Barriers to Lean Surgery—What can we Learn from Failure?

When it comes to practising surgerySurgery and especially ‘Lean’ surgery, fear of failureFear of failure plays a critical role for me and, I suspect, many other surgeons. It is certainly the factor that is most likely to encourage me off the ‘Lean’ path and lead me to overtreat and doubt my own judgements. I end up treating myself not the patient. But why is failing so terrible? In this section I will argue that there has never been a worse time in history to fail. Society won’t forget it; surgeons fear it and our self-esteem forbids it. We need to learn to fail and fail well.