WIHI: Situational Awareness and Patient Safety

Date: June 7, 2012

Featuring:

• Stephen Muething, MD, Vice President for Safety, James M. Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
• Anne Lyren, MD, Co-Leader, OCHSPS National Children’s Network; Strategic Advisor for Quality and Safety, Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital
• Carol Haraden, PhD, Vice President, Institute for Healthcare Improvement

It may seem obvious that anticipating problems makes a whole lot more sense than dealing with things after the fact. Especially if the problems could have been prevented. When it comes to patient care, this can of course mean the difference between life and death but, more often, the lack of attention to complexities that could arise leads to a lot of unnecessary complications and suffering and costs. But what exactly do the systems look like that focus ahead of time on risky situations and high-risk patients with the same degree of science and scrutiny as we’ve come to associate with studying failures, after the fact? Indeed, what if the entire emphasis shifted to doing everything possible to predict problems as a means of preventing failures in the first place? WIHI explored the road to becoming a “high reliability organization” with the Joint Commission’s Dr. Mark Chassin on the March 8, 2012, program, and we’re now returning to the issue based on the groundbreaking work going on at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

We’re going to zero in on “situational awareness” and our guide will be Dr. Stephen Muething, who enjoys a well-deserved reputation for making the principles and practices understandable and within reach. To prepare for the WIHI, we invite you to check out the resources at the James M. Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence at CCHMC. Dr. Muething will be joined by Dr. Anne Lyren, who’s part of a children’s hospital network in Ohio and nationally, committed to sharing data and best practices. Dr. Lyren will explain the critical role that daily huddles play with getting everyone on the same page and capable of responding to problems and crises as they’re developing, in real time. IHI’s Carol Haraden has been leading patient safety improvement initiatives all across the globe and, despite the progress, she’s the first to admit how much work still lies ahead. That’s one of the reasons Carol Haraden is so excited about the work at CCHMC, and in Ohio, where leaders have decided safety on any given day is not only job number one, it’s the product of the vigilance and preparation from the day before... and the day before that.

What does your organization’s commitment to high reliability and situational awareness look like?