The semmelweis reflex still with us?
“The Semmelweis Reflex is the dismissing or rejecting out of hand any information, automatically, without thought, inspection, or experiment.” The ‘reflex’ though not part of his legacy, honours Dr. Semmelweis, an astute Austrian-Hungarian physician called the “savior of mothers”. Semmelweis discovered in 1847 that the number of new cases (incidence) of childbed fever could be drastically cut by use of hand washing standards in obstetrical wards. It took the medical establishment years to adopt his findings into practice. This failure to recognize and apply hand washing led to tragic and unnecessary deaths of thousands of young mothers. Semmelweis’ case is an example of a situation where scientific progress was slowed down by the inertia of established professionals.
I am unsure how to interconnect my previous posts on anti-knowledge, paradigm shifts, and curse of knowledge with the Semmelweis reflex but suspect there is something worth exploring in relation to the future of health care.