The Ferrari Racing Team Revs Up Hospital Procedures

Bob Carroll

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The next time the nursing staff decides to change bed linens during your hospital stay start your stopwatch.

Hospital Care, Ferrari Style

What do a Ferrari race-car team and your local hospital have in common? More than you might think. Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London hired a Formula One Ferrari racing team to improve hospital care. The Wall Street Journal explains:

In one of the more unlikely collaborations of modern medicine, Britain's largest children's hospital has revamped its patient handoff techniques by copying the choreographed pit stops of Italy's Formula One Ferrari racing team. The hospital project has been in place for two years and has already helped reduce the number of mishaps.

It may have reduced some mishaps, but has it also caused some crashes?

I presume the emphasis has been on attention to detail and coordination and not just speed.

One of the most likely scenarios for medical malpractice in my experience is the failure to properly accomplish a transition in hospital care. I am not sure if this is what is meant by patient handoff techniques, but any effort to improve the communications and other steps through and after a transition (such as from the operating room to the recovery room or from the intensive care unit to the regular floor) would be helpful. Too many patients in Florida hospitals are injured by errors even in the daily nursing shift transitions.