Pride and Adaptability to Change
People are slow to adapt to change despite their intelligence, training, and experience.
Ignaz Semmelweiss in 1844 noticed for some strange reason that about 1% of the women who went to the midwives died during childbirth while about 25% of the women who went to the doctors died. In other words, it was safer to go to a midwife than to a highly trained medical doctor for childbirth.
He investigated the cause and found that doctors immediately after performing autopsies on dead bodies go the operations room to help in childbirth delivery.
He proposed doctors should always wash their hands and keep their hands clean before performing any operation. With time, and through Semmelweiss’ stubbornness, the death rate fell from 25% to 1%. In line with the midwives’ results. The administrator called the decline a coincidence, students claimed that Semmelweiss was calling them murderers, and they disagreed with him.
Handwashing was not accepted as standard practice until the late 1860s. This means that this basic idea of cleanliness was ignored for about 20 years by the medical establishment.
The doctors thought they knew what was best based on social conventions rather than evidence
They were more worried about looking like doctors (bloodstained clothes and dirty hands) than working to save lives. This is not unique to doctors as people often will fall victim to their pride. Fortunately, most of us do not deal with life and death daily, so our shortcomings do not have the same impact on people.