Dichotomy of Beauty and Efficiency in Healthcare

Think of your favourite song, or even your favourite place to walk or run. How would you describe its impact on you? Maybe it’s enlivening or awe-inspiring. It could even create deep feelings of peace and tranquility. You might describe it as transcendent or beautiful or list many of its fine qualities. Likely, its particular beauty speaks to you and connects with you. But would you describe it as efficient? Maybe. Some may find beauty in efficiency. However, it’s unlikely you would describe it that way.

Beauty vs. Efficiency

Intuitively, there is a palpable tension between beauty and efficiency. What makes something beautiful can often be at the expense of efficiency. Consider hand-crafted furniture or hand-made soap and compare them with their machine-made counterparts. Imagine the most beautiful city—perhaps Paris or Rome. Their windy cobblestoned streets, quaint alleys, and elaborate fountains might be beautiful but they aren’t the most efficiently designed or constructed cities. Enhancing beauty almost always requires extra time and effort, or at least does not tend to involve prioritizing efficiency. Devoting time and effort to enhance beauty is a luxury that also adds to something’s quality and value. In many ways, though, our modern world is organized to maximize efficiency with little concern for—and sometimes at the expense of—beauty. This can make beauty even more valuable.

Beauty vs. Efficiency in Healthcare

What are the implications of this tension between beauty and efficiency for healthcare? Most healthcare systems seem in dire need of increased efficiency. Patients get bounced around between specialists and quality care can be elusive. Wait times for surgeries and imaging are so long that health issues can progress more rapidly than testing or treatment can take place. Electronic healthcare systems require considerable time and energy from healthcare providers without yet enabling seamless data collection and sharing. Most people would rightly diagnose one of the “problems” plaguing healthcare systems globally as a lack of efficiency. However, other issues persist. Healthcare providers are experiencing alarmingly high rates of burn out and reducing their hours or even seeking early retirement. Patients feel frustrated by delayed diagnoses and treatment, indecision regarding a treatment plan, and a sense that self-advocacy is required at every step. So, the system’s lack of efficiency has a tangible impact on patient and provider experiences and on health outcomes.

Where might beauty have a place? Could beauty be an antidote—perhaps a bakestone—to a complex and inefficient system? Where is there beauty in healthcare and how might we harness and cultivate it? For most people, the moments of connection, of hope, and of deep caring are the beauty of healthcare. Healthcare is a sacred human endeavor, where people connect with each other, care for each other, and work together to heal the other, and in doing so, a part of themselves. Beauty takes many forms. It could be making that follow-up phone call to check that a patient has the next appointment in their schedule. It could be taking a bit more time with a family member to see how they are doing. It could be asking a colleague for a second opinion.

Beauty Makes Up for Inefficiency

In healthcare, the beautiful things can take extra time. But they could also potentially save time. These moments of checking-in, checking-back and checking-on can fill the gaps in a system that doesn’t always perform as it should. These moments can infuse the lives of providers and patients with more beauty and likely better care. Perhaps in our modern healthcare systems, which are imperfect and inefficient, taking the time to create and appreciate moments of beauty can both help to see issues that might otherwise get missed, and foster the connection and care for which providers and patients long. Maybe more inefficient care for more people isn’t the answer. Maybe more beautiful care is what we should be aiming for. Slowing down may be the thing that saves healthcare on both a personal and systemic level.