I’m currently at the SMACCGold conference, and there is an exciting amount of discussion about human factors in resuscitation. Karim Brohi showed a great video of the resuscitation of a critically injured motorcyclist in the UK, which was a great demonstration that the best resuscitations are quiet, calm and co-ordinated.  And we were lucky enough […]

I’ve written previously of my skepticism for the word “team” in relation to the groups of strangers who congregate in  ED resus rooms.  Since then I’ve been trawling through the literature to find the best available evidence on how to teach human factors and non-technical skills, in particular team leading and teamwork skills to people […]

I’m not normally a nervous flyer. I was born overseas, and had lived on 4 continents by the age of 7, and took yearly trips from Australia to the USA to visit family throughout the 80’s and 90’s (in the old days when it took 4 stops and 40 hours to get from Melbourne to […]

Having done a bit of reading about checklist design, and the challenge-response style, I’ve reconfigured the resus time out checklist.  I was actually working on this the other night after finished a late shift up in Darwin, and was on-call for the ED overnight. Sure enough I was asleep for about an hour when the […]

Although titled “How to Avoid Mistakes in Surgery”, which may lead some medical viewers to dismiss it as unrelated to their specialty, the BBC Horizons program last week aired a fascinating episode, hosted by Dr Kevin Fong, a well-known Anaesthetic/ICU Consultant turned TV presenter from England, whose credits include such shows as Extreme A&E.  In […]

After a rousing start from Scott Weingart at SMACC2013, John Myburgh, Intensivist from StGeorge in Sydney raised the issue of “silos” in Critical Care Medicine.  Why do we still see ourselves as such distinct specialties, who “play on different teams”, who are antagonistic, who often lose the focus of the patient as the most important […]

The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, via their Professional Development area are running a course that can only benefit, well, all of us!  The Process Communication Model course involves reflecting on one’s own communication style, analysing your colleagues as well as your own communication styles under stress, and aims provide attendees with skills to better […]

Peter Fritz and Nick Chrimes from Melbourne have just released a groundbreaking new concept in airway management.  Utilising a cognitive aid as opposed to a traditional flowchart algorithm, and a short checklist, the Vortex approach to unanticipated difficult airway management is designed to be easy to remember and implement, to be used by any critical […]

“Time Outs” have been used in the operating theatre for many years. They are designed as an error reduction method, whereby everyone in the theatre stops what they are doing whilst a checklist is run through, ensuring that the correct procedure is being carried out, on the correct patient, by the correct people with the […]