This book details the attributes and practices that help high-reliability organizations (HROs) excel in the service they provide to their customers. Explaining what it takes to achieve high reliability in healthcare settings, it presents proven tools and concepts that leading healthcare organizations are using to improve safety and quality. The book identifies the necessary infrastructure, methods, and analytics required to achieve and sustain higher reliability. It also includes case studies that illustrate success stories and failures, so readers can avoid making the same mistakes.

Building a High-Reliability Organization: A Toolkit for Success Gary Sculli, RN, MSN, ATP Douglas E. Paull, MD, FACS, FCCP, CHSE Building a High-Reliability Organization: A Toolkit for Success is a practical guide to becoming a high-reliability organization (HRO). HROs practice the highest standards of patient quality and prevent never events before they occur. In this first-of-its-kind book, written for real-world healthcare professionals on the front lines of patient safety, authors Gary L. Sculli, RN, MSN, ATP, and Douglas E. Paull, MD, FACS, FCCP, CHSE, take the concept of an HRO and break down what it means at the point of care. Through step-by-step instructions and a practical, straightforward approach, they demonstrate how your organization can ensure safe patient care, every day, for every patient. After reading this book, you will: Possess a clear understanding of what constitutes high-reliability healthcare Be able to promote evidence-based, reliable methods to improve safety, including team training, fatigue management systems, and investment in patient safety infrastructure and technology Understand which elements and behaviors must be included in an overall plan to achieve high reliability at the front lines of care Become a transformational leader in your healthcare organization Be able to apply the principles of a fair and just culture to promote the reporting, discussion, and disclosure of adverse events Table of Contents: Preface and Precepts Chapter 1: Situational Awareness Is Fundamental to High Reliability Chapter 2: Situational Awareness Countermeasures Chapter 3: Everyone on the Same Sheet of Music Chapter 4: Yes--You Need to Use the Checklist! Chapter 5: Preoccupation With Failure--It's an Attitude Chapter 6: Recognizing That the Expert Is Not Always the Person in Charge Chapter 7: Lab Coats and Scrubs, Meet Suits and Ties--Sensitivity to Frontline Operations Chapter 8: Just Response to Human Error: A Necessary Component of High-Reliability Organizations Chapter 9: Standardize Communication and Processes to Create Equivalent Actors Chapter 10: Ensuring Technical and Non-Technical Competence

Increasingly, scholars view reliability—the ability to plan for and withstand disaster—as a social construction. However, there is a tendency to evoke this concept only in the face of catastrophes, such as the British Petroleum oil spill or the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. This book frames reliability as a fundamental issue in the study of organizations—one that can also improve day-to-day operations. Bringing together a diverse cast of contributors, it considers how we can account for the ability of some organizations to maintain high reliability and what we can learn from them. The chapters distinguish reliability from related lines of inquiry; take stock of relevant research from different disciplinary perspectives; highlight implications for practice; and identify directions, questions, and priorities for future research. The first of its kind in over twenty years, this volume delivers a dynamic base of shared knowledge and an integrative research agenda at a time when organizational reliability has never been so important.

Improve your company's ability to avoid or manage crises Managing the Unexpected, Third Edition is a thoroughly revised text that offers an updated look at the groundbreaking ideas explored in the first and second editions. Revised to reflect events emblematic of the unique challenges that organizations have faced in recent years, including bank failures, intelligence failures, quality failures, and other organizational misfortunes, often sparked by organizational actions, this critical book focuses on why some organizations are better able to sustain high performance in the face of unanticipated change. High reliability organizations (HROs), including commercial aviation, emergency rooms, aircraft carrier flight operations, and firefighting units, are looked to as models of exceptional organizational preparedness. This essential text explains the development of unexpected events and guides you in improving your organization for more reliable performance. "Expect the unexpected" is a popular mantra for a reason: it's rooted in experience. Since the dawn of civilization, organizations have been rocked by natural disasters, civil unrest, international conflict, and other unexpected crises that impact their ability to function. Understanding how to maintain function when catastrophe strikes is key to keeping your organization afloat. Explore the many different kinds of unexpected events that your organization may face Consider updated case studies and research Discuss how highly reliable organizations are able to maintain control during unexpected events Discover tactics that may bolster your organization's ability to face the unexpected with confidence Managing the Unexpected, Third Edition offers updated, valuable content to professionals who want to strengthen the preparedness of their organizations—and confidently face unexpected challenges.

Since the first edition of Managing the Unexpected was published in 2001, the unexpected has become a growing part of our everyday lives. The unexpected is often dramatic, as with hurricanes or terrorist attacks. But the unexpected can also come in more subtle forms, such as a small organizational lapse that leads to a major blunder, or an unexamined assumption that costs lives in a crisis. Why are some organizations better able than others to maintain function and structure in the face of unanticipated change? Authors Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe answer this question by pointing to high reliability organizations (HROs), such as emergency rooms in hospitals, flight operations of aircraft carriers, and firefighting units, as models to follow. These organizations have developed ways of acting and styles of learning that enable them to manage the unexpected better than other organizations. Thoroughly revised and updated, the second edition of the groundbreaking book Managing the Unexpected uses HROs as a template for any institution that wants to better organize for high reliability.

"This eBook is an in-depth analysis into what makes a high reliability organisation. Combining research from OHS experts, including Professor Andrew Hopkins, learn what these organisations are doing that enables them to operate safely and what your organisation can do to avoid hazards and disasters."--Wolters Kluwer CCH Website.