Kendall's paper was accepted in Environment & Behavior. She and co-authors reported significant impact of ED layout on timeliness of care for patients with chest pain. The ED layout parameters included distances between exam room and work area, and whether the exam room has a door.

Kendall was recently awarded a $200,000 grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to study errors and adverse events in the Emergency Department using active surveillance. It will further enhance the research profile in patient safety at University of Maryland.

Two major projects were recently funded in which our division played a signficiant role. AHRQ awarded a $400K contract to a consortium (led by Yale) . RPS will contribute to the deployment of the web-based training tool for central line. Air Force awarded a $1.8M contract (PI: Dr. Bochicchio) to study the effectiveness of early aggressive tight glucose control study. RPS will contribute to the study of implementation.

Jason just won the first place award (over 18 other posters) in a competition at Medical Student Research Day (and $300). Congratulations!! Jason's poster described the results of a time-motion study of pre-rounding activities by residents in Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. Jason programmed Excel for the data collection tool. The study illustrated that the majority of the time by residents spent was on manually copying data from one source to another, instead of synthesizing the data. Jason was working with our division during the summer and was supported by NSF. Congratulations!

In the October issue of Annals of Emergency Medicine, our Division published two articles. One was on communication through the use of regular whiteboard, another on the use of video to improve patient safety.

Quality and Safety in Health Care just accepted a paper (lead author: Ayse) reporting an interview study of guideline compliance. The study was sponsored by National Science Foundation and used the theoretical framework of "ambiguity" to synthesize reasons why guidelines in preventing infections were and were not followed in intensive care units.

A survey study of expertise during initial care of trauma patients was just published in Journal of Trauma. The study was sponsored by National Science Foundation. Young-Ju Kim, a graduate research assistant working with Yan, was the lead author. The study concluded that "there was a large variation of the expertise available upon or shortly after a trauma admission. For low patient volume centers, early triage, better notification systems based on advanced telecommunication technology, and compensation for IH call may be a solution to better utilization of the trauma surgical specialties."

Together with a Swiss researcher, Yan will co-chair a symposium on team performance during Human Factors & Ergonomics Society's annual meeting (this year in Baltimore), on Wednesday, October 3. The symposium will consist of five presentations on current research on team performance in healthcare.

The paper by Young-Ju (now in Korea) on OR video privacy was accepted for publication in Journal of Clinical Nursing. The study analysis privacy concerns by staff when OR video is used for coordination. Congratulations, Young-Ju!

Without the fear of the bureaucratic process, Ayan will join us next week before the Labor day. Although a resident, Ayan has already published , a remarkable feat!  Dr. Sen will be officially a fellow with our group when he comes.