The Stress Resistant Leader with Dr. Daniel Dworkis

Dan Dworkis, MD PhD FACEP is the Chief Medical Officer at the Mission Critical Team Institute, a board-certified emergency physician, and an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC where he works at LAC+USC. He performed his emergency medicine residency with Harvard Medical School at the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency at Massachusetts General Hospital / Brigham Health, and holds an MD and PhD in molecular medicine from the Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Dworkis is the founder of The  Emergency Mind Podcast , and the author of The Emergency Mind: Wiring Your Brain for Performance Under Pressure. 

Questions We Asked: 

• Why did you feel the need to create The Emergency Mind? 
• Is poise under pressure a learned skill or innate? 
• What are valuable skills you have learned creating The Emergency Mind? 
• How does someone successfully improve through a performance loop? 
• What are ways to decrease stress while performing procedures? 
• How does the Emergency Mind address team dynamics? 
• How do you build a well functioning solid team?
• How do you run a successful debrief?  
• Advice for medical leaders under pressure? 
• Book Suggestions? 

Quotes & Ideas: 

• Applying knowledge under pressure is a separate learned skill 
• What happens when you are trying to intubate a patient and miss the first time? How do you recover and make the second attempt? 
• Prepare-> Perform-> Recover-> Evolve 
• “Create an environment that sets you up for success” 
• Experiment and be a scientist of yourself: Build->measure->learn 
• Exposing yourself to stressful scenarios outside of the hospital can help you build skills to help clinically 
• Use self-talk to help yourself manage acute stress 
• When debriefing, learn to separate outcome from performance. You can sometimes have a poor outcome with perfect performance and also a good outcome with poor performance. 
• Debriefs can use outcome vs. performance on a 2x2 matrix. 
• Never Waste Suffering. Both ours as providers and the patients. 
• Harness the wisdom in the room around you 
• Practice when you are outside of pressure and then slowly introduce it to stressful situations 

Book Suggestions: 

• Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel 
• Sources of Power by Gary Klein 
  • “A Failure to Disagree” paper by both 
• Ghosts of the Fireground by Peter Leschak