Webinar - Empowerment as a Tool for Error Management in Medicine

Sponsored by ASEM - IISE/SEMS - CAE- ABEPRO

Presenter

Jan Brommundt

Error Management - Empowerment as a Tool for Error Management in Medicine

This talk illustrates that any error-management system, its techniques, and its structures need to be embedded in a broader error-management culture. Non-innovative and overly hierarchical structures are incompatible with such a culture, and the empowerment of personnel traditionally in the lower echelons of hierarchical systems (nurses, air hostesses) is a necessary, efficient, and cost-effective precondition and cornerstone for such a system.

In accordance with the author’s background, most examples and experiences described are from the medical field.

Presenter Biography

Dr. Brommundt leads the cardiac anesthesia team at Groningen University Hospital and teaches medicine and public health in humanitarian action at the Rijks Universiteit Groningen. He has worked in conflict zones with doctors-without-borders and médecins-du-monde since 2004 and holds a degree in health economy. Jan serves as the Medical Director of MELONET, an international repatriation organization. For the last years Jan has focused on non-technical skills, error management, communication and multidisciplinary crew resource management to increase the performance of his teams.

This webinar is the third in a four-part series.

Webinar Series

What happens if someone makes a mistake or takes the wrong decision? The issue here is not intentional misconduct, fraudulent behaviour, gross negligence or large-scale mismanagement, but the little mistakes, errors and poor decisions that occur every single day. Mostly, errors are the result of momentary blackouts, a temporary short circuit in the brain, false impressions, deceptive memories, dots wrongly joined, fragments of conversation that we interpret incorrectly, prejudices, momentary feelings of mental imbalance, disorientation, stress and other disturbances.

What does this mean for larger organizations? From research we know that speaking-up when spotting errors is not the norm in organizations. Mistakes are still associated with shame and embarrassment. Yet factual error management can work and be successful as can be seen by studying high reliability organizations such as aviation, medicine, and the nuclear industry.

In the webinar series on error management we will look into the practices and learnings from these high reliability organizations. Apart from the specifics of the different industries we will reflect on what is necessary to establish an effective open error culture. This includes psychological safety to enable communication across hierarchical levels, a system of error reporting, a leadership culture, where people are empowered to speak up, and how humans interact in complex systems.

The speakers are either researchers or practitioners and provide insights into lessons learned from their field. The series will explore how these learnings may be applied in other organizations.

The webinar series is scheduled as follows. Please note that EACH webinar has its own URL for registration.

June 20 - Introduction to error management (Jan Hagen, ESMT Berlin) - 1:00 PM EDT
Register here: https://www.asem.org/event-2566166

July 11 - Error management and reporting culture in aviation (Thomas Wilpert, Air Berlin) - 1:00 PM EDT
Register here: https://www.asem.org/event-2568371

July 25 - Empowerment as tool for error management in medicine (Jan Brommundt, University Medical Center Groningen) - 1:00 PM EDT
Register here: https://www.asem.org/event-2568393

August 8 - Management practices of learning from errors in high risk industries (Nicolas Dechy, Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire) - 1:00 PM EDT
Register here: https://www.asem.org/event-2568621