Aviation Expert John Nance on Healthcare Culture Change and Educating the Young
Today’s post is by Guest Author, John Nance, Marseille Experience Faculty, Author and ABC Aviation Consultant
Having had the delightful experience of attending and working with all of the sessions of the Marseille Experience this summer, I’ve spent some time since returning from Napa thinking through the scope and the effectiveness of what we all came together to advance: The goal of never again losing a patient to a medical mistake or nosocomial infection.
It may well sound hackneyed, but in fact I think all of us as faculty mean it to the depth of our beings when we say that the medical students and residents and nurses – all of those who joined us – are truly the best hope of changing the course of a noble but tattered non-system that slaughters people at the rate of 50 per hour. That does not mean that existing healthcare professionals cannot… Continue reading
Are we as unique as we think we are?
Since coming back to my apartment, I’ve begun to reflect on some of the experiences from this past week of Marseille. Specifically, I’ve thought about what it will take to affect change at my home institution of Georgetown Medical School.
My mind keeps wandering back to a conversation I had with Michelle on Thursday night. We were both rehashing our outcomes from the X Y business negotiation game. I thought that I had a very clever strategy for success. Even though it ultimately failed, I thought that it was sound in concept. My approach was to feign misunderstanding about the rules for the first few rounds and throw the X card 4 times. Then I would act as if I finally grasped the rules and encourage everyone that it is for everyone’s benefit to throw only the Y card. I assumed everyone would see the benefit to this and then… Continue reading
An apology
On Thursday our team accepted the faculty’s challenge and successfully piled even more people on and off of the teeter totter, in even less time, without breaking the eggs. Afterwards Dave congratulated us on an epic world record-setting accomplishment. I was so happy and proud of our teamwork! But last night, as I reflected on my contributions during the activity, I remembered doing something I wasn’t proud of.
On Tuesday, my teammate Collin had observed that wearing flip flops while inching backwards on the teeter totter was a potential source of error. So yesterday at the beginning of our record-setting performance, when I noticed Laura was wearing flip flops, I turned to her and told her she should take them off. I sensed her hesitation, which I quickly shot down by saying, “we noticed on Tuesday that someone in flip flops almost tripped.” Feeling the pressure from our team to… Continue reading
Marseille East Reflections
I really enjoyed the negotiation exercises we had today. It was interesting to see the concept of negotiation broken down into such small pieces. The results of the Hamilton Estate case were intriguing. I managed to settle on buying the property for $45M, which I thought is a pretty good price. It was $15M less than my best alternative. Yes, it was slightly above the maximum value of the property today, but not too much. I thought I negotiated well and that I got a great deal; I am happy with it. It turns out though that that price is actually at just about the average at which the property was sold across the entire group. I was really surprised to hear that one person bought the property at $31.5M – that’s well below the best alternative option of the seller! I am not… Continue reading
Intraprofessional Collaboration
Listening to Patti and David Skolnik speak about their late son Michael really brought to light how failures in communication can have devastating consequences. Though there were many missteps in the handling of Michael’s case, one area of concern that really stood out was the failure in communication between Michael’s family doctor and his neurosurgeon. Despite the family doctor’s unease that the surgery was being performed unnecessarily, the surgeon quickly diminished those concerns on the basis that the family doctor was “just a GP.” We often discuss how interprofessional collaboration and shared decision making with patients are lacking, but too often we forget that even within our own professions, there are many problems that can create tension and conflict and ultimately result in poor patient care. How can we work with patients and other professions, if we can’t work together within our own groups. I’ve witnessed this all too often… Continue reading
Including Patients in Safety Culture
This post will be relatively short. I spent time writing a rather lengthy post about the healthcare story of someone close to me with her blessing. However, when I read what I had written back to her, after telling me to make a couple changes, she decided that she did not want me to post the story anymore. I respected her wish, but asked her why she changed her mind. After all, I had not included names. She said that she felt bad that some of the healthcare providers in her story looked bad and could maybe somehow figure out the story was about them. I think there was something to be learned about the premature closure, lack of informed consent and shared-decision making, and lack of respect for the patient’s perspective on her illness that led to harsh complications, but I realize that we have already had this opportunity… Continue reading
The Art of Negotiating
Today I failed miserably in the art of negotiating. The Hamilton exercise validated how terrible I am and how much I lack the skills to be selfish and defend my qualities when it comes to negotiating a salary. I have had many opportunities in my short life to negotiate a salary and to be bluntly honest, I failed miserably at all of them. As Paul was explaining that most people avoid this type of exchange I started thinking about why do I have such a negative opinion of negotiations. I considered if it is because I enter this ritual with the predisposition that I have to do the numbers dance…. 35…30…34….32.5… , or that I expect some sleazy tactics to trick me, or is it that I view negotiating as a type of confrontation which I want to avoid at any cost. There was no process of elimination in my… Continue reading
Onward and Upward
I am so so grateful to have been given the opportunity to attend Patient Safety Camp. As the week progressed I started to wish that everyone could attend something like this; I will be highly recommending it when I get back to school. Since I know that everyone cannot attend Patient Safety Camp, I started thinking about how I could carry this information back to Indy and take with me wherever I go after that. My school has a Patient Safety elective (of which I am on the waitlist for), but beyond that we are given no formal training in the Patient Safety Culture. I’m going to sit down with my Integrative Medicine group e-board and see if we can get Patient Safety education to be one of our platforms. I’m likely jumping ahead of myself (as I often do) but we could do a series over the course of… Continue reading
Camaraderie
As I sit here thinking about our first day at the Marseille East Conference, I am struck by the fact that there are even this many people that feel as strongly about patient safety as I do. It is reassuring to know that there are others from all walks of life advocating for the same things. Even more impressive are the patient advocates that devote their lives to promote patient safety in their own way/venue. I am thoroughly impressed by the selflessness and poise it takes for them to educate the budding healthcare professionals as opposed to berate the system for its flaws.
While the healthcare system has flaws, so does everything in life. The great thing is when there is something we can do about it, even if it is challenging!
Marseille East kicks off at Turf Valley #TPSER10
Our third 2014 session for the Marseille Patient Safety Summer Camps is kicking off this morning with student introductions and safety moments. We have another impressive group of future patient safety leaders gathering to increase the growing size of our own Dumbledore’s Army of sorts. Many have been chosen to participate because of academic success and leadership, and a passion for patient safety, but the extracurricular talents never cease to amaze and impress. We have with us:
- A concert pianist
- A philosopher athlete
- A landscape/home improvement aficianado
- Binge Netflix watchers
- Musicians
- A Robert Wood Johnson Foundation intern
- A Classical guitarist
- Scientists
- Public health researchers
- An ICU nurse/ED nursing manager
- Georgetown medical students
- Scuba/kayaking guides/fans
- Biomedical scientists
- An International basketball player
- An Irish dancer
- An MBA/MPH graduate
- A key/Lock collector
- A Neurobiology major
- A Human factors researcher
- Peace corps in Kenya
The group that has come to Turf Valley this week… Continue reading