Do Structured Handovers and Checklists Improve Patient Outcomes?

The Center for Medical Simulation

Hospital environments and clinical care has become complex. Managing interfaces across different aspects of the health system is critical, for example, patient flow across departments in a hospital. There has been a call for addressing these and other human factors in healthcare, but it is not clear what interventions are supported by data. Dr. Saša Sopka, anesthesiologist and medical education researcher, and the Medical Director of AIXTRA – Aachen Interdisciplinary Competency Center for Training and Patient Safety has been working to systematically review this topic. During this presentation, Dr. Sopka will review major problems in healthcare and human factors, explore solutions implemented in aviation and other related fields, and describe the published experience in healthcare highlighting several unexpected outcomes and examples. Two focus areas will be the Safe Surgery Checklist and IPASS for handovers.