Crisis Management in Acute Care Settings ― Human Factors and Team Psychology in a High-stakes Environment

This book is unique in providing a comprehensive overview of the human factors issues relevant to patient safety during acute care. By elucidating the principles of human behavior and decision-making in critical situations and identifying frequent sources of human error, it will help healthcare professionals provide safer, more effective treatment when dealing with emergencies characterized by uncertainty, high stakes, time pressure, and stress. The third edition has emerged from an ongoing synergistic relationship between clinicians and behavioral scientists on both sides of the Atlantic to update and enhance each chapter -- blending the strengths of the two professions into a readily accessible text. Among other improvements, readers will find sharper articulation of concepts and significantly more information on the organizational impact on individual and team performance. Crisis Management in Acute Care Settings is the required reference for all who are learning about, teaching, or providing acute and emergency healthcare. It will be of high value for undergraduate and graduate medical and nursing program and offer a much-needed resource for those who use high-fidelity healthcare simulation to teach teamwork.

Dr. Michael St.Pierre is an anesthesiologist, Intensive Care physician and Emergency Medicine physician at the University Hospital of Erlangen, Germany. He is codirector of the Simulation Center of the Department of Anesthesiology and member of the Patient Safety Division of the German Society of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care. He has written several German textbooks on patient safety, critical incident reporting and simulation in healthcare.

Dr. Gesine Hofinger is a psychologist working on human factors and safety. She is partner of Team HF, a human factors research and trainings association. She has more than two decades of experience with research and training in patient safety. She is author of several German textbooks on Human Factors and patient safety.

Dr. Robert Simon is an educator with more than 40 years’ experience specializing in research, development, and training for high performance, high stress teams in aviation and health care. He was the Principal Investigator for the MedTeams program which was adopted by the US Government and disseminated internationally as TeamSTEPPS. Dr. Simon joined the Center for Medical Simulation (CMS) as Education Director in 2002 and is now Director Emeritus of the Institute. Dr. Simon is on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School, the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Institute of Health Professions and the University of Cantabria.