Changing horses in midstream: sudden changes in plan in dynamic decision-making problems

Motivation - Why and how do expert unexpectedly change from their original plan in dynamic, uncertain settings? Research approach - Critical event interviews of practitioners self-reporting cases of sudden plan changes. Findings - Sudden plan changes developed in much the same manner as an expert's initial plan in recognition-primed decision-making. Limitations - Cases were limited to the healthcare domain; self-reporting distorts some aspects of the events; only cases where the change in plan worked were volunteered. Originality/Value - Many studies have examined persistence in an erroneous plan; fewer have examined sudden switches from bad to good plans. Take away message - Sudden plan changes arise in ways similar to experts' initial plan formulations: appearing as if unbidden, often not preceded by growing awareness of the need for reassessment, and once present seem obviously correct

The Patient in Patient Safety: Clinicians’ Experiences Engaging Patients as Partners in Safety

Patients and families play a role in the safety of care provided across clinical settings, highlighting the need to understand clinician perspectives and experiences related to their engagement. Through a panel discussion entitled, The Patient in Patient Safety: Clinicians’ Experiences Engaging Patients as Partners in Safety, we elicited clinician perspectives that have implications for human factors relevance in both, research and solution development/evaluation. We provide an overview of the panel including participants, format and content, and the resulting discussion

Prospective multicenter randomized patient recruitment and sample collection to enable future measurements of sputum biomarkers of inflammation in an observational study of cystic fibrosis.

BACKGROUND: Biomarkers of inflammation predictive of cystic fibrosis (CF) disease outcomes would increase the power of clinical trials and contribute to better personalization of clinical assessments. A representative patient cohort would improve searching for believable, generalizable, reproducible and accurate biomarkers. METHODS: We recruited patients from Mountain West CF Consortium (MWCFC) care centers for prospective observational study of sputum biomarkers of inflammation. After informed consent, centers enrolled randomly selected patients with CF who were clinically stable sputum producers, 12 years of age and older, without previous organ transplantation. RESULTS: From December 8, 2014 through January 16, 2016, we enrolled 114 patients (53 male) with CF with continuing data collection. Baseline characteristics included mean age 27 years (SD = 12), 80% predicted forced expiratory volume in 1 s (SD = 23%), 1.0 prior year pulmonary exacerbations (SD = 1.2), home elevation 328 m (SD = 112) above sea level. Compared with other patients in the US CF Foundation Patient Registry (CFFPR) in 2014, MWCFC patients had similar distribution of sex, age, lung function, weight and rates of exacerbations, diabetes, pancreatic insufficiency, CF-related arthropathy and airway infections including methicillin-sensitive or -resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Burkholderia cepacia complex, fungal and non-tuberculous Mycobacteria infections. They received CF-specific treatments at similar frequencies. CONCLUSIONS: Randomly-selected, sputum-producing patients within the MWCFC represent sputum-producing patients in the CFFPR. They have similar characteristics, lung function and frequencies of pulmonary exacerbations, microbial infections and use of CF-specific treatments. These findings will plausibly make future interpretations of quantitative measurements of inflammatory biomarkers generalizable to sputum-producing patients in the CFFPR

Environmental cleaning and disinfection in the operating room: a systematic scoping review through a human factors and systems engineering lens.

OBJECTIVE To synthesize evidence and identify gaps in the literature on environmental cleaning and disinfection in the operating room based on a human factors and systems engineering approach guided by the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) model. DESIGN A systematic scoping review. METHODS Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, we searched 4 databases (ie, PubMed, EMBASE, OVID, CINAHL) for empirical studies on operating-room cleaning and disinfection. Studies were categorized based on their objectives and designs and were coded using the SEIPS model. The quality of randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental studies with a nonequivalent groups design was assessed using version 2 of the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool for randomized trials. RESULTS In total, 40 studies were reviewed and categorized into 3 groups: observational studies examining the effectiveness of operating-room cleaning and disinfections (11 studies), observational study assessing compliance with operating-room cleaning and disinfection (1 study), and interventional studies to improve operating-room cleaning and disinfection (28 studies). The SEIPS-based analysis only identified 3 observational studies examining individual work-system components influencing the effectiveness of operating-room cleaning and disinfection. Furthermore, most interventional studies addressed single work-system components, including tools and technologies (20 studies), tasks (3 studies), and organization (3 studies). Only 2 studies implemented interventions targeting multiple work-system components. CONCLUSIONS The existing literature shows suboptimal compliance and inconsistent effectiveness of operating-room cleaning and disinfection. Improvement efforts have been largely focused on cleaning and disinfection tools and technologies and staff monitoring and training. Future research is needed (1) to systematically examine work-system factors influencing operating-room cleaning and disinfection and (2) to redesign the entire work system to optimize operating-room cleaning and disinfection