Dr. Jan Cannon-Bowers of University of Central Florida will give a special seminar on simulation-based training strategies, especially on the skills as related to decision-making and teamwork. The seminar is jointly sponsored by MASTRI center and CAPSUM. Dr. Cannon-Bowers is a leading expert in simulation.

Congratualtions to Ayan who received the match notice for his residency program application! While totally occupied with setlling down, starting multiple research projects and manuscripts, he managed to successfully resume his post-graduate medical education.

Yan presents in a seminar hosted by Institute for Systems Research at University of Maryland, College Park on March 6, 2008. Systems approach to challenges in healthcare is frequently advocated. The seminar is an opportunity to share insights into healthcare work processes with systems researchers.

John Senders, a pioneer in the field of human errors in medicine, visited Research in Patient Safety on Feb 21. John organized the first two human error conferences with participants such as James Reasons in 1980's.

University of Toronto's Human Factors program invited Yan to visit as a Distinguished Alumnus during March 12-13, 2008. The active program has produced a number of leaders in the field of human factors. 

Danny was the lead author of a report on communication during rounds accepted for poster-presentation at the premier International Computer-Human Interaction 2008 conference(sponsored by Academy of Computing Machinery), in Italy. The report described the parallel communication processes and data preparation activities, and provided suggestions for design of computerized support. The study is part of an NSF funded project on rounds.

Center for Advancement in Patient Safety at University of Maryland (CAPSUM.org) will have its second annual symposium on January 29, 2008. The theme of this year is on communication.

Dr. Jessica Herzog fascinated her audience in Davidge Hall with the results of a time-motion study on pre-rounding activities. Her senior resident project identified that residents currently spent 20-30 minutes to prepare for rounds, but more than half of the time was spent on copying data to paper, whereas no or little time (<1 minute) on examining patients and formulating plans. The project is collaboration with our group and Pediatric Intensive Care.

The journal of Anesthesia and Analgesia just published a paper for a study by our group on the use of visual displays to support appointment decision making. A novel graphic display of uncertainty for case duration was tested against tabular format. Two students (Melissa and Danny) were part of the authorship which contains a leading researcher in OR management (Frank Dexter). 

Our poster describing the prototype to support round discussions was nominated for best posters at the American Medical Informatics Association annual meeting. The protype was inspired by the observation at the pediatric intensive care unit, and was a collaborative work between engineers and clinicians.