 |
|
April
17, 2001 Issue 11
 |
|
|||||||||||||||
 |
LEARNING
LINKS Shifting the Burden: Moving Beyond a Reaction Orientation |
|||||||||||||||
 |
FACE
TO FACE Building Community Through "Healthy Chaos": An Interview with Steven Bingler |
|||||||||||||||
 |
FROM
THE FIELD Reducing Hospital Errors Requires a Long-Term Commitment |
|||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||
|
LEARNING
LINKS |
|||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
FACE
TO FACE Building Community Through "Healthy Chaos": An Interview with Steven Bingler by Kali Saposnick Imagine you own a candy store on Main Street and need someone to develop your web site. Whom do you turn to for help? In the 7,000-person town of Littleton, NH, the owner relinquished his store's basement to the high school economics program in exchange for the students' computer services. As a result, the school was able to use its then-empty classroom to house a NASA-sponsored geographic information systems program. That complex, yet simple, exchange exemplifies the kinds of connections that architect Steven Bingler encourages community members to make. "It's authentic economics," says Bingler, founder of Concordia, a nationally recognized, award-winning planning and architectural design firm based in New Orleans, LA. In approaching the design of a new public building or school, the firm engages the whole community in systemically analyzing their resources, raising awareness of otherwise hidden issues, and engendering solutions that meet the needs of diverse constituencies. In particular, Bingler wants to center communities around their schools and vice versa. About the Littleton scenario, he says, "If you can locate a class of 60 students during the day on Main Street, then you can create $100,000 worth of value back at the school site in the form of an empty classroom." The basement redesign, supervised by the town's fire marshal, "took only two months, with the community raising $500 and donating services to build that basement out." Read the complete interview. Steven Bingler will be a forum speaker at the 2001 Systems Thinking in Action® Conference. |
|||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
FROM THE FIELD Reducing Hospital Errors Requires a Long-Term Commitment Each year, hospital medical errors are responsible for 1 million serious injuries and 100,000 deaths in the U.S. alone. Why do so many mistakes occur—and why are they so difficult to prevent? For one thing, despite technological advances aimed at preventing problems, the complexity of our medical system can lead to human errors. For another, hospitals often fail to report mishaps, making learning difficult. Finally, the staff reductions and crowded emergency rooms that have resulted from funding cutbacks make hospitals more vulnerable to blunders than ever before. Despite these challenges, some states are taking a leading role in reducing medical errors. For example, Massachusetts was the first state to endorse safety measures to reduce medication mistakes, the most common type of medical error. Nearly 90 percent of its hospitals have taken initial steps to minimize drug errors in their facilities, and most have stopped punishing individuals who make mistakes but rather try to understand how the wider system broke down. In addition, the Massachusetts Hospital Association reports a growing trend in nearly every Bay State hospital to admit rather than hide errors. Dr. Lucian Leape, an adjunct professor of public health at Harvard, applauds these efforts, but warns that the more facilities look for mistakes, the more they'll find them. He urges hospital leaders to prepare themselves for things to appear worse before they get better. Massachusetts hospitals seem to be taking this long-term view, persevering in their commitment to their patients' welfare. Source: Larry Tye, "Hospitals Struggling to Root Out Care Errors," The Boston Globe, December 11, 2000, and "Mass. Hospitals Cite Effort on Drug Errors," February 17, 2001. Readers who wish to discuss this topic are invited to the Healthcare Community Forum. |
|||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
| Copyright 2001 Pegasus Communications. LEVERAGE POINTS can be freely distributed in its entirety, or reproduced or excerpted for another publication with written permission from Pegasus Communications. Contact permissions@pegasuscom.com. | ||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||
"When
one is willing to see all conflicts—whether
physical, emotional, or mental—as dances
of energy, and to accept them and to blend with
them, options and opportunities for successful
resolution emerge, powerfully and elegantly."
"I'm
sure it may have occurred to you that your book
would be used in other cultures, but probably
not Azerbaijan—a Muslim culture in the
former Soviet Union. I just received a box of
mail and your book When a Butterfly Sneezes
was in it. I can't tell you how relieved I am
to have this here in Baku, as I have just submitted
a $2M proposal to the European Commission for
a Children's Television Program on critical
thinking in conflict prevention. The proposal
has a substantive teaching of teachers component—and
your layout in the Overview is exactly what
we can use as a model."
