Root cause analysis (RCA) after adverse events in healthcare is a standard practice at many institutions. However, healthcare has failed to see a dramatic improvement in patient safety over the last decade. In order to improve the RCA process, this study used systems safety science, which is based partly on human factors engineering principles and has been applied with success in other high‐risk industries like aviation. A multi‐institutional dataset of 334 RCA cases and 782 solutions was analyzed using qualitative methods. A team of safety science experts developed a model of 13 RCA solutions categories through an iterative process, using semi‐structured interview data from 44 frontline staff members from 7 different hospital‐based unit types. These categories were placed in a model and toolkit to help guide RCA teams in developing sustainable and effective solutions to prevent future adverse events. This study was limited by its retrospective review of cases and use of interviews rather than clinical observations. In conclusion, systems safety principles were used to develop guidelines for RCA teams to promote systems‐level sustainable and effective solutions for adverse events.

No abstract

Background Hospital emergency departments (EDs) are dynamic environments, involving coordination and shared decision making by staff who care for multiple patients simultaneously. While computerized information systems have been widely adopted in such clinical environments, serious issues have been raised related to their usability and effectiveness. In particular, there is a need to support clinicians to communicate and maintain awareness of a patient's health status, and progress through the ED plan of care. Objective This study used work-centered usability methods to evaluate an integrated patient-focused status display designed to support ED clinicians' communication and situation awareness regarding a patient's health status and progress through their ED plan of care. The display design was informed by previous studies we conducted examining the information and cognitive support requirements of ED providers and nurses. Methods ED nurse and provider participants were presented various scenarios requiring patient-prioritization and care-planning tasks to be performed using the prototype display. Participants rated the display in terms of its cognitive support, usability, and usefulness. Participants' performance on the various tasks, and their feedback on the display design and utility, was analyzed. Results Participants provided ratings for usability and usefulness for the display sections using a work-centered usability questionnaire—mean scores for nurses and providers were 7.56 and 6.6 (1 being lowest and 9 being highest), respectively. General usability scores, based on the System Usability Scale tool, were rated as acceptable or marginally acceptable. Similarly, participants also rated the display highly in terms of support for specific cognitive objectives. Conclusion A novel patient-focused status display for emergency medicine was evaluated via a simulation-based study in terms of work-centered usability and usefulness. Participants' subjective ratings of usability, usefulness, and support for cognitive objectives were encouraging. These findings, including participants' qualitative feedback, provided insights for improving the design of the display.

ObjectiveTo characterise the use of interpreter services and other strategies used to communicate with limited English proficient (LEP) patients throughout their emergency department visit.MethodsWe performed a process tracing study observing LEP patients throughout their stay in the emergency department. A single observer completed 47 hours of observation of 103 communication episodes between staff and nine patients with LEP documenting the strategy used to communicate (eg, professional interpreter, family member, own language skills) and duration of conversations for each communicative encounter with hospital staff members. Data collection occurred in a single emergency department in the eastern USA between July 2017 and February 2018.ResultsThe most common strategy (per communicative encounter) was for the emergency department staff to communicate with the patient in English (observed in 29.1% of encounters). Total time spent in communicating was highest using telephone-based interpreters (32.9% of total time spent communicating) and in-person interpreters (29.2% of total time spent communicating). Communicative mechanism also varied by care task/phase of care with the most use of interpreter services or Spanish proficient staff (as primary communicator) occurring during triage (100%) and the initial provider assessment (100%) and the lowest interpreter service use during ongoing evaluation and treatment tasks (24.3%).ConclusionsEmergency department staff use various mechanisms to communicate with LEP patients throughout their length of stay. Utilisation of interpreter services was poorest during evaluation and treatment tasks, indicating that this area should be a focus for improving communication with LEP patients.

Resilience engineering (RE) has ushered new approaches to learning about work in complex sociotechnical systems. In terms of improving safety, RE marks a shift from the traditional approach of retrospectively investigating adverse events, toward learning proactively about patterns in everyday work, including how things go well. This study applied the RE framework to the health care domain, by developing and implementing a new knowledge-elicitation protocol to learn about how frontline care providers achieve safe and effective patient care in their everyday work. Eighteen participants, including physicians, nurses, residents, and clinical leaders from a range of specialties, were interviewed using the new protocol. Qualitative analysis of the data revealed multiple themes and patterns which underlie resilient functioning of individuals, teams, and the organization as a whole. Further, a Resilience Mapping Framework (RMF) was developed based on major thematic categories to systematically represent and map various resilient capabilities—monitoring, anticipating, responding, and learning—across different levels of system scale, from the individual to the organizational. This study demonstrates new methods to identify and represent resilience not just during salient and critical “events,” but across the continuum of situations, from the everyday “normal” functioning to the critical.