There are four responses to overload. Two responses are reactive and urgent tradeoffs: shed load or reduce thoroughness. The other two require anticipation and enough time to take effect: add resources, or time-shift workloads.
"In managing workload there are only four coping strategies: (1) shed load, (2) do all components but do each less thoroughly, thereby consuming less resources, (3) shift work in time to lower workload periods, (4) recruit more resources." — Woods, Hollnagel. Joint Cognitive Systems: Patterns in Cognitive Systems Engineering. p.126.
"The first two are tactical responses to emerging bottlenecks. When facing a bottleneck, one can prioritize across tasks and activities, dropping out any but the essential ones. But shedding load is a narrowing process that has vulnerabilities should the priority be misplaced. Similarly, in a bottleneck, one can take energy/time from every task, though now each task becomes more fragile. The paradox in tactical responses to workload bottlenecks is that, if there are tasks which really are lower priority, why not always drop them, or if task performance does not degrade when one cuts the normal investment of energy/time, why would one ever make the larger investment?"
"The third and fourth adaptive responses are strategic and depend on anticipation or knowledge of potential upcoming bottleneck points. With anticipation one can recruit more resources such as extra staff, special equipment, additional expertise, or additional time. But note that this strategy consumes organizational resources that are always under some degree of pressure (the Law of Stretched Systems, p. 18). More directly under the control of practitioners is the other strategic response—shift workload in time."
TODO: consider also capturing the specific example from anesthesiology—it highlights doing work before a bottleneck in order to be prepared to intervene quickly should the need arise, and it highlights the specific expertise of anticipating those needs.