“Opportunities” in Healthcare — (Reframing Failure)

We don’t like the word failure in hospitals.

My husband and I got into a lively conversation one evening about how certain words mean very different things in healthcare than they do in the rest of the professional world. One word that kept coming up was opportunity. In most business and personal settings, an opportunity is something good — a chance to grow, advance, gain something.

But in hospital settings, “opportunity” is the polite word we use for… well, when something went wrong. A patient fell. An infection developed that shouldn’t have. A wound got contaminated despite best efforts. It could be a minor misstep or a catastrophic error — and we still call it an opportunity.

Why?

We started exploring that question and realized it says a lot about the kind of work we do.

Hospitals, at their core, are places where we are trying to fix what is already broken. And because we deal with people, and people’s bodies are fragile and finite, we are always working against a clock we can’t stop. Everyone who comes to a hospital is already on their way toward deterioration. People are going to die here. In fact, if our only measure of success were to keep everyone alive indefinitely, we would have a 100% failure rate.

So our goals shift.

We work to keep people alive longer than they would have lived otherwise. To restore what we can. To ease pain. To improve quality of life even in the face of decline. Those are good and noble goals — but they come with limits.

And then there are the failures that really are on us: when a patient falls out of bed because we didn’t set the alarm, or acquires an infection because personal protective gear wasn’t worn properly, or leaves the operating room with a sponge still inside their body. Those are preventable, and we absolutely should work toward zero harm.

But even here, the reality of human error and the unpredictability of the environment means perfection is unattainable. We train, we document, we educate, we review. And still, things go wrong.

That’s why we call them opportunities.

Because no one can come to work every day in an industry of loss, and face nothing but failure. Calling it an opportunity reminds us that something can still be done. We can learn from it. We can improve the process. We can make tomorrow better than today.

I’ve seen people stress over whether to wash their hands again before tending to a wound while the patient is actively bleeding and needs immediate pressure. Yes — aseptic technique matters. But life comes first. You use the dirty washcloth if you have to, and you save the patient’s life. You can’t chase 100% compliance with 100% perfection and still be human.

We are chasing excellence in a world where perfection is impossible.

That’s why I think it’s worth pausing to explore this strange language of “opportunity” we use in healthcare. Yes, sometimes it can feel like corporate spin. And yes, we shouldn’t shy away from acknowledging real harm or calling things what they are.

But there’s also something deeply human about refusing to give up on the idea that even failure can teach us. Even failure can push us forward. Even failure can open an opportunity to grow — and to do better next time.

And in a place where loss is guaranteed, that’s a mindset I can live with.

🎧 Listen here: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/transformationship/episodes/Opportunities-in-Healthcare--Reframing-Failure-e35p3ts