Locus of Control—What We Can Learn from Taking Responsibility?

In this short chapter I want to focus on one barrier to ‘Lean’ surgerySurgery but also, I believe, a barrier to any good surgery or even skill in generalLocus of control (LOC), ‘Locus of control’(LOC). The great surgeons I have met tend towards a high internal LOC and thus they tend to take responsibilitySurgeon's responsibility for what happens in theatre. People with a high external LOC tend to blame external circumstances. I think it is important that ‘everything is your fault’ as a surgeon or else how can you make progress? However, in some respects, this barrier to Lean might also be a barrier to developing a culture accepting of failure, which I will discuss next.