Dear Renown Medical Staff Colleagues,
2025 will be an exciting year as we focus on our strategic pillar“ Providing Essential & Advanced Care Options.” We welcome our new Kidney Transplant program highlighted in the last newsletter, look to expand our ECMO program ahead of schedule and anticipate the opening of the Conrad Breast Center in the beginning of the summer. All these programs promise to bring leading-edge care, close to home, for our community.
In addition, we have initiated discussions with Medical Staff leadership about two areas of need. The first is Medical Staff wellness. The goal is to develop reliable support for our physicians / APPs by offering peer-to-peer coaching, crisis event support and to enhance ease of practice. The second area will be to focus on becoming a High Reliability Organization( HRO).
Initially developed in the nuclear and aviation industry, and later introduced to healthcare, HROs“… operate under very trying conditions all the time and yet manage to have fewer than their fair share of accidents.”
HROs function under five principles.( Managing the Unexpected, Weick & Sutcliffe). Three Principles of Anticipation:
Two Principles of Containment 1. Preoccupation with Failure 1. Commitment to Resilience 2. Sensitivity to Operations 2. Deference to Expertise 3. Reluctance to Simplify Interpretations
HROs combine these principles with simple universal skills, e. g., practicing a questioning attitude by pausing, questioning, and confirming; using Stop Think Act and Review( STAR) as a chance to selfcheck and to give one’ s brain a chance to catch up with what one’ s hands are about to do, and to“ CUS with Respect”, that is, to speak up for safety with the use of key words, Concern, Uncomfortable and Stop for a Safety Issue, to call attention to a potential risk.
By living these principles and cultivating the universal skills, hospitals have been able to reduce safety events by as much as 70-80 %. We already provide top-notch care. However, we can provide even safer care on our journey to eliminate preventable harm.
Be well, Bill
Bill Plauth, MD, MMM Chief Medical Officer, Renown Health Associate Dean, Clinical Affairs, UNR Med 10315 Professional Circle Reno, NV 89521 C: 970-903-5585 Bill. Plauth @ Renown. org
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