The Power of Pause

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Perioperative nurses' days are often hectic, with barely time to take a breather. Nurses can become distracted by the need to multitask, getting themselves into fast-forward thinking mode. Thoughts of turnover time and the next procedure or the next day's procedures can seem too important and can cloud what is most significant: the current patient. For health care workers, managers, or anyone else seeking to reduce the stress of misunderstandings and miscommunications, this book will be a valuable tool.

The author is an Emmy-award winning executive coach, writer, communication specialist, and educator. In collaboration with the Harvard School of Public Health, she designed and launched the campaign for choosing a designated driver and turned the tragedy of a respected young reporter's death into a nationally recognized movement. This campaign illustrates the power of pause, thinking through the situation, and selecting a sober driver rather than taking an unsafe chance.

The illustrations and references in the book are current and relevant. The book is well organized and easy to understand, and it relates clear, concise ways to be in the moment (ie, use the “gift of pause”), which is the key to making the best choices, not just at work, but universally.

The author describes a pause as any space between an action and a reaction. A pause restores the ability to access intuition and trust gut feelings, and provides a chance to rewire an overloaded mind and tap into common sense. Some of the 12 power of pause practices that the author suggests to accomplish this include the following:

One example in the book is about an angry e-mail sent by a client to the marketing manager of a Fortune 500 company. Modern communication modes allow instantaneous responses to any transmission. Fortunately, the manager understood that replying immediately to someone who is upset is not always the best solution. She was able to pause, reflect, and gather more information rather than respond right away, and solved the problem to both her company's and the client's satisfaction.

Often, OR staff members are so busy multitasking that they forget how valuable a temporary halt can be. The power of pause is well reflected in the practice of taking a time out. Immediately before surgery begins, the OR team agrees out loud that they have the correct patient for the right procedure. One of the Joint Commission National Patient Safety Goals is to improve the accuracy of patient identification by using two identifiers, which also demonstrates a powerful use of pause for the safety of our patients. This system, the power of pause, would work well in many other aspects of our demanding lives as is well illustrated in this book.