Unleashing Innovation on
the Front Lines—Preventing MRSA Transmissions & Transforming Culture
Keith McCandless, Social Invention Group, keithmccandless@earthlink.net, www.socialinvention.net
Moderator: Lynn Osborn, Director, CIMIT Education
and Convening, losborn@partners.org
MRSA infection is caused by Staphylococcus aureus bacteria — often called "staph." MRSA stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. It's a strain of staph that's resistant to the broad-spectrum antibiotics commonly used to treat it. Each year, 100,000 people in the US contract serious MRSA infections, almost 20,000 of them die each year (more than succumb to AIDS).
Most MRSA infections occur in hospitals or other health care settings, such as nursing homes and dialysis centers. It's known as health care-associated MRSA, or HA-MRSA. Older adults and people with weakened immune systems are at most risk of HA-MRSA. More recently, another type of MRSA has occurred among otherwise healthy people in the wider community. This form, community-associated MRSA, or CA-MRSA, is responsible for serious skin and soft tissue infections and for a serious form of pneumonia.
Despite conscientious efforts, conventional approaches to prevention such as hand hygiene, education campaigns, infection control protocols, monitoring, and legislative mandates have not succeeded. Innovations in how we prevent MRSA are much needed.
The Billings Clinic in Montana
is getting spectacular results eliminating transmissions of MRSA. A variety
of socially-inventive approaches are being used to unleash hundreds
of small innovations. The approaches—Positive Deviance, Improv Learning
Simulations, and Social Network Mapping—engage frontline staff in
discovering tacit and emergent solutions for themselves… not waiting
for experts in infection control or managers to solve the problem.
Changes in self-organizing behaviors
at the unit level have shifted behaviors toward a more collectively
mindful culture. As experts and leaders let go of over-control, front
line staff take on more responsibility for safety and innovation. The
results include more joy in work, safe practice, and spectacular results.
The focus of this session will be on socially inventive methods and surprises along the way. We can act our way into new thinking about change and innovation.
Innovation “Now: in the Clinical Office Practice
Ronald Dixon, MD, MA,
Associate Medical Director, MGH Beacon Hill Internal Medicine Associates;
Director, Virtual Practice Pilot at Massachusetts General Hospital,
rdixon@partners.org
Ron Dixon will address approaches to larger scale innovation in the delivery of healthcare services within a general medicine office practice. Innovations to be discussed are technology based, with the potential to reduce in person office visits. We will focus on the process, with discussion about the enablers and barriers to implementation.
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