging the error while learning to eradicate it.
1 Paradiso, L. & Sweeney, N. (2019). Just culture: It's more than policy. Nursing Management,
50(6):38-45. DOI: 10.1097/01.NUMA.0000558482.07815.ae
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