This article discusses the negative connotations that surround the term “second victim,” which is used to describe healthcare providers following their involvement in a adverse medical incident. Authors of this article persuade people to stop using this term, since it discourages healthcare providers from taking responsibility for their actions, as well as undermines the patient’s feelings and situation.

This article discusses the prevalence of disruptive behavior in the healthcare setting, which is defined as any act that influences a group’s intended outcome. Disruptive behavior often takes the form of angry outbursts and passive aggressive actions, especially in extremely stressful environments, such as emergency rooms. This behavior is often detrimental to the culture of safety and quality healthcare, as well as increases the risk of lawsuits. To combat disruptive behavior, five principles are are offered as guides to promoting professionalism and professional accountability in support of quality team-oriented care, patient safety and, if necessary, legal defense if disruptive colleagues challenge disciplinary interventions. 

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is the lead Federal agency charged with improving the safety and quality of America’s health care system. AHRQ develops the knowledge, tools, and data needed to improve the health care system and help Americans, health care professionals, and policymakers make informed health decisions.

“Annie’s Story” is an example of how healthcare organizations seeking high reliability embrace a just culture in all they do. This includes a system’s approach to analyzing near misses and harm events—looking to analyze events without the knee-jerk blame and shame approach of old. This video specifically focused on Nurse Andrea’s personal experience with an adverse health event with a patient who underwent a hypoglycemic emergency due to a misreading of a glucometer. The video then details the steps she and the hospital took to prevent future adverse health events, as well as other ways to increase overall patient safety and quality.

This article explains the challenge of balancing accountability and a “no blame” model in healthcare systems when promoting patient safety. Accountability is defined as taking responsibility for one’s actions. In this article, it is taking responsibility for malpractice that increases patient harm. the “no blame” model is defined as not accusing a single entity for any healthcare misconduct. It is important for healthcare systems to embody both taking responsibility for healthcare malpractices as well as the “no blame” model to effectively promote patient safety and quality and reduce adverse health events.

Resources for clinicians and staff looking for data and information about the importance of support after adverse medical events, or for administrators that are interested in implementing a peer support program at their institution.

Mitigating the Toll of Medical Errors on Clinicians by Jo Shapiro, MD, FACS

Webinar Date: October 31, 2019

As a clinician, being involved in adverse events can have devastating emotional consequences. How we react to these events – as individuals, colleagues and organizations – has a major effect on our organizational culture of psychological safety, provider wellbeing, disclosure and reporting, and patient safety.  Dr. Shapiro’s presentation will detail these effects and address the unique role that frontline physicians can play in supporting one another after adverse events. She will describe the peer support program developed at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and adopted by dozens of healthcare organizations. She will describe the building blocks of a creating and sustaining a peer support program, including providing the participants with the rationale to bring to leadership in advocating for peer support program resources.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify the emotional impact of adverse events on clinicians
2. Recognize the impact this has on a culture of psychological safety, provider wellbeing, disclosure and reporting, and patient safety.
3. Provide a rationale to leadership for developing a peer support program
4. Delineate the foundational aspects of a peer support program

The “Second Victim Rapid Response Team” was a system created to provide psychological, social, and emotional support for healthcare providers who are known”second victims” in the wake of any adverse health outcome or compromise in patient safety.

University of Missouri Health Care (MUHC) deployed an evidence-based emotional support structure for second victims based on research with recovering second victims known as the forYOU Team. It was designed to increase awareness of the second victim phenomenon, “normalize” the psychological and physical impacts, provide real-time surveillance for possible second victims within clinical settings, and render immediate peer-to-peer emotional support when a potential second victim is identified. This article describes the forYOU Team experience.

In communication-and-resolution programs (CRPs), health systems and liability insurers encourage the disclosure of unanticipated care outcomes to affected patients and proactively seek resolutions, including offering an apology, an explanation, and, where appropriate, reimbursement or compensation. Anecdotal reports from the University of Michigan Health System and other early adopters of CRPs suggest that these programs can substantially reduce liability costs and improve patient safety. In this study, CRP participants were interviewed. They identified several factors that contributed to their programs’ success, including the presence of a strong institutional champion and investing in building and marketing the program to skeptical clinicians.

Two victims are involved in adverse incidents within health care. The first victim is the patient and family and the second is the health care provider. Researchers of this study focused on the effects of adverse events on healthcare professionals. They found that it is necessary to develop and implement support systems that can utilized by both patients, families, and healthcare providers when dealing with the effects of adverse incidents.

The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety (2012) created a toolkit to help health care organizations implement support programs for clinicians suffering from the emotional impact of errors and adverse events. Based on the best available evidence related to the second victim experience, the toolkit consists of 10 modules, each with a series of specific action steps, references, and exemplars.

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) started collaborating together to utilize its combined resources and knowledge to further  patient safety efforts and create safety systems in various healthcare settings.

This article discusses that just culture is balance between holding organizations and individuals accountable for implementing safe practices and change in the workplace. This is especially important in healthcare settings to decrease patient mortality and increase patient safety. Benefits of fostering a just culture include increasing effective communication and innovation across various departments.

Sidney Dekker, PhD supervises the Safety Science Innovation Lab at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. In Dekker’s book, Just Culture: Restoring Trust and Accountability in Your Organization (3rd ed.), he discusses how to effectively create a just culture of accountability and responsibility. This includes learning strategies on how to appropriately approach adverse incidents such that knowledge is maximized and the negative effects are minimized.

The Collaborative for Accountability and Improvement and the Foundation for Healthcare Quality hosted a two-day retreat in Seattle, Washington (09/2017) in which administrators and healthcare providers discussed ways to advance communication and resolution programs (CRPs) and other resources in Northwest Hospitals to increase patient safety and communication among hospital leadership, attorneys, and health insurers.

Alberta Health Services (AHS) adopted the Patient and Family Centered Care (PFCC) program to increase patient and family engagement in the healthcare settings. The PFCC encourages and trains patients, families, and healthcare workers to share their experiences and improve care. This program also offers methods to measure the effectiveness of this program.

Marx discusses uses a legal viewpoint to discuss how to be more tolerant of errors in the workplace, while also holding people accountable for their mistakes. He outlines four important behavior concepts, and how they can be applied to the healthcare system to decrease risk of adverse events and increase accountability: malpractice, understanding violations, ignorance, and mishaps.

This article delves into the burnout epidemic plaguing physicians. The epidemic is caused by prolonged work hours, lack of resources, and demanding documentation. The burnout is also caused by emotionally stressing factors, such as those related to medically adverse incidents. To combat this epidemic, researchers of this article advocate for healthcare organizations to implement support systems that aid physicians’ well-being. In this study, the authors analyzed the effectiveness of a physician peer-support program in the Center for Professionalism and Peer Support at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. They found that this program used various techniques to promote physicians’ well-being, such as engaging in attentive listening and reflection to cope with stress in the workplace.

It’s part of health care providers’ professional culture to put their patients’ needs above their own. Before the COVID-19 crisis, health care providers had been experiencing a crisis of burnout which is now exacerbated by new challenges brought by the virus. This article provides several core principles as a way to move forward given the culture and challenges faced by health care providers.

By: Jo A. Shapiro, MD

The authors of this article analyzed the importance of developing a support system for physicians so they can effectively cope with stress in the workplace, especially following an adverse medical event. Researchers found that peer support groups are one of the most effective support systems for physicians.

Health care providers working on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic are threatened not only by exposure to the virus but also by pervasive and detrimental  effects on their mental health. Immediate actions need to be taken for a national strategy to safeguard the health and well-being of our clinicians. The article outlines 5 high-priority actions to protect the well-being of clinicians during and after COVID-19 crisis.

Written by: Victor J. Dzau, M.D., Darrell Kirch, M.D., and Thomas Nasca, M.D.

Sidney Dekker, the author of Second Victim: Error, Guilt, Trauma, and Resilience, discusses how healthcare professionals are considered second victims in medical mishaps, because of the trauma and guilt they experience int the wake of these incidents. In his book, Dekker details efficient ways to investigate medically adverse events so that healthcare professionals do not feel neglected or more guilty in the process. Dekker also emphasizes the importance of having support systems in healthcare settings for second victims.

Streamed live on May 6, 2015 Clinicians encounter many stressors during their careers, none more significant than a difficult patient event that results in harm. Acknowledging that clinicians make seldom use of traditional support services, leading health centers across the US are pioneering Peer Support Programs that make available a trained and compassionate network of peers who can reach out and provide 1:1 support to a clinician experiencing stress.

In this live video event, we are honored to host the leading authority in the field, Dr. Jo Shaprio of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, in conversation with Dr. Bryan Bohman, physician leader of Stanford Medicine’s Peer Support Program, to explore the following questions:

• What is motivating leading institutions to establish Peer Support Programs?
• How do Peer Support Programs work? How do they differ from existing support services?
• How effective are they? What do the data say?
• What best practices have emerged?
• What challenges need to be overcome?

The Risk Authority – Stanford, in partnership with Aon Risk Solutions, Lockton UK and MedPro Group invite you to participate in this exciting opportunity to learn about and explore Peer Support Programs from leading experts in the field.

Read more here.

In the BMJ Quality & Safety Study (2009), researchers studied why clinicians are often considered “second victims” in the wake of medical errors. The researchers delved into how healthcare providers recover from the guilt and stress involved medical errors, and discuss the elements related to recovery and delineate from the second victim phenomenon. These factors include moving forward, receiving emotional support, and reestablishing a sense of integrity. Researchers recommended that it is important to for healthcare institutions to implement support systems that not only offer emotional aid but also decrease the likelihood of future adverse events.

The Covid-19 pandemic has amplified the immediate need for medical institutions to better support the emotional well-being of clinicians who are facing important emotional stressors, including grief from seeing so many patients die, fears of contracting the virus and infecting their family members, and anger over health care disparities and other systems failures. This article highlights the cultural and structural barriers that have caused existing emotional support programs to fail and describes key strategies that institutions can use to design peer-support programs that clinicians will embrace, such as reframing emotional stress, proactively engaging clinicians, making professional mental health services accessible, and holding institutional leadership accountable for clinician well-being.

Researchers acknowledged how a majority of adverse medical events involve patient harm. Patients and family are known as first victims. Researchers also acknowledged how healthcare professionals are also considered victims after an adverse event, due to the emotional and psychological trauma experienced after it. In other words, healthcare professionals are also known as second victims. In this study, researchers analyzed the various coping strategies that clinicians use in the wake of adverse events. These strategies include attending programs that offer emotional aid second victims, as well as taking accountability for the situation and learning from it.

The authors of this article discuss how physicians are dubbed “second victims,’ due to the negative emotional and psychological challenges they experience as a result of patient adverse incidents. The authors also illustrate how the term “second victim” can be a harmful term, since it implies passivity and mitigates the experiences of patients and families also affected by medical errors. It is argued that this term points to the necessity of healthcare institutions to implement support programs to help physicians heal and cope following the negative effects of adverse health outcomes.

This article discusses on how healthcare professionals are often considered “second victims” of adverse medical events, due to the psychological and emotional trauma they experience. To support second victims, it is important for health institutions to implement early warning systems that address harm risks associated with adverse incidents. In this article, researchers specifically focus on nurses and how respond to adverse medical events.