BT

Facilitating the Spread of Knowledge and Innovation in Professional Software Development

Write for InfoQ

Topics

Choose your language

InfoQ Homepage Podcasts Nick White on the Lessons Software Engineering Can Learn from Multi-Disciplinary Medical Teams

Nick White on the Lessons Software Engineering Can Learn from Multi-Disciplinary Medical Teams

Bookmarks

In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Nick White about his experiences as a medical patient under the care of a cross-functional, multi-disciplinary team and the lessons that we can take from that for software engineering.

Key Takeaways

  • The collaborative approach to diagnosis by a multi-disciplinary team of specialists used by the Wellington Regional Hospital Cancer Care Unit
  • With a complex diagnosis like cancer, the range of treatment options is wide and the multi-disciplinary approach enables the best possible combination of treatments and more successful patient outcomes
  • Setting a goal of coming back from the surgery to continue as a mountain runner
  • Running up Mt Fuji to raise funds and awareness for cancer research
  • As technologists we need to be open to learning from other disciplines in areas such as collaboration approaches, dealing with hand-offs and bottle-necks, and customer service

Show Notes

  • 00:45 Introductions
  • 01:09 The high-stakes environment of medical care
  • 02:02 Nick’s story of being diagnosed with cancer
  • 04:23 The shock of the diagnosis and the impact on Nick, his family and friends
  • 05:23 The multi-disciplined approach taken by the cancer treatment unit in Wellington Regional Hospital
  • 06:10 The contrast between this approach and the normal experience of dealing with medical specialists on at a time
  • 06:24 Why this approach is preferred for cancer treatment
  • 07:24 Coming to a consensus opinion quickly and identifying treatment options
  • 08:14 Describing the extensive surgery and treatment Nick was to go through
  • 10:54 24 hours to tell friends and family that he was going in for radical and high-risk surgery
  • 12:35 Coming through the surgery and being unable to speak – communicating using hand-written notes
  • 13:14 The process of getting speech back over 6 months
  • 14:16 Setting goals to come back from the illness to do mountain running
  • 15:18 Registering the run The Goat mountain race prior to the surgery (6 months after the surgery)
  • 16:42 The physical recovery process
  • 17:47 Sneaking in activities to prepare for mountain running
  • 19:00 Running The Goat six months after surgery
  • 19:35 Continuing mountain running as the recovery progressed
  • 20:54 The path to recovery was not straightforward, there were setbacks and problems along the way
  • 22:16 The value of positive stories for people who are going through cancer treatment
  • 22:47 5 years after surgery patients are considered cancer-free and Nick wanted to do something meaningful to mark the milestone
  • 22:57 Deciding to run up Mt Fuji in Japan to raise funds and awareness for cancer research
  • 23:54 The challenges involved with tackling Mt Fuji
  • 24:48 The goal of running up Mt Fuji and returning to Wellington to give a speech about it to raise funds for the Gillies McIndoe Research Institute
  • 26:17 The goal was to raise $3776, the actual figure raised was $8000
  • 26:48 Bringing these experiences and ideas into working with technical teams as an agile coach
  • 27:03 The importance of trust and communication when under pressure and the stakes are high
  • 27:57 How multi-disciplinary medical teams tackle the problem of hand-offs can provide guidance for software teams
  • 29:09 Be open to learning from other disciplines and approaches
  • 29:57 The example of adventure racing – what ideas can technical teams learn from the way those teams support each other?
  • 30:39 The best teams have a mix of different skills
  • 31:30 Advice for the audience: Look beyond your own profession, see what you can learn from different professions, industries and disciplines and bring the ideas into your own work

Mentioned:

 

From time to time InfoQ publishes trend reports on the key topics we’re following, including a recent one on DevOps and Cloud.  So if you are curious about how we see that state of adoption for topics like Kubernetes, Chaos Engineering, or AIOps point a browser to http://infoq.link/devops-trends-2019.

More about our podcasts

You can keep up-to-date with the podcasts via our RSS Feed, and they are available via SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast and the Google Podcast. From this page you also have access to our recorded show notes. They all have clickable links that will take you directly to that part of the audio.

Previous podcasts

Rate this Article

Adoption
Style

BT