TL;DR:Blaming workers after mistakes makes organizations less safe. Psychological safety shifts the focus from “who failed” to “what in the system allowed this to happen,” leading to better learning, prevention, and patient safety. Why Blaming Workers Fails to Improve Safety…
A story shared by Dr. Marty Makary reveals how hospital silos and lack of ownership can allow obvious safety risks to persist — even after someone dies. Editor’s note (2026): This story is from a 2021 post, but the lesson…
I post here a lot about my most recent podcast series, “My Favorite Mistake,” but my first pandemic podcast project was a collaboration with the firm Value Capture. It’s a podcast series called “Habitual Excellence,” using a phrase from Paul…
My guest for Episode #385 of the podcast is Emily Elrod, the president of the firm Workzbe, based in Georgia. We have shared interests in Lean, ergonomics, healthcare and creating better workplaces. We met earlier this year and she was…
Today is the World Health Organization “World Patient Safety Day 2020.” Patient safety is not just an American healthcare issue — see some statistics I have compiled over the years. At one point, the per capita rate of people killed…
I’m very excited that one of the projects that I’ve been working on over the past few months has come to fruition. It’s an eBook, available as a free PDF or as a very inexpensive Kindle book, that collects the…
Today, I wanted to share an excellent article written by Dr. John Toussaint (of Catalysis) and Ken Segel (of Value Capture): Ken and John were both deeply influenced by the late Paul O’Neill, who made worker safety the primary imperative…
tl;dr: Airlines, including American and Delta say that masks are “required” on board, but enforcement of this supposed requirement is spotty, at best. It would be more accurate to say they’re “requested” or “recommended.” But, a new announcement promises tougher…
I was asked by a writer for Forbes.com to share some thoughts on re-opening workplaces safely (or as safely as reasonably possible). Here is that piece: Key Steps To Assess When (And If) To Bring Employees Back To The Office…
Here is the second post in a series about how to be safe when traveling (if you have to now or when things start opening up a bit). The series includes: I recently stayed in three different hotels because my…
It’s possible that I could start traveling again for my healthcare consulting work next month… or maybe in July. My colleagues at Value Capture aren’t sure yet how this will work out, but clients are sharing their current plans for…
Thanks to Emily Elrod for inviting me to do a video chat webinar as part of a series that she has been running recently on “surviving quarantine by spreading life.” It was done on Thursday 5/7 at 4:30 pm ET.…