A path breaking study by a team of medical anthropologists and linguists at Wayne State University's Institute for Information Technology and Culture (IITC) has identified patterns of speech and social interaction that contribute to maintaining medical safety in a hospital emergency room. The study, titled Learning to Listen, used airline cockpit voice recorder technology to record more than 300 hours of informal conversation among doctors, nurses and technicians in an emergency room, and compared the changing speech patterns with patterns and trends in patient care.

As researchers Dr. Allen W. Batteau and Ms. Margaret Karadjoff reported Nov. 20 at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago, they found that the emergency room in the study has a very safe environment, with a significantly low incidence of error. Errors, such as leaving patients unattended or ordering incorrect medications, rarely occur. When such errors do occur, they are nearly always caught before patients are affected.

This pattern of being able to detect and correct errors is typical of high reliability organizations, characterized by a high level of teamwork among all personnel. Teamwork - open communication, respect for expertise, constant learning, and mutual reinforcement - is created and reinforced through informal communication.

When communication and teamwork break down, errors go uncorrected. On two separate occasions the researchers observed a breakdown of teamwork, although neither one resulted in a hazardous situation for a patient. The researchers are now studying the speech patterns to see if they offer clues for when teamwork is about to break down. If changes in linguistic patterns indicate a degradation of situational awareness, then this becomes a powerful tool for improving patient safety. This suggests that when medical teams monitor their own teamwork, they can become more aware of when the team needs to pull together for the patients' safety.

This study was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Grant # 0236832, and was conducted by the IITC of Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. The findings of the study do not reflect positions of either NSF or Wayne State University.

IITC is a multidisciplinary group of medical and organizational anthropologists, psychologists, engineers, nurses, social workers, computer experts, and medical doctors, collaborating to understand the cultural aspects of technology use. For further information on this project or the IITC, visit Institute for Information Technology and Culture.

Wayne State University is a premier institution offering more than 350 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to more than 33,000 students in metropolitan Detroit.