30 minutes (see "Stick to a Specific Patient Safety Agenda"). Each
conference involves a 15-minute presentation by staff members fol-
lowed by a question and answer session. Our department has realized
several benefits since we started holding the meetings:
• It's constructive to have members of the surgical team gather with
their peers to have honest discussions about errors and near-misses in
order to define exactly what happened.
• The meetings are relevant learning opportunities for staff based on
real-life events their colleagues experienced or safety-related issues
the entire team needs to solve.
• Staff appreciate the opportunity to openly share how they can
improve their practices, are more aware of incidents that occur and
learn how they can prevent them.
Managers can conduct retrospective reviews of safety incidents, but
they don't have an intimate knowledge of the root causes or what
team members involved were thinking. Plus, staff would rather hear
from peers than managers. It's a powerful message when colleagues
can share what happened, admit the mistakes made and lead an open
and honest discussion about how the team can ensure something sim-
ilar won't happen again. That's a far better approach than having a
manager stand in front of the group to reprimand them for their per-
formance.
Interestingly, staff told us they want to hear from surgeons involved
in events. We've invited several surgeons to join us, but they've
declined for numerous reasons, including their busy schedules. Staff
also shared in the meetings that they wanted to hear from manage-
ment about policies and procedures relevant to the adverse events dis-
cussed. They often knew what needed to be done to prevent patient
harm, but didn't always understand the reasoning behind the correct
M A R C H 2 0 2 0 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y. N E T • 2