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Sunday, June 17, 2018

...The Journey to High Reliability

While attending a recent Promedica Health Safety Conference to present a class on hazardous attitudes, I was able to take in a presentation by Dr. Kate Kellogg (MedStar, Washington DC) on "High-Reliability Organizations."

Jonathan Godfrey, Randy Mains, and Dan Foulds
presenting AMRM topics and learning about
High-Reliability Organizations from
Dr. Kate Kellogg, MD


At AMTC, I heard Dr. Ira Blumen state that, regarding risk to patients flown in EMS helicopters, "the real risk starts when they are unloaded from the helicopter and wheeled into the hospital." Hospitals have come under scrutiny for causing harm to patients, and some of them have looked for ways to stop doing this.



Many hospitals and health-care systems have made great strides in improving patient care and reducing incidents of harm by adopting the tenets of (Air) Crew Resource Management, and then developing them further. HRO research started with the Nuclear Navy, management of the power-grid (nuclear), and air traffic control. Instead of focusing on industries and companies that went wrong (Three Mile Island) three UCB researchers concentrated on complex industries that did things right - successfully!

This video is long, and you may not get through it all in one sitting, but I encourage you to get a cold drink, and a note-pad and capture the key ideas and techniques that Dr. Mark covers.

If we want to eliminate fatal crashes in HEMS, it's apparent that we are going to have to do something different. What we are doing now doesn't work. We kill patients and crews regularly.

When you think about fatal crashes in HEMS, the only acceptable number is ZERO.

PS. Feel free to share this with your company's C.E.O; because that's where your company's journey to High Reliability will have to start...