Speed Versus Efficiency

The importance of speed only when it can be done efficently is important to a paramedic in an emergency.

This is a story that my very first training officer told me about the importance of being efficient, not trying to speed in an emergency.

When he was very young he went to a Karate class and one day his Sensei told him and all the other kids to take off their shoes and then race to tie the shoe laces up again, as a way of testing everyone’s speed. All the kids raced and some made some reasonable times too. Afterwards, he asked them to all take their shoes off again and untie the laces. The Sensei then said, “actually, don’t worry about that, put your shoes back on and we’ll go for a run instead.” Now, none of the kids rushed, but just tied their shoes like they normally would. Because they weren’t rushing, they were very efficient in the way they tied their shoes, and didn’t get their hands caught on things while tying them. As a result, afterward, the Sensei (who had been secretly timing them on both occasions) pointed out that every child had been considerably faster in tying their shoe laces, when they weren’t trying to race, than when they went as fast as they possibly could.

The moral of this story is that you only have two hands and one mind. You can only do one thing at a time efficently (you can try to do lots of things, but it probably wont get you anywhere faster). As a paramedic this is a good lesson, because it identifies the fact that when you attend a major medical emergency (and your first instict is to do 20 things at once), you must take one thing at a time and slowly get through it all.

After telling me that story, my training officer said to me everytime we attended a major incident and he could tell that I started to race too much, he would say “Shoelaces” and this would remind me of the story and force me to slow down and do each thing correctly.