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Limits of Conventional Wisdom
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This is an analogy that seems to relate to the current changes that are so unpopular.
In the 1980's, before smoking was prohibited in hospitals, I worked on the night shift at a state mental hospital. Smoking is characteristic for this type of patient. The overwhelming majority smoked. The conventional wisdom was that limiting the patients' smoking privileges would lead to all sorts of problems in a population that was already stressed. All the old-timers knew that disaster would come the day that the patients couldn't smoke anymore. Most nurses felt very strongly about smoking limits. It would be chaos at best and all out war at the worst. Nurses have a higher than average number of smokers.
The night shift had to get by with a skeleton staff. The patients were required to smoke in the day room, which was unsupervised at night because of the limited staffing. Unsupervised smoking led to an excessive number of trash can fires on the night shift.The fire marshal decreed that this had to stop. The only option was to prohibit smoking entirely on the night shift. All the staff, especially the experienced old timers were positive that there would be an increase in patient agitation and even violence when the patients were denied their cigarettes.
The new policy went into effect. When a patient got up at night and wanted to smoke, they were told that there was no smoking on the night shift, no exceptions. The patients would go back to bed. After a few nights, patients stopped getting up at all. I suppose when they woke up during the night, they remembered that they couldn't smoke and went back to sleep. Many of the staff were surprised by the new calm on the night shift. I was less surprised because I had read a study that showed with striking results that not only was the widespread belief that patient agitation would increase if smoking was prohibited not true, agitation DECREASED because acting out for cigarettes and smoking privileges was eliminated when the patients understood the zero tolerance policy. So much for all those wise ones who KNOW what will happen in the future. We don't know. Unintended consequences both positive and negative are common.
None of us know what the future holds.
All we can do is wait and see.
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