3. Germ theory

In the mid-1800s, there was a devastating problem within hospitals across Europe. Mortality rates for women going through child birth exceeded 10%.

Just imagine - one in every ten babies losing their mum before they'd opened their eyes.

The dominant medical belief suggested the problem lay with the pregnant women - they were either too weak or susceptible to disease. Solutions focused on treatment, in the hope that building up their strength and immune systems would increase their chance of survival.

But after years of failure, the hospitals were stumped.

Enter Ignaz Semmelweis.

Ignaz worked in a hospital in Vienna with two maternity wards - one staffed by doctors and medical students, and the other staffed by nurses. And he noticed something intriguing - women in the doctors' ward were dying at a much higher rate than those in the midwife's ward.

Coincidence?

Ignaz investigated and made a startling discovery - doctors would routinely perform autopsies as part of their working day, whereas the midwives never left the maternity ward. He hypothesised that maybe the doctors were carrying contamination from the corpses to the mothers.

To test, he introduced mandatory handwashing.

And guess what? Mortality rates plummeted.

But despite the results, many doctors rejected his conclusions. While Ignaz could prove it worked, he didn't have the evidence to show why.

And it wasn't until many years later that Louis Pasteur developed 'germ theory', which proposes that microscopic organisms cause infection and disease. It was Pasteur's work that provided the scientific explanation that Semmelweis lacked.

Once this became accepted knowledge, Sammelweis' techniques became commonplace and mortality rates consistently decreased around the world.

So, why are we talking about germs?

Well, I'm sure you've already put two and two together, but germ theory shifted attention away from the patient and towards the environment. Instead of trying to solve the problem by building up the women, Ignaz Semmelweis changed the environment. By forcing doctors to wash their hands, even weak, unhealthy women were surviving child birth.

And this story provides a similar paradigm shift to that which L&D pros need to make.

Are skills important? Yes, of course.

But when it comes to performance, they're secondary to the environment, both in importance and order of implementation.

And as we enter a world in which performance is not only down to humans, but also AI, this represents a significant change in how L&D needs to think.

Yours,
- Ant