[MUSIC] The next topic is to talk about systems thinking. What is that? If you haven't already, you may take a look at this wonderful book, written by Peter Senge, entitled The Fifth Discipline, The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. And what he does is really focus on the importance of systems thinking in an organization in order to make it a learning organization. In his book he states that all too often, essential parts try to optimize themselves, without considering their impact on the greater whole. I'll give more examples of that in one of our later lessons. He also mentioned that performance improvement of essential parts should always be in context with the other essential parts, to optimize output of the whole. And in our case, as nurses, pharmacists, physicians, respiratory therapists are trying to improve their individual areas. They should do it in context with the other groups, to make sure that we optimize the output of the whole the hospital. And in our case, the whole, its output is excellent patient care, research, and teaching. Let me further emphasize this point by talking about a car. Let's say we want to make the best car ever, by first going to the Rolls Royce industry and getting the best engine possible from the Rolls Royce. We'll go Mercedes, which has an excellent transmission, we'll use the transmission out of a Mercedes. We'll use the fuel pump from a Lamborghini, and we'll use the body of the car from a great classic. What we end up isn't even a car, it's because these parts were not intended to interconnect with one another. And as a matter of fact, whatever that thing is, I suspect the driver and passengers will not do so well as soon as they fire up that engine. By the way, Mercedes makes jet engines. But what we need to do is to make sure that the essential parts are optimized in context with the whole. And in this picture, the whole in this case is a car, and its function is to safely get somebody from a to b. Obviously by optimizing each individual part without considering the whole, we don't achieve that overall goal. Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes, so that's what Peter Senge teaches us. Let me offer another definition that adds to that, and that comes from Wikipedia. What they say is that systems thinking has been defined as an approach to problem solving, that attempts to balance holistic thinking and reductionistic thinking. Both are important, and that's the topic for an upcoming lesson.