Planes are two-dimensional shapes. Planes geometry involves the analysis of two-dimensional shapes. In the video below, these ideas are explained in greater detail. Please comment or like the video and let us know how we can improve things.
Groups often have norms, and a measure of cohesiveness, Both of these concepts will be discussed so that their importance becomes more apparent.
Group Norms
Norms are rules for standard behavior in a group. For example, one group may value being on-time while another may value avoiding confrontation. Norms can be written, but they are often unwritten and grow overtime naturally in response to different situations are problems within the group.
All norms may not apply to all members. For example, new members often have to undergo a socialization process by completing a less desirable task. In contrast, seniors members are expected to set a good example and guide new members. This is highly common in social groups found in sports.
Group norms serve several purposes. First, the development of norms enhances the survival of a group by ensuring goal-directed behavior. If a group is under stress, it will focus on the norms to survive the stressful situation. Norms also help the group to know what is important or valued by that group. For example, if a group prides itself on high standards, this becomes a way to identify this group’s members.
Third, norms help members to avoid embarrassing actions. When it becomes clear what is acceptable behavior, it also becomes clear what is unacceptable behavior. If members know they are in a high-standard group, they will not dare submit low-quality work to the team. This prevents such a person from embarrassing themselves.
So far, it has been assumed that groups would have positive norms. However, this is not always the case as criminals also form groups with norms that encourage lawless behavior. Students can also create groups that are antithetical to learning. Despite their negative connotation, even bad groups must have some form of norms to survive.
Group Cohesiveness
Group cohesiveness is the level of closeness or camaraderie in a group. Several factors can affect group cohesiveness. For example, homogeneity or how similar members are to each other. If all the members are female and from the same country, the cohesiveness could be higher than if they are mixed because members already have a similar background.
The size of the group affects cohesiveness as well. A smaller group will usually have higher cohesiveness than larger ones. This is due in part to another factor of group cohesiveness and this interaction. The more time people can interact with each other, the better the cohesiveness is. Maturity is another factor. As time goes by, groups develop more robust relationships through having endured various hardships and successes together.
Goals also improve cohesiveness. When group members know why they are coming together and have a shared mission, this can strengthen the bonds within the group. Lastly, external threats can rally a group together to defeat an obstacle that endangers the team. For example, the danger of a department closer will bring people together to protect their jobs. Even people who may not like each other.
Benefits of cohesiveness
Group cohesiveness can lead to several benefits. Satisfaction is a significant benefit of group cohesiveness. People are social creatures, and the pleasure of a strong relationship is delightful for most. Loyalty is yet another result. When people enjoy a particular group, they will often find ways to maintain membership whenever possible and defend themselves from outsiders.
A darker benefit to group cohesiveness is the power the group has over other members. When group membership becomes too valuable for members, they can be pushed to do things that may be questionable. Anyone who has fallen victim to peer pressure knows what this is about. Other examples could include the rise of various violent groups that some people commit acts of violence to maintain membership.
Conclusion
Norms and cohesiveness are two dynamics in a group that people need to be aware of to succeed when collaborating with others. Groups need clear rules as well as other things such as interaction while being mindful of the size. When group membership is enjoyable, production is also often higher.
The video found below addresses the following topics: Points, Lines, Rays, Line Segments. These are ideas that are generally learned around the time a student takes algebra or geometry. In the current context, these ideas don’t seem useful but they become much more important with time.
Working in groups is a part of the educational experience and, naturally, the real world. For educators, understanding the roles within a group and how size can affect performance is vital so that educators can put students in situations where they can succeed. We will look at the roles within groups and their size in this post.
Roles in Groups
There are at least three different roles in groups, and these are all based on what a member chooses to focus on as a member. These three roles are task-orientation, relations-orientation, and self-orientation.
Task-oriented group members are focused on getting things done and achieving group performance goals. Often it is hard to find task-oriented students, but high-performing students may fill this role in a group. Generally, focusing on the task can irritate peers who believe that other things are essential. However, when the work is not done, it can also lead to friction with the task-oriented person.
Relation-orientated members are focus on the social harmony and cohesiveness of the group. They are focus on being sure that people are happy. Completing the task or achieving the mission is secondary to the socio-emotional state of the group. Task-orientated members might call relation-orientated members “slackers” or non-performers. However, if work is what makes everyone happy, a relation-orientated person will work for the sake of harmony. It seems like most students fit this role.
Lastly, self-oriented individuals only care about their own goals, even at the expense of the group. They only see the group in terms of what they can get out of it. Such individuals can be high performers or social loafers. What makes them unique is their motivation to benefit themselves. Task and relationship-oriented members often do not even see these people as team players and have some disdain for them when their motivates are exposed.
Success with a group requires having a balance between task and relation-oriented people and avoidance of self-oriented people. A teacher may want to avoid a group where everyone is relation-oriented because nothing will get done as everyone is focused on the people’s happiness. A group that is is heavily task-oriented or has a minority of relation-orientated people may have success. Any combination of self-oriented people can be a problem unless the other group members can get them to buy into the group’s mission.
Group Size
When forming groups and determining their size, a teacher must think about how the size affects performance. The size of a group is relative. What is a large group to one person is a small or medium group to another. However, despite this ambiguity, certain things tend to happen as a group’s size is modified.
When a group becomes larger, the interaction between members decreases due to the higher number of relationships. In addition, the cohesiveness or strength of the group also goes down as people have less personal responsibility. Other things that decline include satisfaction while absenteeism and social loafing increase.
This indicates that smaller groups may be better as they increase all of these dimensions that have already been discussed. For students who are already struggling with maturity and performance. Smaller groups may be critical for academic success. If groups get too big, the lack of individual accountability could become a problem.
Conclusion
People are people just as students are students. When working groups, they have different motivates and reasons for being there. As a teacher, it is crucial to find the right balance between the various roles in a group and the group’s size needed for success.
Groups are an essential part of the classroom and learning experience of students. As teachers, we often form groups and or even disband them. In this post, we will look at the different types of groups that develop in a class and the reasons students join groups.
Types of Groups
The types of groups that develop organizationally can be defined in terms of two dimensions: formal vs. informal and permanent versus temporary. This means that there are four potential types of groups which are listed below.
Formal groups are usually set up by the teacher, while informal groups develop naturally due to student preference. How long a group lasts often depends on the purpose of the group. We will now go through each of these four group types in detail.
Formal & Permanent
Formal and permanent groups are called a command or functional groups. The teacher develops this type of group to complete a specific long-term task. Examples of this would include assignments, projects, or even teams for sports competitions.
Formal & Temporary
Formal and temporary groups have the same criteria as formal and permanent groups. The main difference is how long the group is together. Therefore, the difference between the first two groups is how long the group will exist. In addition, what is considered permanent or temporary will vary from teacher to teacher and from student to student.
Informal & Permanent
Informal and permanent groups are also called friendship groups. The purpose of this type of group is for socializing and generally having a good time. This type of group will develop naturally without the influence of the teacher. However, sometimes this type of group’s interest can clash with the teacher’s goals in the classroom when socializing becomes too important.
Informal & Temporary
Informal and temporary groups are also called interest groups. These groups often last as long as the members have a similar interest—for example, a book club or a study group.
Reasons for Group Membership
There are several reasons why people join groups. The teacher creates formal groups, but for informal groups, there are distinct reasons.
Socializing is the main reason for group membership. Students are social creatures like everyone, and they enjoy each other and even the teacher at times. Therefore, students will join groups just to appreciate being around each other.
As mentioned previously, students will join groups to enjoy various shared interests. Some activities require more than one person (i.e., basketball), which provides an opportunity for an informal group to develop to pursue this shared interest.
Sometimes groups are joined because of proximity. Students who may not become members of the same group may do so because of physical proximity. For example, students from foreign countries may socialize together because they share the same foreign experience that local students do not.
Lastly, protection is another driving factor for joining groups. The perils of high school and even college can be filled with experiences of bullying and taunting. Nothing helps to quell such negative experiences, such as having a group of friends who will protect you from such treatment. Of course, some students join groups not so much for protection as for the opportunity to torment other students.
Conclusion
Group types are just ways for teachers to be aware of another unique dynamic of students’ social experience. Some groups are top-down while others are bottom-up. In addition, the motivation behind joining a group can vary from student to student. Either way, understanding this can help teachers to help students.
Robert Koch (1843-1910) was a poor country doctor in Germany. One day his life took a new direction when an epidemic struck the local farm animals. The culprit was anthrax. Even though Koch was a doctor for humans, he decided to study this disease that is commonly associated with animals.
The Germ
Anthrax is a disease that can strike suddenly and seemingly without warning. Animals will be healthy one day and dead the next. It was also possible for the disease to sicken and kill humans. There was no cure for the disease outside of killing the animals.
Koch began his research on anthrax with a microscope his wife had given him and no other equipment. If he needed something, he would make it himself or use common everyday items such as dinner plates. As Koch examined the blood of the dead animals, he continued to notice the presence of a bacteria in the blood of the dead animals. He never found these bacteria in healthy animals.
At this time, there was still controversy over whether germs caused disease. Therefore, it was not clear if the bacteria were causing anthrax. This means that Koch had to investigate more closely as to what the bacteria in the blood meant. To confirm his findings, Koch conducted an experiment.
The Experiment
The experiment involved growing anthrax outside of the blood. Then the cultured anthrax was placed inside living mice. The mice were killed by anthrax with their blood containing the bacteria. This was the proof Koch needed that anthrax was the killer.
Koch also found that the bacteria could survive outside a liquid in a state Koch called spores. In this state, anthrax could survive extreme conditions—this helped to explain how contagious the disease. Killing animals was not enough. They needed to be burned or buried deep in the ground to prevent infection.
Sharing Results
The next step for Koch was to take pictures of the bacteria. Then he decided to share his findings. Koch was an outsider to academic life, and working in the countryside did not warrant the respect he needed at this moment. Nevertheless, he contacted a university, and they agreed to let him share his results. Koch didn’t lecture; instead, he repeated his experiments at the university. Students and teachers saw the mice die along with the pictures of anthrax.
The impact was unquestioned. Koch had shown that germ clearly caused disease. This laid to rest what was, at one time, a controversial idea that unseen microbes could make people sick. These ideas are far removed from what Galen was proposing several thousand years ago.
Conclusion
Koch did not necessarily find a cure for anthrax. Instead, he was able to confirm the theory of germs. This may not have been the goal, but it was a significant contribution to medicine that convinced skeptical experts. The person who would defeat anthrax was Louis Pasteur, the same person who developed germ theory.
Scurvy was at one time a serious problem for sailors who spent a long time at sea. Scurvy, which means “scaly skin,” causes weight loss, fatigue, bleeding gums, and tooth loss. The underlying problem is a weakening of the connective fibers that hold the body together.
During the 1700s, the British empire spread worldwide and required a massive navy for commercial and military reasons. Scurvy was wearing down the strength of the empire.
Naval Doctor
The answer for scurvy was found by James Lind (1716-1794), a Scottish physician. He began his career as a surgeon in the British navy and was surprised by the amount of suffering that scurvy was causing in the navy. As Lind started to examine this problem, he began to see the context.
During this time, voyages on ships for sailors could last more than a year. Storing food was always a problem for such long trips. Most food was dried and or preserved with salt. There was almost no access to fruits and vegetables. Lind began to suspect that the lack of fruit and vegetables was a contributing factor in scurvy.
To confirm his suspicion, Lind conducted an experiment. He created several different groups of sailors suffering from scurvy, and he gave each group a different diet. He found that the group of men who were given oranges or lemons could recover and return to work. This indicated that there was a relationship between scurvy and citrus fruits.
The Test
The famous explorer James Cook heard of Lind’s work. Cook wanted to explore the Pacific Ocean. The problem was such a trip would take over four years. This meant that the risk of scurvy would be high for him and his crew. Cook as Lind what he could do, and Lind recommended taking citrus fruits and stopping at ports whenever possible to purchase fresh food. With this advice, Cook made his trip and outline several countries along with parts of Antarctica.
Despite the success of citrus fruit in addressing scurvy, British navy leaders and other medical professionals were not supportive of Lind’s findings. It was mainly a matter of pride as the navy thought it provided the best food possible for their sailors. It would take ten years for them to implement the changes proposed by Lind regarding the use of citrus fruit.
Medical professionals were also doubtful of Lind’s recommendations. This was during a time when there were still question about the connection between diet and disease. This skepticism continued for much longer than the doubts of the navy.
Conclusion
Lind had found the answer for scurvy, but he did not know why citrus fruit helped to prevent or cure this disease. The reason why eating citrus fruits found this works about 100 years later. It was found that the body needs vitamin C. Scurvy was a sign that someone was a deficiency in vitamin C. When food is preserved through drying, salting, it destroys vitamin C. It is important to remember that sometimes the answer doesn’t necessarily have to be understood at the time that it is used.
Performance appraisals are commonly associated with a supervisor assessing the performance of a subordinate. However, performance appraisals can also be used in the classroom to provide students with feedback about their behavior and academic progress. We will look at the uses and problems of performance appraisals in the classroom as well as how to avoid common mistakes.
Uses of Performance Appraisals
Performance appraisals can be used to give students feedback about their progress in terms of behavior or academics. In addition, Appraisals can provide students with insights into their strengths and weaknesses. For example, a student might be solid academically, but the teacher may notice they struggle with interacting with others.
Appraisals can also be useful when determining rewards among students. Depending on the employed system, this can be one of many ways to assess honor and praise for students. Lastly, appraisals can help teachers be aware of what they need to do to help students academically or in other areas that need development.
Problems with Appraisals
There are several problems with appraisals. These problems may not all apply to the classroom but are common when performance appraisals are conducted in other settings such as business.
First, there can be problems with the instrument. The tool used to perform the assessment must be assessed for validity and reliability. Another common concern is something called the central tendency error. This happens when a teacher gives everybody a score in the middle and thus makes all students average. This is an example of a human error rather than a problem with the instrument itself. Teachers must remind themselves to recognize both excellent and abysmal performance.
An equally dangerous trap teachers may fall into is strictness or leniency error. This happens when a teacher is too mean or too nice, which can skew scores. Being too strict hurts excellent students while being too lenient rewards poor-performing students.
The halo effect involves giving good or bad scores in one component of an appraisal and continuing this scoring in another element. For example, if a student has excellent leadership skills and is marked highly for this. The teacher may also mark this same student as excellent in other categories when there is no evidence to support this.
The final two problems are recency error and personal bias. Recency error involves only remember the latest behavior of the student to the exclusion of older actions. Suppose the student is having a good day this beneficial. However, if a student has struggled recently for whatever reason (personal, health, etc.) and the teacher does not think of the overall trend, this can be detrimental.
Personal biases happen when a teacher does not get along with a student, which affects the scores the student earns in an appraisal. It is often not popular to speak about this, but all people have varying capacities to tolerate each other’s behavior and attitudes, and sometimes the clash of personalities rather than performance can influence how teachers assess a student.
Overcoming the Problems
Outside of validity and reliability, the majority of the problems with performance appraisals involve the human aspect. This means that the appraisers need to be aware of the mistakes they could make and make a conscious effort not to make these common errors as they can have a negative effect on students.
This means that teachers need to be aware of these pitfalls so that they do not make them. As such, necessary awareness is required to ensure that appraisals are fair and accurately measure the teacher’s perception of a student’s performance.
Conclusion
Everything that a teacher does has to be weighed in terms of pros and cons. Performance appraisals are another tool that a teacher can use in their classroom to provide feedback and support for students. However, a teacher must be aware of the drawbacks to using such a tool, which does not mean that the device should not be used even if it has some disadvantages.
Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) was an influential English-Belgian doctor of the 16th century. He came from a medical family as he had several family members who were doctors, and his father was an apothecary (pharmacist). Vesalius decided early in life that he wanted to follow the family tradition of medical practice.
Studies
At the age of 17, Vesalius went to university. He studied at at least three different universities. The first was the University of Paris. While in Paris, Vesalius was able to attend lectures by the famous Jacobus Sylvius. However, Vesalius grew bored over listening to Sylvius read aloud the books of Galen. Vesalius believed in a more active learning approach to doing medicine rather than listening to it. In other words, Vesalius thought that the teacher should do the dissections rather than only talk about them.
Due to war, Vesalius continued his studies in Belgium at the University of Louvain. While at Louvain, Vesalius found a human skeleton that he was able to observe and learn from. He also noted some discrepancies between the human skeleton he possessed at the teachings of Galen. For example, Galen claimed that the breastbone has seven segments, but Vesalius could only find three segments in the human skeleton. This discrepancy is because Galen dissected apes and not humans.
Vesalius’ next school was Padua University in Italy and perhaps the most prestigious school in Europe at the time. In Padua, Vesalius completes his education and becomes a faculty member at the tender age of 22.
Teaching
Vesalius’ teaching was revolutionary at the time. He believed in doing the dissections himself in front of the students. Many people thought that the book was enough to learn anatomy, and there was no need for dissections. However, students loved Vesalius’ demonstration-style approach, and his classes were packed with up to 400 students.
Having such a large class led to other problems. It was hard for students to see the dissections. This was before videos and LCD projectors. Another problem was the dead body. After a day or two, the body Vesalius was dissecting would begin to rot. To solve these problems, Vesalius started making drawings of his dissections that students could study.
As Vesalius continued teaching, he began to make corrections to the works of Galen. This was unspeakable given the status of Galen. However, Vesalius could not find several of Galen’s observations in animals in people. These corrections were put into a book by Vesalius with help from an artist. Other doctors objected to Vesalius’ modifications and the use of an artist. However, artists often knew more about the body than doctors as they wanted their drawings and paintings to be as realistic as possible, which meant knowledge of anatomy.
Vesalius’ reforms were too much for his colleagues. He was attacked continuously, and he took things too personally. In addition, his books were so popular that people pirated them, which meant Vesalius never received much profit from his innovations. Eventually, all this became too much for Vesalius, and he would leave teaching and eventually died somewhere around 50 years of age.
Conclusion
Experiential learning was Vesalius’ main gift to education in his field. Before Vesalius, teachers talked about the body. After Vesalius, teachers showed the body to their students. This shift from talk to action created a much more engaging learning experience. Such an approach benefited many students much to the chagrin of other teachers. Vesalius gave his students practical experience versus head knowledge, which is critical when working with living people.
Critical race theory is a framework used by many to see the world in terms of race and power. Based on postmodernism, this concept is a significant influence on how many people see the world today. Primarily this relates to the difference in power and privilege between people who are white and black.
Tenets
Some proponents of critical race theory believe that race is a social construct developed to maintain the supremacy of white people. In addition, color was also at one time used to justify slavery. However, many also say that race is central when dealing with any issues of power and oppression. A significant problem is that it is difficult to define precisely what critical race theory is, and as with all definitions, there is no consensus.
Other significant tenets of critical race theory are the idea of white supremacy and white privilege, which means that people who are white have certain advantages due to their skin color. Another tenet is the need to give people of color a voice. By voice, it may mean being a part of decision-making and sharing grievances from oppression.
A final central tenet of critical race theory is the idea of intersectionality. Intersectionality is the idea that a person can be a member of more than one oppressed group. A classic example of this is a black woman. Such a person may experience oppression due to their race (black) or sex (female). As such, you can add more and more groups if a person continues to fight them based on the traits that are a part of their being.
Types
There are at least two types of critical theorists, and these are the materialists and the postmodern. The materialist look at how economic, legal, and politics affect race and may be considered to align more with communism. The postmodern focuses more on linguistics, deconstructing discourse to find power imbalances, and searching for implicit bias. Examples of what the postmodern critical race theorists do is look for things as microaggression, hate speech, cultural appropriation. These terms are used every day to attack people on social media. For example, being surprised that someone who is black is married because of the high out of wedlock birth rate would be considered microaggression by some and maybe even hate speech by others. The postmodern camp is generally more common today.
Both of these schools of thought have in common that they both dislike or even hate liberalism with its focus on incremental change. For example, many view Martin Luther King Jr as a liberal because he wanted to downplay color and focus on character. In critical race theory, it is all about color first and then some consideration of character.
Another trait of agreement is the view of knowledge as a social construct. This means that the marginalized groups determine what is true and not some external standard such as science or religion. To determine who is right, look for which group is more oppressed in a particular situation. This can be insanely confusing if it is taken seriously.
Even when there are attempts to end racism, this is viewed with suspicion by critical theorists. There have been accusations that white people give rights and opportunities to blacks only when it benefits them. In addition, legislation that is anti-racist supports racism. If these two beliefs are commonly believed, it makes it difficult for there ever to be any solution to justice and oppression.
Conclusion
Critical race theory is one of many schools of thought that has seized the minds of many. People who adhere to this worldview see race and oppression in most aspects of life. When a person sees problems of oppression everywhere, it is natural to wonder how they can have any sense of happiness or peace.
Goal theory is almost a self-explanatory term. Essentially, goal theory states that people are motivated when they have goals. This seems obvious, yet many people do not have goals and thus often lack motivation. As such, goal theory can be useful for people who lack motivation or who perhaps need help in clarifying the goals they have but cannot achieve.
Principles of Goal Theory
There are several principles related to goal theory. First, as has already been stated, is that people perform better when they have goals. Second, and this one needs explanation, the goals must be personal goals that the person wants to achieve. It is hard to be motivated by someone else’s goals. Goals must come from the individual. Many students struggle in school because all the goals come from the curriculum or teacher and rarely from the student. When all actions are coming from the top down, and it could lead to a loss of motivation.
A third principle similar and related to the second is that people have to commit to the goal(s). In other words, it cannot only be in the person’s head but must be followed with action. Procrastination is a sign of a lack of commitment. Such behavior is seen by everyone when they make a goal, maybe a reasonable goal, but never actually do anything to make it happen.
The fourth principle of goal theory is that challenging goals encourage better performance than easy goals. A struggling helps people to perform better, whether adult or child. In the classroom, goals need to elicit moderate to hard struggle because this motivates a student to push themselves. Of course, it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and this means that goals should be challenging but attainable; otherwise, people will give up and be even less motivated.
Fifth, goals need to specific rather than broad. This is a good point. However, different people have different views on broad and specific. Determining whether a goal is broad or specific can be done by assessing a person’s ability to achieve the goal if it is not apparent to the person what they need to succeed. This means that the goal may require refinement in the form of breaking a goal into several subgoals, defining what it means to complete the goal, or setting boundaries such as a timeframe in which the goal is pursued.
Consequences
The consequences of setting goals are not necessarily negative. When adults or students achieve goals, there is a sense of satisfaction in achieving them. Achieving goals brings a sense of autonomy and even self-actualization as a person sees that they can do something and have an impact, no matter how small, on their environment.
There can also be rewards when involving goals. Students can be given various privileges fr achieving goals. This is a more extrinsic matter, but providing external rewards can be beneficial for students on occasion.
There are also problems with goal setting. When goals are set in one area, other areas may be ignored. For example, a student set a goal of doing their math homework at the exclusion of other homework. To achieve this one goal meant to create problems in another area.
Another problem is when goal setting is abuse. An example of this is when a child sets goals that are easy to achieve their real goal of being lazy. It takes experience on the part of a teacher to know when the students’ goals are reasonable and not too hard or too easy.
Conclusion
Children need goals. It breaks the learning experience of school into small measurable steps that they can achieve little by little. These goals must be negotiated at least partially so that students have ownership in the process. When this is done, cooperation may be achieved.
Ignaz Semmelweiss (1818-1865) initially went to university to become a lawyer. However, a friend invited him to a lecture and medicine. Becoming fascinated with medicine Semmelweiss switch his studies to become a physician.
Death in the Maternity Ward
In 1844, Semmelweiss graduated from the University of Vienna as a medical doctor. After graduation, Semmelweiss accepted a position as a doctor at a charity hospital for poor women. The hospital had two wards. One ward was for training doctors, while the second ward was for training midwives. For some strange reason, pregnant women would beg to be sent to the midwife ward to have their baby.
Semmelweiss was curious about this but could not get a straight answer from the women about why they preferred midwives to medical doctors. Eventually, he heard rumors that people believed that more women died from the doctors than the midwives. Semmelweiss began to investigate this. He found that about 1% of the women who went to the midwives died while about 25% of the women who went to the doctors died. In other words, it was safer to go to a midwife than a highly trained medical doctor for childbirth.
Many of the women who died among the doctors died from childbed fever, a type of infection. Semmelweiss was trying to figure out what was causing this infection. During this time, one of Semmelweiss’ best friends died. His friend died from childbed fever. What made this strange was that Semmelweiss’ friend was a man and had not had a baby.
The Problem Found
It turns out that his friend had been performing an autopsy one week before his death on one of the many women who had died from childbed fever. During the procedure, the careless student accidentally nicked Semmelweiss’ friend’s finger. The injury caused some minor bleeding, which eventually led to the infection that caused his death.
Semmelweiss figure that childbed fever was contagious and that doctors were spreading this infection around through uncleanliness. It was common for a doctor to go from the morgue to the operating room to visiting patients while wearing the same blood-soaked clothes. On the other hand, the midwives never performed autopsies (they weren’t qualified) and always made sure everything was clean.
Semmelweiss concluded that doctors needed to wash their hands and keep their clothes clean. When he shared this with his colleagues and students, they thought it was embarrassing because being clean was for midwives. After all, they were doctors. Others thought this was a joke. The hospital administrator called Semmelweiss’ idea foolish and claimed there was no budget for the soap and water Semmelweiss was wasting.
Success and Failure
With time, and through Semmelweiss’s stubbornness, the death rate fell from 25% to 1%. In line with the midwives’ results. The administrator called the decline a coincidence, students claimed that Semmelweiss was calling them murderers, and they disagreed with him. This all was happening in the mid 1840’s at the beginning of Semmelwiess’s career.
Despite the 1840ss benefit of handwashing, the students and the leadership continued to resist Semmelweiss’ innovation. This eventually led to Semmelweiss leaving the hospital. Once he was gone, the handwashing stopped, and the death rate soared again. However, the doctors did not care as long as they did not have to wash their hands like midwives.
Handwashing was not accepted as standard practice until the late 1860s. This means that this basic idea of cleanliness was ignored for about 20 years by the medical establishment. Semmelweiss was never able to see this happen as he died in the mid-1860s from an infection he received from cutting his finger during a surgical procedure.
Conclusion
A central lesson drawn from this story is how slow people are, despite their intelligence, training, and experience, to change. The doctors thought they knew what was best based on social conventions rather than evidence. They were more worried about looking like doctors (bloodstained clothes and dirty hands) than working to save lives. This is not unique to doctors as people often will fall victim to their pride. Fortunately, most of us do not deal with life and death daily, so our shortcomings do not have the same impact on people.