Many a time the solution for your problem may not be within your head. But inside someone else’s. Especially someone who is unconnected or unrelated to you. All you need is an egoless mind to search, seek and scoop it up.

In the mid-90s, Great Ormond Street Hospital, a children’s clinic in London was doing something it shouldn’t. It was killing children!

They didn’t do it on purpose but were doing it nevertheless. Their cardiac ward was plagued with high mortality rates. The doctors studied the surgery processes and found the culprit. A large number of fatalities were occurring due to problems during handovers between the operating room and the ICU.

After the children were operated, the medical staff had to transfer their life support equipment like monitoring lines, ventilator and vasodilators twice. First, between the operating room and a wheeled bed for transport. Second, back to a bed in the ICU.

Though the entire process took just 15 minutes, it was infested with screw ups. Each child had a peculiar case history and the learnings during the surgery was getting lost during the handovers. The resultant errors in knowledge transfer were proving fatal. Equipment problems and staff goof-ups were also compounding the problem.

No one wants to see a child die. Not definitely the doctors who were operating them. Yet, that’s what was happening and at an alarming rate.

One day, after a long surgery, two doctors sat down in front of a TV for a break. As luck would have it, what they watched on TV changed things. And saved lives!

It was not a medical show. Nor was it a hospital documentary. It was Formula 1.

The doctors watched the drivers race around the track and pull over to the side of the circuit for a pit stop where the crew took over. They pulled out the tires, filled the tank with gas, screwed on new tires and jumped out of the way so the car could vroom back onto the track. All within seven seconds!

The doctors felt what they saw was much like what their own handover process in the hospital was. But the car crew made the hospital staff seem like incompetent idiots.

The doctors called the car crew and the next week they were with a Ferrari pit team in Italy. The mechanics demonstrated their process. While outwardly it looked similar to what the hospital staff were doing, the differences were painfully obvious.

The pit crew were meticulously planning out every possible scenario of what could go wrong during a handover and practiced each scenario until it became habit. On the other hand, the hospital staff were just handling work on the fly.

While both staff operated within similar sized workspace, the car crew seemed to have lots of physical space between each other while the hospital staff were constantly getting in each other’s way.

The car crew had a dedicated overseer who was directing the pit stop crew. He stood back, watched and directed the operation holistically. Only after he waved his flag was the car allowed back onto the track. But in the hospital room full of surgeons, anaesthesiologists and nurses, there was no one person to direct everyone.

The next difference was in the noise level. The car crew worked in complete silence. In contrast, the operating room was full of banter and chatter. The staff not only were talking about operating procedures but were also chitchatting during the procedure.

The doctors returned to London and put in place a complete revamp. They added space to the working area around the bed. They routinised the handover wherein each staff were prescribed a clear set of actions. Contingencies that could arise in every possible scenario was mapped out and potential solutions were practiced.

The head anaesthesiologist became the dedicated overseer – the man who was to stand back, observe and direct the whole operation and handover. Also, the staff was asked to shup up and work in silence!

Did it work?

Far better than if the doctors had asked handover experts from another hospital for help. Learnings from a completely unrelated industry reduced handover error by a staggering 66%. More children started walking out of the hospital……alive!

For all you know, one of them may even grow up and become a Formula 1 winner!