Checklists and Error Prevention on the TV Show ER
Hulu – ER: Old Times – Watch the full episode now. Thanks to Bryan to bringing this episode of ER to my attention. I don’t normally watch it, but my wife always DVRs it, so I was able to watch…
Patient safety doesn’t improve through punishment, vigilance posters, or telling people to “be more careful.” It improves when leaders design safer systems, support speaking up, and focus on learning instead of blame. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on patient safety through a Lean lens—exploring medical errors, near misses, psychological safety, leadership behaviors, and how healthcare organizations can reduce harm by fixing systems rather than blaming individuals.
Hulu – ER: Old Times – Watch the full episode now. Thanks to Bryan to bringing this episode of ER to my attention. I don’t normally watch it, but my wife always DVRs it, so I was able to watch…

TL;DR: “Toyota’s ‘stop the line’ concept is being adapted for healthcare — empowering any staff member to pause a procedure when something seems wrong, before it becomes a harm event. A surgical tech suspects the wrong patient has been brought…
Dennis Quaid Takes Oprah To Hospital That OD’d His Babies This might be the first time I’m DVR-ing the Oprah show. Tomorrow, actor Dennis Quaid will talk about the medical errors that nearly killed his twin babies. For the first…

Autographed Norman Bodek Collection Book & CDs – eBay (item 160304046494 end time Dec-19-08 17:45:25 PST) Norman Bodek has graciously collaborated with me on this exciting project. I am auctioning off a custom audio CD set (4 CDs) of Norman’s…
BBC NEWS | Health | Breathing life into resuscitation Thanks to my old boss, Mike, for sending this my way. Here’s an article (with pictures, better photos here) from the BBC about a revolutionary new design for hospital “crash carts”…
I wanted to remind you about an online event I’m presenting for Thursday afternoon and tell you about a new event (local to Dallas) that I’m attending Thursday night. THE DARK REPORT presents: How To Find And Eliminate All The…
Bedside Manner: Advocating for a Relative in the Hospital (WSJ) WSJ Health Blog (free): Five Tips for Helping a Family Member in the Hospital I’ve written before about my questions of why so many hospitals abdicate their leadership responsibility for…
Kevin Meyer, over at Evolving Excellence, recently wrote a good piece on “endorsing” a U.S. presidential candidate. Today, I’m technically Constitution-eligible to be President of the United States, as I’m now 35 years young. However, I’m not nominating myself to…
Healthcare Intelligence Network » Blog Archive » Eight Steps to a Culture of Safety I think words matter. Action matters, also, but the words we use do matter (not that I always choose them well here). Hospitals often use different…
By Mike Thelen: Having spent the last 10 years working within Lean disciplines, it is second nature to identify shortcomings in any business model from a Lean perspective. Since I also have two individuals in my immediate family who work…
Heparin errors and patient harm have been in the news quite a bit the last few years. So what are hospital regulators doing about it? Let’s look at the time line here: 2006: Heparin error kills 3 babies in Indianapolis…
NHS: 60,000 medication blunders in 18 months – Health News, Health & Wellbeing – The Independent Trust me, I’m not picking on the NHS. There’s a lot of good things happening here with Lean and I’ll blog about some of…