Trust me, I’m a… Physicianeer? #43 #cong20

Synopsis:

“I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture.” These are the opening lines of the Hippocratic Oath, recited by newly qualified physicians for millennia and named after Hippocrates of Kos, the ancient Greek physician considered to be the “Father of Medicine”. For over 2000 years following his death, medicine as a profession moved a at glacial pace. But change is coming… introducing, the Physicianeer.

Total Words

917

Reading Time in Minutes

4

Key Takeaways:

  1. 21st Century problems need 21st Century solutions.
  2. Large scale societal issues have enormous knock on consequences for healthcare delivery.
  3. Even traditional careers like medicine can be, and should be, adjusted to deal with the problems we face today (and tomorrow).
  4. Humans are not machines.

About Niall McCormick:

Niall is an engineer, educator and now mature medical student at NUI Galway. He co-founded and ran Colmac Robotics, an award winning educational technology business for 4 years before starting a new adventure and beginning a career in healthcare. As part of the Board of the Camden Education Trust, he advises on innovative educational projects taking place in Ireland and around the world. He is interested in too much but emergency medicine, community and education are at the core.

Contacting Niall McCormick:

 You can connect with Niall on Twitter or via email. mccormickniall@gmail.com

By Niall McCormick

“I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture.”

These are the opening lines of the Hippocratic Oath, recited by newly qualified physicians for millennia and named after Hippocrates of Kos, the ancient Greek physician considered to be the “Father of Medicine”. For over 2000 years following his death, medicine as a profession moved a at glacial pace. It is only since the late 1800’s that significant progress has been made in medicine, surgery and disease understanding. And what a leap we have made… We now understand, at a molecular level, the pathways and progression of many diseases and afflictions. Diseases that were previously considered death sentences are now curable or manageable to the point where the person lives a largely normal life. People staring at St. Peter and the pearly gates can now be brought swiftly back from the brink, thanks to seemingly never-ending new innovations and wonder drugs. And yet, for all we know about the human body, there is still so much left to learn.

It is often remarked that innovation is the lifeblood of business and you can argue that it is also the lifeblood of healthcare. To be a good doctor, you need, among other skills, an analytic eye, an attentive ear, a calm demeanour and a desire to help. To address the scale of challenges facing humans and healthcare in the coming years, we need to add a few new skills into the mix, for a few doctors at least.

Enter stage right, the Physicianeer.

Physicianeer [fi-zish-uhn-eer]
noun

  1. a person who is qualified and licenced to practice medicine.
  2. a person who is skilled in the art of healing.
  3. a person who is competent by virtue of his/her fundamental education and training to apply the scientific method and outlook to the analysis and solution of engineering problems.

Next year, NUI Galway will become the first University in Europe to offer a dual Medicine & Engineering degree, dubbed, the Physicianeer programme. Ireland is already a world leader in the med-tech industry and astonishingly, 8 out of the top 10 med tech companies have a presence in Galway. The goal of the programme is to produce graduates who not only have the ability to diagnose, understand and treat a variety of illnesses and afflictions, but who also possess the skills and knowledge to develop innovative and creative new solutions to meet the ever-growing list of challenges we face in our attempts to deliver healthcare in the 21st Century.

As someone who will (hopefully!) possess, at the end of a rather long journey, a dual qualification in Engineering and Medicine, I can clearly see the endless possibilities that a skilled cohort of physicianeers could realise in the Irish health system of the future. As a student engineer, I was trained in the core competencies of problem-solving, critical analysis and working under pressure. These skills have so far served me well in my additional studies. There is significant cross over between the worlds of medicine and engineering. In many respects, most systems in the human bodies work like engineering problems: Input => Process => Output. Medicine however, is as much an art as it is a science. Humans are not machines, everyone is unique and will respond to illness and treatment in their own slightly unique way.

We have no shortage of problems in Irish healthcare; staff retention, enormous waiting lists, trolley-jammed corridors, novel diseases, rising issues relating to our increasingly sedentary lifestyle, outdated systems… the list is never-ending. But in every problem, there lies an opportunity to devise a solution. In healthcare, solutions reduce suffering, increase quality of life and prevent untimely death. To fully understand and solve the challenges presented by 21st Century healthcare, you need a 21st Century skillset. Enter stage right, the Physicianeer.

November 17, 2020 2020 Society 3.0 No comments yet

“It takes an empowered village to raise a child in the digital age” – The story of Africa Code Week #63 #cong19

Synopsis:

In 2018, the Africa Code Week project introduced 2.3 million young Africans to coding and digital literacy skills. 37 countries | 63,759 free workshops | 22,999 teachers trained and an almost 50:50 balance between boys and girls taking part. Impressive numbers from an initiative in just its fourth year. Africa Code Week is a powerful example of the incredible possibilities when communities come together to address a pressing social problem. This is their story…

Key Takeaways:

  1.  For community projects to work, they need buy in from all of the key partners. It simply will not work without it.
  2. For community projects to thrive, the communities themselves need to take an active role. It is not enough to simply agree to support it. The reason ACW is continuing to grow and thrive is because the communities are empowered to take an active role. They are creators, not just consumers.
  3. Even a seemingly insurmountable challenge, like radically altering the education systems of an entire continent, are possible.
  4. Sometimes, all it takes is a simple, “I wonder if…”

About Niall McCormick:

Niall is a recovering engineer and now mature medical student at NUI Galway. He co-founded and ran Colmac Robotics, an award winning educational technology business for 4 years before starting a new adventure and beginning a career in healthcare. As part of the Board of the Camden Education Trust, he advises on innovative educational projects taking place in Ireland and around the world. He is interested in too much but emergency medicine, community and education are at the core.

Contacting Niall McCormick:

You can follow Niall on Twitter or send him an email.

By Niall McCormick

“It takes an empowered village to raise a child in the digital age” – this is the mission statement of Africa Code Week, one of the most powerful forces for good that is sweeping across the 2nd largest continent on Earth. Since its inception, the project has introduced over 4 million young Africans to coding and digital literacy skills, gained the admiration and support of 28 African governments and 131 implementation partners and, most importantly, has energised communities across the continent.

So, some background on Africa before we get stuck in:

  • It consists of 54 countries (plus two that are disputed), home to 1.2 billion people.
  • It’s big… really big. At just over 30 million square km, it is bigger than the US, China and Canada combined and almost twice the size of Russia.
  • It’s old… really old. Widely recognised as the origin of humans and the Great Apes.
  • It’s diverse, in every sense of the word. From its geography to its wildlife to its wealth distribution, the continent occupies an entire spectrum on every level.
  • It’s incredibly resource rich, holding huge amounts of the world’s platinum, gold, cobalt, diamonds and uranium. Its richest resource though, is its people.

So how do you a start a mammoth project like this? With a simple, “I wonder if…”. Like many great ideas, this one came from a conversation in Ireland and was between two of the trailblazers of this project, German software company SAP’s Head of Corporate Social Responsibility for EMEA, Claire Gillessen-Duval and the Galway Education Centre’s Bernard Kirk. The EU Code Week project had been running in Ireland and other EU countries for a number of years with the aim of introducing young people to coding and digital literacy skills. In 2014, Ireland had the most number of events of any country in the project, despite our small size. This was achieved by establishing key partnerships between schools, industry and government. Claire, seeing an opportunity, uttered the fateful words “I wonder if we could do that in Africa?”, and so, the Africa Code Week initiative was born.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Ireland has played, and continues to play, a key role in this project. The Camden Trust, an Irish education charity are one of the main partners alongside SAP, Irish embassies across the continent play an active role in facilitating government talks and recently Irish Aid have come on board with the project. Despite what we may sometimes think, we are known and respected the world over as educators, carers and peacekeepers in some of the most deprived parts of the planet. The Irish Defence Forces are the longest continuous serving peacekeepers with the United Nations, currently in their 61st year. Thousands of Irish priests, nuns and brothers are credited with providing education and healthcare for some of the poorest communities in the world throughout the 20th Century. Now, in the 21st Century, we are helping to provide digital missionaries.

In its first year, the plan was simple: Run workshops in 10 African countries where SAP had its offices and introduce 20,000 children to digital literacy skills. The results: 88,763 young people from 17 African countries took part in the more than 3,000 free coding workshops. Clearly, this had huge potential.

Potential is one thing, realisation is quite another. In the first year, the burden of training the trainers or running the workshops fell on a relatively small group of volunteers from SAP’s African and European offices along with representatives from the other key partners at the time including the Galway Education Centre and Cape Town Science Centre. If the project was going to reach its potential, it needed to rethink how this whole thing would work. There were two key missing pieces in the puzzle. If you want to change an education system, you absolutely need government involvement. Africa has 54 governments, each with its own agenda and ideas for how education should be delivered. If you want to inspire communities to actively participate in something, you have to empower them.

It is thought that pre-colonial Africa consisted of up to 10,000 different states. Much of the continent was then colonised by European powers and independence struggles lasted until the very recent past. In anything that you do, you should be very cognisant of history. With the best intentions in the world, you will inevitably set yourself up for failure by failing to acknowledge the past. In the case of Africa Code Week, the focus rightly shifted to community empowerment and ownership. Gaining the approval and involvement of several governments, adopting a train the trainer model and recruiting highly talented educators, ambassadors and community leaders from across the continent has propelled the project into its current position where over 4 million young people have been afforded the opportunity to experience coding and technology, opening up opportunities that were previously unimaginable.

The title of this post is, “It takes an empowered village to raise a child in the digital age”. It perfectly encompasses the mission of Africa Code Week as they continue to push the boundaries on what it possible. It began as a CSR project, an opportunity for one of the world’s biggest companies to give something back to the communities it works in, but it has become so much more than that. It is catapulting communities and education systems into the 21st Century and affording young people a potential future that was simply not an option for them even a few short years ago. Its success is largely down to the inspirational leadership from a core group of people steering the project, who have successfully brought all of the right people to the table and sparked the fire. Without key partner support, government backing and community empowerment, it simply wouldn’t work.

See more on Africa Code Week.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”

Nelson Mandela

November 20, 2019 2019 Community No comments yet

I Have a Cunning Plan… #53 #cong18

Synopsis:

Why do some people proclaim with misguided confidence, “I have a great idea!”? Why is it that many people completely overestimate their own abilities in various aspects of life, from driving to managing money to starting businesses? Have you ever had to listen to someone tell you an absolutely ridiculous idea and then watch their shock as you fail to see their apparent genius? Human beings are biologically programmed to overestimate their own abilities This is a recognised psychological effect and you have probably succumbed to it on many occasions. But what is it, and how do you avoid falling into its trap?

4 Key Takeaways:

  1. Ask for feedback from others. Consider it, even if it’s hard to hear.
  2. Keep learning, the more knowledge you have on a subject, the less likely that you will have fatal flaws in your ideas.
  3. Remember the proverb, “When arguing with a fool, first make sure that the other person isn’t doing the exact same thing.”

About Niall McCormick:

Niall is a recovering engineer and now mature medical student at NUI Galway. He co-founded and ran Colmac Robotics, an award winning educational technology business for 4 years before starting a new adventure and beginning a career in healthcare. He is interested in too much but health, community and education are at the core.

Contacting Niall McCormick:

You can follow Niall on Twitter or send him an email.

By Niall McCormick

How good are your driving skills? How healthy are you compared to your friends? How good are you with money? How good are your ideas? It turns out, human beings are biologically programmed to overestimate their own attributes and abilities. Social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger investigated this phenomenon in 1999. The effect was named after the pair as the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

At its core, the Dunning-Kruger Effect implies that many people cannot see their own weaknesses because they lack the wisdom required to see it. They display illusionary superiority which is caused by two issues. They lack the wisdom to make good decisions and they then fail to see those decisions as being bad choices. This superiority complex is not due to ego, it’s due to deficits that they cannot see in themselves. Those with the least ability are often the most likely to overrate their skills and to the greatest extent. On the other hand, experts often do not perceive their specific abilities to be as far above normal as they actually are. In general, most people appear to display some level of this effect at various times. It is often said that a small piece of knowledge is a dangerous thing. You do not know enough to realise that you know virtually nothing at all. Instead, you grasp a small simple chunk and proclaim with sincere, but completely misguided confidence that you know exactly what you are talking about.

Baldrick, the loveable fool from the Blackadder series displays the effect several times over the course of the series when he produces his cunning plan to solve whatever predicament that he and Edmond find themselves in. Of course, the plan is always ridiculous in the extreme and never works, but is delivered by Baldrick as a genuine idea. He is an extreme example of the phenomenon – very little wisdom or subject knowledge resulting in high levels of confidence.

The diagram above perfectly explains the effect. At the beginning, you have absolutely no knowledge therefore your confidence is low. However, after gaining just a small piece of information and successfully digesting it, your confidence grows rapidly. This is the danger zone and should be avoided at all costs. You have now reached the peak of Mount Stupid. You display superior confidence and sometimes arrogance when dealing with the subject matter but with just a small bit more knowledge you begin to realise that all is not as it seems. You quickly fall into the Valley of Despair. You now know that there is so much more to learn and in actual fact, you have only sratched the surface. What follows is dubbed the Slope of Enlightenment when you gain more wisdom and begin to plateau. You are now entering expert territory. Interestingly, your confidence level here is rarely that which was displayed at the beginning, always coming in at a lower level.

So how do we avoid getting stuck on top of Mount Stupid? David Dunning offers 3 sage pieces of advice:

  1. Ask for feedback from others. Consider it, even if it’s hard to hear. Always share your ideas with those that have expertise and knowledge that you might not have. You have nothing to gain from keeping a bad idea all to yourself, falsely believing that it is an excellent one.
  2. Keep learning, the more knowledge you have on a subject, the less likely that you will have fatal flaws in your ideas. Look at the diagram. You can probably overlay an experience from your life that perfectly fits the bill. At the beginning you believed that you knew it all, that it was easy, but as you learned more you realised that in actual fact, you knew nothing. As time progressed and you keep learning, you began to reach the plateau of sustainability.
  3. Remember the proverb, “When arguing with a fool, first make sure that the other person isn’t doing the exact same thing.” Try to stay out of the danger zone and recognise when others are in it.
November 9, 2018 2018 Ideas No comments yet