Roger Coe Eddy edited abstract.tex  almost 8 years ago

Commit id: db07740fe28acd0108c119e8aaa50ca159c9577b

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\begin{quotation}  This is a preliminary report of an small interdisciplinary study of application of self-directed reflective thinking to reduction of medical error. Medical error produces significant mortality, morbidity and disability. Large amounts of money and clinical and research effort have been applied to efforts to reduce prevalence and incidence. These efforts have mainly been applied to hospitals, clinics and large medical groups. Overall reduction of error has been disappointing perhaps due to increasing technical complexity and many changes in medical practice and administration.  The focus of this report is on efforts to deal with these problems at an individual and small group level. Personally and in our circles of friends and acquaintances many errors and near misses occurred. Emotional immediacy was a strong motivator to pursue causes and remedies. We wrote written case reports, searched medical, organizational, anthropological, psychiatric and psychoanalytic and philosophy of science literature for ideas in developing relatively simple, grounded, solutions at the level of work in the trenches of medical care. \textbf{Three open source tools are presented to support users reflective thinking. to support personal resilience, advancement of knowledge and increased personal and organizational awareness. We welcome comment and suggestions for further development. }  end{quotation]  Preliminary efforts and reading led to the creation of Narrative Descriptions. The user was asked to describe an event, and associated emotions. Then a discussion was added with three points of view, personal, interpersonal-communicative, and organizational. Originally these were for discussion within our group but later we suggested a narrative focus be added with consideration of uses: editing and re-reading, a reader, a teaching file, or categorization or an ontology.  Work with Narrative Discussions revealed complexity that required additions for a complete examination of events. We discovered Flanagan’s early work on the Critical Incident Technique (CIT)\cite{Flanagan1953},\cite{Fivars198012}. His goal was finding scientific basis for assessment of pilots. Early attempts to cope with medical error tended to focus on a model of Blame and Train. Considering safety studies from other fields suggested there was much greater complexity. To a psychiatrist it appeared there was little attempt to search for problems out of awareness, due to unconscious, denied or unobserved detail. We combined the approach of examining specific events (CIT) with pushing the user to consider emotional reactions and states. The user also needed to apply multiple points of view other than their own and attempt to describe the nature of communication, or lack thereof, and systemic and organizational factors. We also asked them to include any possible relevant associations, what comes to mind, even if it was a tune, a book, a movie, a distant memory of an event.\cite{Devlin2014}  Keywords should be added for future categorization or teaching. Work Points could indicate ideas to be explored, related concepts, or plans of action or solution. The rather complicated template embraces and clarifies complex situations and the final tool was called a Complex Context Critical Incident ReportCCCIR). The CCCIR template and examples are in an Appendix.  While users can fairly rapidly learn to use such a template a simpler unit was needed for self-training in close observation and participant observation. We call these SwampNotes and they are based on a short (300-400 word) note card. While computers can speed up these tools all that is necessary is pencil and paper. We hope these tools may be useful in worlds as different as academic medical centers and pre-literate tribal societies.   \end{quotation  }