Supporting Pre-Existing Teams in Crisis with IT: A Preliminary Organizational-Team Collaboration Framework

A number of pre-existing teams are trained to operate in crisis. These teams can be found in aviation, navy, nuclear power, offshore oil, air traffic control facilities, and trauma centers. Understanding how to support pre-existing teams like these, with IT is essential. To date, most support for these teams is automation support such as an electronic checklist for an airplane flight crew responding to an engine fire rather than collaboration support such as linking paramedics in the field to doctors in emergency rooms. While automated support is rapidly developing, very little consideration has been given to enhancing the collaboration support for teams that face crisis. With advances in network capacity and sensors, IT has enabled pre-existing teams that face crisis the opportunity to obtain collaboration support from others in the organization. Collaboration with other human experts is necessary to aid problem discovery and to consider ramifications of responses. Here we suggest a preliminary set of IT system guiding principles to support collaboration for a particular, but common type of pre-existing team that faces crisis. These principles are based on two frameworks that have been developed to mitigate the effects of crisis. One is an organizational approach called the High Reliability Organization (HRO); the other, a team approach, was developed in the aviation community known as Crew Resource Management (CRM). Here we briefly explain each approach, highlight their principles, and then suggest principles of a Collaboration Crisis IT (CCIT) system to support the collaboration needs of teams that face crisis

Situational Awareness Support to Enhance Teamwork in Collaborative Environments

Modern collaborative environments often provide an overwhelming amount of visual information on multiple displays. The multitude of personal and shared interaction devices leads to lack of awareness of team members on ongoing activities, and awareness of who is in control of shared artefacts. This research addresses the situational awareness (SA) support of multidisciplinary teams in co-located collaborative environments. This work aims at getting insights into design and evaluation of large displays systems that afford SA and effective teamwork

Collective Failure: The Emergence, Consequences, and Management of Errors in Teams

The goal of the current chapter is to examine the emergence, consequences, and management of errors in teams. We begin by discussing the origin and emergence of errors in teams. We argue that errors in teams can originate at both the individual and collective level and suggest this distinction is important because it has implications for how errors propagate within a team. We then consider the paradoxical effects of errors on team performance and team learning. This discussion highlights the importance of error management in teams so that errors can prompt learning while at the same time mitigating their negative consequences. Thus, we focus significant attention on the challenge of error prevention and error management in teams and highlight numerous factors that can influence these processes. We conclude the chapter with a discussion of important research gaps and outline an agenda for future work in this area

Committed to Safety: Ten Case Studies on Reducing Harm to Patients

Presents case studies of healthcare organizations, clinical teams, and learning collaborations to illustrate successful innovations for improving patient safety nationwide. Includes actions taken, results achieved, lessons learned, and recommendations

Advancing Patient Safety in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

As part of a systemwide transformation, the VA formed its National Center for Patient Safety to foster an organizational culture of safety within its nationwide network of hospitals and outpatient clinics. A recent medical team training program designed to improve communication among operating room staff was associated with a reduction in surgical mortality and improvements in quality of care, on-time surgery starts, and staff morale. The program is now being expanded to other clinical units, along with a patient engagement program that prevents errors by facilitating communication relating to patients' daily care plans. A recognition program stimulated facilities to conduct timelier and higher-quality root-cause analyses of reported safety events to identify stronger actions for preventing their recurrence. Other initiatives have reduced rates of health care -- associated infections, patient mortality, and post-operative complications. Success factors include leadership accountability for performance and organizational support for testing, expanding, and adopting improvements

USING IMAGERY PRACTICE TO IMPROVE AIRLINE PILOT SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

Pilot error remains the primary cause of airline airplane accidents (Federal Aviation Administration, n.d.). Airline pilots have relied on Crew Resource Management and Threat Error Management to reduce or eliminate errors (Helmreich & Foushee, 2019). Unfortunately, the worldwide accident rate continues to increase (International Air Transport Association, 2021), demonstrating the need for further research into improving aviation safety. Current regulations do not require imagery training for airline pilots to improve situational awareness (Federal Aviation Administration, 2017a). Athletes and other professionals, such as musicians and medical professionals, use imagery to improve performance (Munzert et al., 2009). Imagery practice may improve the situational awareness of airline pilots. This study examined the relationship between imagery practice and airline pilot situational awareness. The researcher used an experimental posttest design with a group of airline pilots that received imagery training and a practice period. The data analysis answered the research questions and objectives using data provided by the participants who completed an interactive video survey. The researcher compared the survey results with airline pilots without imagery practice, measuring Endsley\u27s (1995) three levels of situational awareness, including perception, comprehension, and projection. The study\u27s results produced three findings that emphasize the effects of the research. Pilots who practiced imagery more often had higher levels of situational awareness during the video survey than pilots who practiced less. Although there was an improvement in the group that practiced imaging a flight, further research may improve the effectiveness of imagery practice. More experienced pilots participated in the study compared to less experienced pilots. Further research regarding safety training experience and situational awareness could add to the findings of this study, along with Wang et al. (2021) findings regarding pilots using personal attributes such as emotional intelligence that replace inadequate training to maintain situational awareness

Assessing Situation Awareness in Unmanned Aircraft Systems Operations

The objective of this study was to investigate the potential utility of the Situation Awareness Linked Indicators Adapted to Novel Tasks (SALIANT) methodology as an assessment tool in unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) operations. Eighteen participants completed a UAS scenario (port security) as part of nine two-person crews (pilot and sensor operator). Subject matter experts mapped the naturally occurring team behaviors in the UAS scenario to create a SALIANT checklist, which was then used to rate participants’ SA. Results showed the SALIANT methodology was able to discriminate differences in SA behaviors among the UAS crews. Results also revealed significant correlations between targeted operator characteristics and several of the SALIANT indicators

Near misses in financial trading: skills for capturing and averting error

Objective: The aims of this study were (a) to determine whether near-miss incidents in financial trading contain information on the operator skills and systems that detect and prevent near misses and the patterns and trends revealed by these data and (b) to explore if particular operator skills and systems are found as important for avoiding particular types of error on the trading floor. Background: In this study, we examine a cohort of near-miss incidents collected from a financial trading organization using the Financial Incident Analysis System and report on the nontechnical skills and systems that are used to detect and prevent error in this domain. Method: One thousand near-miss incidents are analyzed using distribution, mean, chi-square, and associative analysis to describe the data; reliability is provided. Results: Slips/lapses (52%) and human–computer interface problems (21%) often occur alone and are the main contributors to error causation, whereas the prevention of error is largely a result of teamwork (65%) and situation awareness (46%) skills. No matter the cause of error, situation awareness and teamwork skills are used most often to detect and prevent the error. Conclusion: Situation awareness and teamwork skills appear universally important as a “last line” of defense for capturing error, and data from incident-monitoring systems can be analyzed in a fashion more consistent with a “Safety-II” approach. Application: This research provides data for ameliorating risk within financial trading organizations, with implications for future risk management programs and regulation

How Thoroughly Do Proposed Nextgen Mid-Term Operational Improvements Address Existing Threats?

The goals of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) include improved safety, increased capacity, increased efficiency, and reduced environmental impact. The FAA has developed 46 mid-term Operational Improvements (OIs) to facilitate initial realization of these benefits in the 2015 – 2018 timeframe. These OIs describe changes in technologies, policies and procedures from current-day air and ground operations designed to mitigate safety, capacity, efficiency, and environmental issues. The main goal of this project was to investigate how thoroughly threats to safety present in today’s operations are addressed by the OIs. These threats, without mitigation, could remain threats in the mid-term, potentially compromising the intended NextGen safety benefits. To address this concern, we extracted threats to safety from 200 Aviation Safety Reporting System incident reports filed by tower air traffic controllers over a five-year period. We then evaluated whether these threats are addressed by the mid-term OIs