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Nov 23, 2006

"Life just seems so full of connections. Most of the time we don't even pay attention to the depth of life. We only see flat surfaces." --Colin Neenan

Hospital Learns From Car Racing

Hospitals don't usually model their processes after car racing, but in an unlikely collaboration, Britain's largest children's hospital has revamped its patient hand-off techniques with lessons learned from the choreographed pit stops of Formula One racing. In 2003, Dr. Allan Goldman and surgeon Martin Elliot were watching a race unfold when they noticed striking similarities between patient hand-overs at their hospital and the interchange of tasks at a racing pit stop. The duo invited members of McLaren, the British racing team, to provide insights into pit-stop maneuvers. Armed with videos and slides, the racing team described how they used a human-factors expert to study the way their pit crews performed. Based on what they learned the hospital implemented changes with amazing results. The average number of technical errors per handover fell 42 percent and "information handover omissions" fell 49 percent!