• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Former fighter pilots teach patient safety

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, February 3, 2006

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education!

Two years ago, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), an academic medical center in Nashville, TN, began looking for ways to dramatically improve patient safety. What they found was crew resource management, a type of training with roots in the aviation industry.

VUMC contracted LifeWings Partners, LLC, a group of former fighter pilots, astronauts, and active physicians, to provide the training, which emphasizes the same teamwork and communication skills used by aviators. The training also provided VUMC staff with the tools necessary to create a culture of safety in which potential medical errors are avoided.

As a result of the initiative, VUMC ranked number one out of almost 900 hospitals that submitted information for the 2005 Leapfrog Hospital Quality and Safety Survey for patient safety indicators and the creation of a culture of safety in the hospital. Leapfrog Group is a consortium of large employers that work for health care quality.

Source: eMediaWire

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education!

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive