Disclaimer: The concept of anti-fragility is a new one to me and while not completely through the book (Antifragile-Nassim Taleb) the concept is one I’ve wanted to explore and try my hand at applying to my life and in doing so trying to explain it while applying it to different things in my life.
The book explains that we have a full definition of ‘fragile’ but there is no word for the opposite. The author introduces the concept of ‘antifragile’ which we have defined out of a couple of quotes below.
“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. The anti-fragile loves randomness and uncertainty, which also means-crucially-a love of errors, a certain class of errors. Antifragility has a singular property of allowing us to deal with the unknown, to do things without understanding them-and do them well.”
How can this concept be applied to the practitioner (which is the focus of this post). We can be resilient in our patient care by taking the lessons and learning opportunities from care/interventions when they don’t go completely how we planned. We absorb the “shock” and we stay the same. We approach every injury that seems to be the same with the same tools that we always use. See the nail, use a hammer. See the screw, give the hammer a try. Obviously, this might not be the best for the care of the patient, when in the fact, every patient’s issues and pain are unique to them.
This is where I think being ‘antifragile’ in your patient care is not only a win for the patient but a win for the practitioner. If we look at the definition above, we want the randomness and the uncertainty and the errors that come along with something that doesn’t to exactly as we had planned. This is where we can excel and absorb the shocks that we could just pass by, we use them to get better. If there is an ‘error’ in diagnosis or care, we learn from it immediately, or it forces us to adapt in real time. We get stronger, and both entities benefit.
By maintaining an open mind, you can become antifragile and accept mistakes, adapt to them, and get stronger both for you and your patient. Don’t put yourself in a corner and allow that to affect you and/or your patients by just being resilient and carrying on. Focus on becoming ‘antifragile’ and embrace errors (or potential ones) to strengthen the system and improve outcomes.