Presentation
“The 5 Rights of Safety Tools: Right Method, Right People, Right Time, Right Cost, Right Outcome”
SessionHE6: Innovations in Methods
DescriptionChildren’s mental and behavioral health hospitals face a persistent safety challenge: contraband items entering secure units. These items range from sharp objects to restricted personal belongings, all posing a serious risk to patients and staff. Preventing contraband is complex, requiring the balance of clinical care, patient rights, staff workload, and security considerations. Traditional safety approaches in healthcare, such as quality improvement (QI) methods or failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), are often used, but their effectiveness in this unique context is rarely compared directly to human factors tools.
This presentation provides a comparative analysis of five proactive safety approaches: two styles of Learning Teams, a Human Factors review, a design charette, and a Simplified FMEA. The study systematically examined the usability, feasibility, cost, and outcomes when applied to contraband prevention in a pediatric behavioral health hospital. Each method was tested against the same problem, enabling a rare side-by-side comparison of how different approaches uncover risks, prioritize action, and translate into implementable solutions.
Methods and Applications
Learning Teams (two approaches): A structured facilitated session with frontline staff to map how contraband enters the system and brainstorm mitigation strategies. Two variations were tested: one focused on open discussion and storytelling, and the other on structured problem-solving.
Human Factors Review: An expert-driven method examining workflows, environmental design, human-system interactions, and latent conditions that enable contraband risks.
Mini-design Charette: a highly facilitated, collaborative series of sessions to co-design a process in real time with the goal of solving an operations problem
Simplified FMEA: A risk-prioritization approach adapted for time-limited hospital teams, scoring the likelihood, severity, and detectability of contraband-related failures.
Comparative Measures:
1. Time: Duration of preparation, facilitation, and analysis.
2. People: Number and types of participants required.
3. Cost: Resource intensity, including staff time and facilitation.
4. Action Plans: Strength, specificity, and sustainability of recommendations.
5. Barriers and Facilitators: Implementation challenges unique to each method.
Key Findings (to be expanded in the presentation):
Some methods generated more innovative ideas but required significant facilitation expertise. Others produced concrete, implementable actions but risked missing system-level contributors. As expected, the strength of action items varied, with human factors and system design approaches surfacing design and system changes while QI methods leaned toward procedural fixes.
Differences in cost and time were substantial, with implications for how organizations select methods given resource constraints.
Importance of the Message
Healthcare often defaults to the methods leaders are most familiar with—usually QI-based approaches—without considering whether those tools are the best fit for the problem. This can lead to wasted time, staff frustration, and weaker safety outcomes. By comparing approaches in the same setting and on the same problem, this study highlights the strengths and limitations of each tool.
The central takeaway: there is no one-size-fits-all safety method. Leaders must intentionally choose tools that match the complexity of the problem, the context, and the outcomes desired. For contraband prevention in pediatric behavioral health—a high-risk, emotionally charged, and resource-limited environment—tool selection is not just academic. It can mean the difference between a patient staying safe or experiencing harm.
Presentation Overview
This session will walk participants through:
The contraband problem in pediatric behavioral health.
An overview of each safety method, including practical steps and adaptations.
A comparative analysis of time, resources, costs, and outcomes.
Lessons learned about what each tool contributes—and what it misses.
Practical guidance for leaders: how to select the right method for the right problem.
The presentation will be educational, insightful, and entertaining, drawing on real-world stories from frontline staff, anonymized case examples, and candid reflections about the messiness of trying different tools in practice. Humor and humility will keep the audience engaged, while rigorous comparison provides concrete learning.
Takeaway Points:
Contraband prevention highlights the need for safety tools that account for human factors, system design, and context—not just procedures.
Human factors reviews often generate stronger, system-level solutions, but QI methods may be easier for teams to adopt and spread.
Tool choice matters: time, people, and costs vary dramatically, influencing feasibility in resource-strained settings.
Healthcare needs a toolkit approach, where leaders know the trade-offs and can choose methods intentionally rather than defaulting to habit.
This presentation provides a comparative analysis of five proactive safety approaches: two styles of Learning Teams, a Human Factors review, a design charette, and a Simplified FMEA. The study systematically examined the usability, feasibility, cost, and outcomes when applied to contraband prevention in a pediatric behavioral health hospital. Each method was tested against the same problem, enabling a rare side-by-side comparison of how different approaches uncover risks, prioritize action, and translate into implementable solutions.
Methods and Applications
Learning Teams (two approaches): A structured facilitated session with frontline staff to map how contraband enters the system and brainstorm mitigation strategies. Two variations were tested: one focused on open discussion and storytelling, and the other on structured problem-solving.
Human Factors Review: An expert-driven method examining workflows, environmental design, human-system interactions, and latent conditions that enable contraband risks.
Mini-design Charette: a highly facilitated, collaborative series of sessions to co-design a process in real time with the goal of solving an operations problem
Simplified FMEA: A risk-prioritization approach adapted for time-limited hospital teams, scoring the likelihood, severity, and detectability of contraband-related failures.
Comparative Measures:
1. Time: Duration of preparation, facilitation, and analysis.
2. People: Number and types of participants required.
3. Cost: Resource intensity, including staff time and facilitation.
4. Action Plans: Strength, specificity, and sustainability of recommendations.
5. Barriers and Facilitators: Implementation challenges unique to each method.
Key Findings (to be expanded in the presentation):
Some methods generated more innovative ideas but required significant facilitation expertise. Others produced concrete, implementable actions but risked missing system-level contributors. As expected, the strength of action items varied, with human factors and system design approaches surfacing design and system changes while QI methods leaned toward procedural fixes.
Differences in cost and time were substantial, with implications for how organizations select methods given resource constraints.
Importance of the Message
Healthcare often defaults to the methods leaders are most familiar with—usually QI-based approaches—without considering whether those tools are the best fit for the problem. This can lead to wasted time, staff frustration, and weaker safety outcomes. By comparing approaches in the same setting and on the same problem, this study highlights the strengths and limitations of each tool.
The central takeaway: there is no one-size-fits-all safety method. Leaders must intentionally choose tools that match the complexity of the problem, the context, and the outcomes desired. For contraband prevention in pediatric behavioral health—a high-risk, emotionally charged, and resource-limited environment—tool selection is not just academic. It can mean the difference between a patient staying safe or experiencing harm.
Presentation Overview
This session will walk participants through:
The contraband problem in pediatric behavioral health.
An overview of each safety method, including practical steps and adaptations.
A comparative analysis of time, resources, costs, and outcomes.
Lessons learned about what each tool contributes—and what it misses.
Practical guidance for leaders: how to select the right method for the right problem.
The presentation will be educational, insightful, and entertaining, drawing on real-world stories from frontline staff, anonymized case examples, and candid reflections about the messiness of trying different tools in practice. Humor and humility will keep the audience engaged, while rigorous comparison provides concrete learning.
Takeaway Points:
Contraband prevention highlights the need for safety tools that account for human factors, system design, and context—not just procedures.
Human factors reviews often generate stronger, system-level solutions, but QI methods may be easier for teams to adopt and spread.
Tool choice matters: time, people, and costs vary dramatically, influencing feasibility in resource-strained settings.
Healthcare needs a toolkit approach, where leaders know the trade-offs and can choose methods intentionally rather than defaulting to habit.
Event Type
Oral Presentations
TimeTuesday, March 241:52pm - 2:15pm EDT
LocationMurray Hill West
Hospital Environments