Attitudes of Risk Management Professionals Toward Disclosure of Medical Mistakes

The author reports on health care organization risk managers\u27 attitudes toward disclosure of medical mistakes

The Road to Transformation: Ascending from the Decade of Darkness

Nobody likes mistakes. Fewer yet like to revisit errors—to analyze, discuss or study them. They are often an embarrassment and remind us of our fallibility and shortcomings. It is always much easier to celebrate our achievements and successes—that leaves everyone with a warm feeling. However, although it is always preferable to avoid making mistakes, once they occur they are important and must be recognized as such. They speak to our weaknesses as both individuals and institutions. They are signals, if not alarms, to warn us of deficiencies that must be addressed. In fact, it has often been said for good reason that one can learn more from one’s mistakes than from one’s successes. The military has always been bad at accepting this premise. Mistakes are often construed as a sign of weakness or inability and many perceive them as potential career-ending events. Such a zero tolerance to mistakes breeds an environment of risk aversion, micro-management and stagnation. It kills initiative and experimentation. And, it avoids examining mistakes in detail—lest blame insidiously spread its evil tentacles and taint others in the chain of command. However, this state affairs leads to atrophy within an organization. It takes strong will and determination to break such a cycle. Normally, crisis is the only catalyst that compels leadership within an organization to take action, and even then it is difficult. The Department of National Defence (DND) and the Canadian Forces (CF), particularly the officer corps, found themselves in such a situation in the late 1980s and 1990s. By 1997, they were at the lowest ebb of their history. They had lost the confidence and trust of the government and Canadian people they served. They were stripped of their ability to investigate themselves. Furthermore, they were not trusted to implement the recommended changes forced upon them by the government and an external committee was established as a watchdog. Whether the leadership wanted to admit it or not, and they vehemently denied it at the time, there existed some substantial and deep rooted problems with DND, the CF and the officer corps. They were caught in a decade of darkness

Learning by Blundering Around Some Experiences in International Management

Based upon the experiences of American Companies operating abroad the paper focuses on the issue of learning in management. It shows that costly mistakes can be avoided by looking at the blunders committed by others. It also aims at generating information about similar cases in India.

The Role of Human Fallibility in Psychological Research:A Survey of Mistakes in Data Management

Errors are an inevitable consequence of human fallibility, and researchers are no exception. Most researchers can recall major frustrations or serious time delays due to human errors while collecting, analyzing, or reporting data. The present study is an exploration of mistakes made during the data-management process in psychological research. We surveyed 488 researchers regarding the type, frequency, seriousness, and outcome of mistakes that have occurred in their research team during the last 5 years. The majority of respondents suggested that mistakes occurred with very low or low frequency. Most respondents reported that the most frequent mistakes led to insignificant or minor consequences, such as time loss or frustration. The most serious mistakes caused insignificant or minor consequences for about a third of respondents, moderate consequences for almost half of respondents, and major or extreme consequences for about one fifth of respondents. The most frequently reported types of mistakes were ambiguous naming/defining of data, version control error, and wrong data processing/analysis. Most mistakes were reportedly due to poor project preparation or management and/or personal difficulties (physical or cognitive constraints). With these initial exploratory findings, we do not aim to provide a description representative for psychological scientists but, rather, to lay the groundwork for a systematic investigation of human fallibility in research data management and the development of solutions to reduce errors and mitigate their impact

Software project management: learning from our mistakes

In the January/February 2014 issue of IEEE Software, the Voice of Evidence column published an article titled ?Looking for the Holy Grail of Software Development?. In that article, the authors reviewed the main practices that software project managers needed to engage in to make success more likely. While it is important to know what software project managers should do, a complementary question is, What should they not do? In other words, what practices should software project managers avoid to make success more likely? Answering this question might assist current and future software project managers in preventing, or at least mitigating, problematic scenarios that, if unresolved, will eventually lead to additional project failures. In the words of Laplante et al ?While it is certainly useful to study the successful ways people solve problems, the old adage that we learn from our mistakes suggests that studying failures might be even more fruitful.

Reputation and Credibility. Mistakes in… Mistake Management

AbstractThe core value and ultimate purpose of the image policies is Credibility. Unfortunately, nothing is more mysterious in the public communication field than the subject's credibility. The credibility formula is the “cornerstone” of Public Relations and if it were a scientific formula we would teach it in schools. Should someone discover this formula he/she would master the world or at least would control his/her own life horizon. For starters, two things must be said regarding credibility. First of all, it is an excellent strategic reserve for possible image crisis; in other words, credibility represents a sort of “save money for a rainy day”. Second of all, it is never gained once and for all, we cannot anchor it on solid ground; its world resembles the moving sands. If we represent a player in the public arena, it is a crime not to have a damage limitation strategy that is a mistake management strategy. Mistakes can be made in any field of activity but its management implies the same elements. When a mistake is acknowledged, the first steps must be taken towards its management. We shall see that this may lead us to a credibility gain

Human resource management in change – one reason: the European Union

Times are moving fast, especially if political changes are coming up. Romania’s accession to the European Union is followed by several changes in the Human Resource Management; in Romania itself, but also in the other EU countries. Employees are moving beyond borders to work abroad and need to be caught and imbedded in the new working environment. Motivation is an important issue, but also other appeals for qualified staff to decide upon the move into a foreign European country. Further of importance is the integration and therefore new demands for the Human Resources Management, of the non native new employees. Dangers and mistakes that occur due to wrong integration and cultural misunderstandings may harm the good intensions of cross-country and -cultural working.human resource management, international work.

Framework programmable platform for the advanced software development workstation. Integration mechanism design document

The Framework Programmable Software Development Platform (FPP) is a project aimed at combining effective tool and data integration mechanisms with a model of the software development process in an intelligent integrated software development environment. Guided by this model, this system development framework will take advantage of an integrated operating environment to automate effectively the management of the software development process so that costly mistakes during the development phase can be eliminated