Transcript Slide 1

I MAKE ERRORS….YOU WILL TOO!
I’M A FAILURE….YOU CAN BE TOO!
Prepared by:
Gord Vail, M.Sc., MD
Chief of Staff, Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital
Windsor ON
DISCLOSURES
Advisory Boards
● Hoffman-LaRoche
● Bayer
Sponsored Speaker
● Hoffman-LaRoche
● Bayer
● Sanofi-Aventis
Educational Grants for HDGH Grand Rounds
● Leo Pharma
● Sanofi-Aventis
ERRORS AT WORK
•
Categories of errors
 Examples
•
Change management
 Why it’s difficult
•
Errors in Administrative
Projects
QUOTE
“A failure is a man who has blundered but is not
able to cash in on the experience.”
Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) American author & philosopher
GOD SAVE THE THE QUEEN
QUESTION
What did the last slide say?
ATTRIBUTION ERROR
● Or pattern recognition error
● Why did you see something different?
● What conditions occur at work that could make such
an error occur?
○ Labeling
○ Location
○ Same patient, day after day…
- Chest pain in the ED
○ Old charts
● Our PA example
THE TYPICAL INNER-CITY ED PATIENT…

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Chronic pain/alcoholic/homeless patient in the hallway
Our PA sees them (unusual)

Finds abnormalities

If one of the attendings with their past experience saw them???
AN EXAMPLE CLOSE TO HOME…
General surgeon gets a referral
• ?Breast cancer
• U/S ordered by FMD for ?Breast cancer
• U/S report RFR included with referral: ?Breast cancer
• U/S guided biopsy for ?Breast cancer
• Pathology report RFR: ?Breast cancer
What do you think happened?
• Actual diagnosis on pathology – NOT breast cancer
CONFIRMATION BIAS
We try to find data that will support our hypothesis
 What gets written on a chart is your interpretation of the
interaction
What do you ignore in your practice?
 “Typical” chest pain
 Usual IVDA patient
 Psychiatry patients with medical illnesses
How can you avoid this?
 Truly listen…to the patient and that voice in your head!
IMPLEMENTING CHANGE
My story
• HDGH LEAN Initiatives
• Dr. David Ng & I
• Leadership
• Computerization of the ED
What did it show?
What learnings came out?
WHICH PROJECT SUCCEEDED?
WHY IS CHANGE IMPORTANT?
“The major problem with planning is that plans are virtually always
wrong.” Brown & Eisenhardt 1998
The Emergency department is a fairly stable environment
• 1 ICU admit/d, 4 medical, 4 hospitalist, 12% admission rate
It’s the long-term issues facing a hospital that change:
• Funding
• Technology
• Care models
I’M A FAILURE… YOU’RE GOING TO FAIL…
Management projects failure rate = 80%
• We have to learn from failure
Culture of Blame
• If not supportive, who’s going to lead a project doomed to fail?
• Why try to lead?
• How can you change it?
• Do you really think everyone at your hospital wants you & PIP
or P4R to succeed?
These are the important questions that need to be asked!
RESEARCH COMPONENT
•
•
•
Everyone’s involved in before/after
scenarios
Not the most rigorous but still
useful
Will help others
 Our experience with
communication
 My colleague/friend in
telestroke medicine

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Always need proof (and more
proof!) that something works
Ideas for improvement
Not everything intuitively
correct is proven to be so…
Target patterns of ten shots fired by two riflemen. A’s pattern exhibits no
constant error, but rather large variable errors. B’s pattern shows a large
constant error, but small errors. (from Chapanis, 1951).
THREE TYPES OF HUMAN ERRORS
1. Skill Based
 Slips or lapses, i.e. forgetting your keys in the a.m.!
2. Rule Based
 Brain processes
 Go back into your experience and find correct response, for example a differential
diagnosis for SOB
3. Knowledge Based
 Lack of knowledge
 Shouldn’t reach the patient
 Barriers such as co-signing for clerks/residents
James Reason’s Swiss Cheese model from 1990
 Puts up barriers to prevent the error from propagating
STAR technique used to assist with prevention
 Stop, think, act, review
THE SWISS CHEESE MODEL
The Swiss cheese model of how defenses, barriers, and safeguards may be
penetrated by an accident trajectory.
HIERARCHAL ERRORS
Usual example to start with is pilots
• Who flies?
See any relation to medicine?
• Who tells on an attending when you’re in training?
Cultural change
• Errors are talked about
• Legislated in Canada about when & how to disclose an error
Can work for you
• Examples from the leaders filter down
• An example from HDGH is Hand washing!
PERSON OR SYSTEM APPROACH?
Person focuses on the individual
• Forgetfulness, inattention or moral weakness
System looks at conditions around person’s work
• Build defenses to avert or mitigate an error’s effects
But, isn’t blaming an individual easier & more satisfying??
• Less institutional responsibility
• Less time consuming
• No work to fix; just eliminate the individual
SUMMARY
Leaders in the crowd

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Be kind!
Acknowledge your failures and errors; Powerful to those you
work with.
Think of the big picture

One person made the error that’s going to allow you to rework
the system that led to the error; Difficult to do but necessary
Keep trying things

Hit that 20% goal!
THANK YOU!
QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS?