... and Conference Season Begins
Health care and human factors are in the spotlight in March and April, with AIHce 2013 and Safety 2013 following close behind.
- By Jerry Laws
- Mar 01, 2013
This year's U.S. safety and health conference season is heating up. The biggest events are more than a month away, but March is the beginning of a healthy number of top-flight events.
The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society's 2013 International Symposium on Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care: Advancing the Cause, taking place March 10-13 at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel, will address many hot-button patient safety issues in the fast-moving health care industry, and it starts with a March 10 "Behind the Scenes" tour of the MedStar Central Intravenous Admixture Center, where a trio of human factors experts will lead a small group on the tour to demonstrate processes and equipment failures that contributed to the NECC fungal contamination outbreak of 2012. Experts from The National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare, MedStar Institute for Innovation will identify good and bad examples of HF/E designs, discuss organizational responses to adverse events, and explain why the utilization of compounding centers is increasing.
More than 400 people attended the 2012 symposium. The opening plenary address on March 11 at the 2013 conference will be given by Dr. Ross Ungerleider, M.D., MBA, on the topic, "The Seven Practices of Highly Resonant Operating Room Teams: Unlocking the Creative Potential of Human Factors" on Monday, March 11. Ungerleider is professor, chief of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery, and director of the Pediatric Heart Program at Brenner Children's Hospital, Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.
The closing plenary speaker on March 13 will be Kellie Taylor, PharmD, MPH, with her talk, "FDA's Perspective on Preventing Medication Errors: The Role of Human Factors." Taylor is deputy director in the Division of Medication Error Prevention and Analysis at the Office of Medication Error Prevention and Risk Management, in the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research’s Office of Surveillance and Epidemiology.
Another prominent ergonomics conference taking place in March is the 16th Annual Applied Ergonomics Conference sponsored by the Institute of Industrial Engineers, March 18-21 at the Hilton Anatole Dallas. Keynote speakers are the Ohio State University's William Marras and Janet Froetscher, head of the National Safety Council.
More Events in 2013's First Half
The 2013 American Occupational Health Conference, presented by the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, is right around the corner. It takes place April 28 through May 1 at the Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando, Fla.
AIHce 2013 in Montreal (May 21-23) and ASSE’s Safety 2013 in Las Vegas (June 24-27) also highlight the calendar during the first half of the year. The AIHce 2013 Advance Program is available at http://aihce2013.org/general-information/advance-program/. For information about Safety 2013, visit http://www.safety2013.org/.
About the Author
Jerry Laws is Editor of Occupational Health & Safety magazine, which is owned by 1105 Media Inc.