Published 2/20/2020
FEBRUARY NEWSLETTER
Check out what we've been up to since the website went live!
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The website went live on October 1, 2019! Since then we've had:
5,590 Google searches, 40 subscribers, & 35 HFTH members voted in
Congratulations to our newly elected Executive Council!
Our founding members have voted in our Executive Council!
President -- Sarah Fouquet
Secretary-Treasurer -- Ray Chan
Public Relations Chair -- Eryn Godwin
Membership Chair -- Joy Rivera
Events Chair -- Adjhaporn Khunlertkit
A Note From Our President
Dear friends,
It’s really happening! We are beyond excited to get this network running to support the wonderful work you do every day. I am incredibly honored and grateful to be the network’s first president, while also feeling extremely undeserved - I would not be here without the support of my fellow practitioners and colleagues.
Theodore Roosevelt once said, “No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care”. For each of us, the letters after our names and our years of experience are meaningless if we don’t embrace empathy as a foundation of our work. It’s also what brought many of us together – sharing experiences, lessons, mistakes and support at many conference happy hours.
Whether you're a boots-on-the ground HF practitioner, an industry partner, or care provider – our hope is that this network will be a valuable resource to all. As we move forward, please excuse any growing pains, feel free to reach out, join a committee, or contribute to our HFTH Forum.
Best wishes (and Go Chiefs!),
Sarah Fouquet, PhD
Children's Mercy Hospital Kansas City
HFTH Spotlight:
10 Questions in 10 Minutes!
This month's Spotlight is Ken Catchpole, PhD! Be sure to read Ken's complete interview, here on the HFTH Spotlight web-page.
He has also provided the review of our Book of the Month (check it out below, it's a great read)!
1) What is your job title?
"I am the SmartState Endowed Chair in Clinical Practice and Human Factors at the Medical University of South Carolina."
2) Why did you go into Human Factors?
"In 1989, a career adviser suggested that I might enjoy studying Ergonomics at University. It totally suited me from day one!"
3) Why did you go the healthcare route?
"After receiving my PhD, I was looking for a new challenge. I applied for a job in a UK Children’s Hospital researching 'errors' in congenital heart surgery. On my first day I was completely overwhelmed trying to understand what was going on and what I could do to help such amazing people do amazing things. Then I realized how much systems set people up for failure and that nearly everyone in healthcare was unaware of this. I was hooked..."
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4) Why did you decide to be embedded as opposed to work in academia or industry?
"It is the best, and probably only, way to understand the complexity and unique challenges of healthcare." "Being in a hospital means you work alongside clinicians; learn their language, recognize the problems they have and try different solutions that encompass more than just HF perspectives. If I want to understand work on the ICU, I go up to the ICU (5 minute walk from my office), talk to staff and observe what they do.
Industry or academia simply don’t provide those opportunities to learn, experiment and apply HF principles..."
5) What do you enjoy most about being an embedded HF practitioner?
"Changing people’s view of the world. Coming to a problem (big or small) and being able to apply experience and principles to help understand why a system isn’t working and what can be done about it..."
6) What is one piece of advice you would give up-and-coming HF professionals who want to be embedded in healthcare?
"Your HF training tells you only one third of what you need to be successful." "Don’t think that it will be easy or change will be fast; don’t expect to be always welcomed or understood; expect to fail, but do it anyway and learn from it."
9) If you could be a member of any TV show family, which would it be?
"The Simpsons"
What People Are Doing
Children's Mercy Hospital's Human Factors Collaborative was asked to assist the Intensive Care Nursery (ICN) with the unit's breast milk fridge organization. A few near misses had occurred involving incorrect milk deliveries to patients. As a result, the HF team recommended organizing the milk fridge by bed number, as opposed to patient names in an attempt to reduce potential errors. Currently, a trial with the new system is taking place on two sections (or "pods") of the ICN. Each colored bin in the image is representative of a bed number. Pink bins are Pod E and blue are Pod F. Interviews with ICN nurses are also taking place to gauge satisfaction with the new system.
What Books We're Reading
Our Book of the Month is Still Not Safe by Bob Wears and Kathleen Sutcliffe. This is an essential read for anyone interested in healthcare safety science. The book tells the history of the Patient Safety movement. The central thesis revolves around healthcare adopting a simplistic approach to health safety. Rather than embracing the complexity of systems safety science which is typified by Safety II thinking, healthcare adopted a more simplistic Safety I approach. By turning “harm” to “error,” safety became something deficient that simply needed fixing the illusion of an otherwise perfect system. This view kept safety scientists, engineers and human factors experts from interfering and challenging physician leadership. Thus, patient safety became “medicalized” and momentum was lost.
Whether you subscribe to this view or not, this book places the everyday work of reducing harm within the socio-cultural context and explains challenges embedded HF practitioners are familiar with today.
What Articles We're Reading
SEIPS 3.0: Human-centered design of the patient journey for patient safety (2020).
SEIPS has long been an important framework for viewing the healthcare system. Since its initial publication in 2006, it was updated in 2014 and now a third iteration has been released. In the updated model, Carayon, P., Wooldridge, A., Hoonakker, P., Hundt, A. S., & Kelly, M. M. expand "the process component, using the concept of the patient journey to describe the spatio-temporal distribution of patients' interactions with multiple care settings over time."
Situation Awareness is a hot topic in hospital pediatrics. However, there are few examples ​measuring individual and team situation awareness within the pediatric setting. Coolen, E., Draaisma, J., & Loeffen, J. provide an example of the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Tool (SAGAT) being utilized within inpatient pediatrics.
HFES International Healthcare Symposium 2020
Look for us at HFES Healthcare in March! March 8 - 11, 2020!
Join Our Network
Complete the Membership Application to request HFTH membership.
We cannot wait to work with you!
