A few weeks ago I took my wife to an emergency room as her seemingly simple looking flu became somewhat scary in the wee hours of the morning. She had just come back from an overseas trip. Well, just to be safe than sorry, I took her to the ER. After waiting in the room for a doctor, and answering several questions of the nurse… so they can complete their questionnaire, my wife was already feeling alright. Where as I was feeling helpless & hopeless. Then after about 45-50mins, the doctor appeared and told us it’s a case of viral infection & nothing needs to be done. He said, “We will test her for flu. After that you can go home, take rest & drink plenary of fluids.” Sure, as if we didn’t know any of this, we came home after causing a few hundred dollars worth of dent to our plastic cards.
Wish the story ended here. The very next day she developed high fever and severe cough and in-spite of our son telling her to go back to see a doctor, we both resisted the urge as we knew what new (?) we will learn. Which is go home… take rest… drink etc etc.
The next two days she waited and finally went to our primary care who then prescribed her antibiotics. Almost a week had gone by and I had seen her condition had gotten worse. After the antibiotics, she started getting better and now after 3 weeks she is getting back to normal.
I am no doctor but does it really have to be this way?
Then there was another story! Last year, I had come from an overseas trip and thought I am coming over by flu, went to an urgent care (walk-in clinic) where I was seen by a nurse practitioner. She checked my vitals and prescribed a course of antibiotics right away and had ordered tests. A couple days of rest & I was fine. The tests did come back positive with bacterial infection. So she was right prescribing me the antibiotics on a hunch. Or was it just a hunch?
So…. Was the doctor who saw my wife in ER right or was the nurse practitioner who used the hunch to prescribe antibiotics? Or is my question wrong?
Well, it could be all the above (Including all possible combinations of the words in above sentence); as we can’t really go back and verify the conditions under which those decisions were made.
Recently, I read a book and the author mentioned how the decisions based on hunches are really the decisions based on a long brewed logic of varied experiences one has collected. In the story, a team of firefighters go in to the house on fire and as they enter the house, don’t really see a sign of fire. The chief, on a hunch (?), at once orders everyone out and as they are just get out of the house the floor collapses and is engulfed in to flames. Luckily (?) no one is hurt. Now; we can argue that the chief was lucky & it could have been just a case of fluke or not; but really was that just the hunch?
The author argued that what we consider a decision based on the gut feel, is a solid logic based on years of experience or what I call a “deeper understanding” that one developes without even knowing it.
I have several examples that I can list in support of my argument for deeper understanding. Whether my theory is correct or not; one can’t deny that there is something beyond understanding. Some call it hunch or gut feeling, others may call it an intuition or whatever. For me, I call it “deep understanding”. The understanding of the things you develop by collecting information, gaining experience by using it and teaching your brain “more” without you even know you are developing a “Deep Understanding“….. as I call it.
What do you call it as?
