Move Over Oprah, Here Comes the PANAnac Booklist!

I would like to start this post with a confession. I don’t like reading fiction! That’s right, I have never made it past the first couple pages of the Harry Potter’s series. I really enjoy learning something as I read, or hearing from someone’s personal experiences, research or opinions. To be honest, some of my “readings” include audiobooks to help me fall asleep. Do I remember anything in the morning? Absolutely not, but I like to pretend that my subconscious mind is learning while I sleep.

Ok Val, but how does this relate to nursing? One of my most recent reads had some fascinating facts that actually debunk some of our famous nursing beliefs and superstitions. Is nursing intuition really a thing? Do full moons and Friday the 13th really equal mass hospital mayhem? Daniel Kahneman provides insight on the human mind in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. He separates the thought process between fast (automatic, quick action) and slow (effortful mental activity) and connects how these affect our biases and decision making.

We are not the unicorns we think we are

Kahneman explains that “expert intuition” is not a superpower after all. Ever have that gut feeling that something is wrong with your patient but you can’t quite put your finger on it? The patient looks somewhat okay but your spidey senses are buzzing telling you otherwise? Well, unfortunately, this is not a magical nursing power after all. Kahneman points out that, “the situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition.” Essentially, your subconscious has picked up a change in your patient’s presentation and recalls/relates it to previous situations where the patient’s condition worsened. Without even performing a deliberate assessment, your mind is continuously assessing your patient thus providing these cues and triggers. Personally, I think that’s pretty magical!

There is a reason why you suddenly can’t do med math during a Code

Kahneman also talks about how each person has an attention budget that is divided up to the tasks that we do. When we go beyond our attention budget, this causes us to freeze and possibly fail at the task at hand. Applying this concept to a Code situation, in order to effectively calculate a med dose you will have to learn to focus your attention only to that task and not try to multitask. You can do several things at once, but only if they are easy and undemanding. Time pressure also drives your mind to race rather than focus attention. Kahneman points out that to gain ease in such tasks, one must acquire sharp focus as well as collect experiences to enhance the ease of thinking slow (voluntarily allocating attention to the effortful mental activity that demands it).

A full moon is a full moon

The mind likes to see patterns even when there are none. It is easy for your brain to associate that your crazy busy shift is totally due to a full moon or Friday the 13th, especially if or when people surrounding you have the same impression. I am here to tell you that the lunar phase has nothing to do with how crazy the ER/OR/Delivery Room gets sometimes. There are actual studies to prove it!

Kahneman’s book can be a little heavy at times and requires focused attention (he’s trying to prove his point here) but was refreshingly thought provoking. And to further prove his theories, none of his examples really relate to nursing but because I was the reader, my fast unconscious lazy associative brain made all those connections without me even noticing.

I hope this may inspire you to pick up this book up at your library or favorite book store. I’d love to hear what you think of some of Kahneman’s concepts, feel free to comment below!