EMP-36

In just a couple of months, we will be celebrating our 10th Reunion at Kellogg! We hope you can join us at the Allen Center May 4-6!

Mark Bader and I will keep you updated with any news of specific EMP-36 gatherings. If you would like to host or suggest a venue, please contact Mark or me (Karen Kalbacher Stevens).

We received a wonderful update from Ed Dunn. Ed continues to make us proud with his commitment to healthcare work! Here is Ed's update:

"I'm in my fourth year as director of policy and clinical affairs for the VA National Center for Patient Safety, based in Ann Arbor, Mich. I am leading the national roll-out of the medical team training program developed in our office. The program is based upon the fact that approximately 70 percent of adverse events in healthcare are the result of communication failure. We have borrowed principles of crew resource management from aviation and tweaked them for use in healthcare. For example, a pre-flight plan becomes a pre-op briefing in the OR before the start of a surgical procedure, a post-flight debriefing becomes a debriefing after a resuscitation event in a hospital and a flight-crew briefing becomes interdisciplinary rounds in an ICU. Over the next two years, we will be taking our program across the country to all VA medical centers providing surgical services.

"It has been an exciting opportunity for me personally to use my clinical, policy and management background to work in an office and a branch of the federal government so committed to implementing concrete and tangible interventions to increase the safety of healthcare delivery.

"A note for my classmates from Bob Aspell and myself: 'Had enough yet?' and 'How is the market approach doing with improving access to healthcare these days?'