Are You as Good as You Think? – Simon Carley

Are You as Good as You Think? – Simon Carley

Simon Carley has us asking ourselves some confronting questions about our abilities in his SMACC Chicago talk ‘Are You as Good as You Think?’. Carley has us delve into our confidence, competencies and whats makes for a good self learning environment.

Initially Carley asks us how good we think we are at driving? He then sites studies of Australian and European driver responses, of which 93% of Aussies and 69% europeans rated themselves as above average drivers. Carley uses this  example to suggests that, as individuals we are not particlarly good at rating ourselves, and inexperienced people tend to rate themselves more highly than experienced one –  Illusory Superiority Cognitive Bias.  Carley asks since you can’t have awesome without average… How do we measure ourselves?. He offers us  the following tools and processes to establish better self learning and teaching processes;

* Reflection Diaries – revisit it (clinically and physically), follow up.
* Peer reviews: 1:1 feedback doesn’t work. It needs to planned with clear goals and objectives such as;
* Clarify Expectations
* Review logistics
* Focus Lens
* Plan Feedback
* Observe Event (i.e teaching)
* Debrief and Action
* Clinical Feedback
* Follow up – not just the exceptionally sick patients, but follow up with the routine ones.
* Build Peer Reviews into your practice.

Carley finishes by asking us to choose on of the items below and commit ourselves to making happen within the month.

I am going to …
* Organise Trainee Feedback
* Focused 360 Assessment
* Keep a Patient/Teaching Diary
* Be Peer Reviewed
* Reflect
* Develop Team Feedback
* Follow up with Patients
* Something Else
* Nothing I am already Awesome!

What have you committed too?