COMMUNICATION UNDER PRESSURE

All Articles

 

A weekly newsletter on high-stakes communication — drawn from 27 years in operating theatres, military medicine, and hospital leadership. One story. One pattern. One thing you'll use. 

 

Each piece below began as a newsletter issue — and earned a permanent home here.
"I'm Scared of Being Left Behind"
2026-04-11 22:15 "I'm Scared of Being Left Behind"     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Thirty years ago I was the medical officer accompanying a high altitude patrol to the passes of Tibet. Twe...
The question nobody asked
2026-04-08 13:14 The question nobody asked ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ "I is for Inquire — The Question That Saves Lives" This is the fourth letter in SCRIPTED — a communication framework built across 27 years...
What the pre-brief couldn't predict- and why it still mattered
2026-04-08 12:04 What the pre-brief couldn't predict — and why it still mattered   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ R is for Rehearse. This is the third letter in SCRIPTED — a communication framework built across ...
Five milliliters from disaster
2026-04-08 11:54 Five milliliters from disaster     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ FIVE MILLILITERS FROM DISASTER The patient was screaming. Not the controlled breathing of early labour. Not the man...
The 10 seconds that moved her
2026-04-08 11:43 The 10 seconds that moved her   The surgery wasn't the dangerous part. It was the 10 seconds between my words and her hands. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I had just finished intubat...
CRAFT-SHARED: 11 principles for communication under pressure
2026-04-08 11:38 CRAFT-SHARED: 11 Principles for Communication Under Pressure   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ For 27 years as an anesthesiologist, I worked where communication mistakes cost lives. T...