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Although several organizational behavior management (OBM) intervention techniques have been used to improve designated behaviors related to patient safety, there remains a lack of patient-safety-focused behavioral interventions among healthcare workers. OBM interventions are often applied to needs already identified within an organization, and the means by which these needs are determined vary across applications. The current research addresses gaps in the literature by translating OBM intervention techniques to identify and improve the prevention potential of responses to reported medical errors. A content analysis of 17 months of descriptions of follow-up actions to error reports for nine types of the most-frequently occurring errors was conducted. Follow-up actions were coded according to a taxonomy of behavioral intervention components, with accompanying impact scores based on criteria developed by Geller et al. Two error types were selected for intervention, based on the highest frequency of reporting and lowest average follow-up intervention impact score. Over a 3-month intervention period, managers were instructed to respond to these two error types with active communication, group feedback, and positive recognition strategies. Results indicate improved prevention potential as a consequence of improved corrective action for targeted errors, with rates of individual and group feedback delivery increasing by 10–35% for managers' responses to targeted error types. Future implications for identifying and classifying responses to medical error are discussed.
Cunningham et al. (Fri,) studied this question.