I participated in new-hire training recently, and found it to my liking. As Abe Lincoln said in a book review: “The people who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.”

The best part of new hire training was their questions. Deep ones, insightful ones, carefully-angled ones. Good questions, all.

This raises a unique debate. Which is better, a solid answer, or the good question that prompted it? Perhaps this seems academic because we work in medicine, and we all know that answers make the medical world function. They are the clinical version of “actionable intel.”

But once you have an answer, it’s defined… it’s confined. Answers, by definition, are static. Once an answer is laying in your hand, it’s given you all that it can. We like that, though, because it feels solid and unchanging.

But we are alive, and life must evolve. You know what’s solid and unchanging? All those dead fossils that evolution left behind. Of course, we must be selective, like evolution. Holding the question: “What should I eat for lunch?” may not change your life. But “How can I treat my spouse and myself better?” just might.

A good question is dynamic. It can grow as you do. Since it’s always open-ended, it can push you to look more closely at a decision made long ago when you were less experienced. It can prompt you to reevaluate old assumptions about yourself and others. A good question, kept close like a friend, can open your eyes to new possibilities because it demands that no stone remain unturned. In medicine, a good question can push you to reexamine until you notice something that you overlooked...

Let’s consider the most important (and common) medical example:

The dead answer: “We’ve always done it this way.”  

The good question: “Is there a better way?”

When it comes to CABG, there certainly is. “We’ve always placed a finger or two on the graft, and if we get a snappy pulse, then that means we're fine to close.” The purpose of CABG is to restore flow, yet most physicians don’t measure that flow. A CABG graft bridges an artery, so it’s literally like building a roadway bridge while wearing a blindfold and then hoping it’ll be strong enough for traffic.

Is there a better way? Transonic offers a system that quickly and easily returns quantitative measurements of flow inside a vessel—while leaving the vessel in its native state.

Your patients deserve quantitative assurance. So do you.

Click here to explore this most excellent question.

Thanks for reading, 

               Transonic Systems, Inc.

                                 The Measure of Better Results