[Learning from failure - implications for respiratory and intensive care medicine: a conceptual review]

The clinical, social and economical impact of failure in medicine [i. e., adverse health care events (AHCE)] is overwhelming. Respiratory and intensive care medicine are strongly relevant to AHCE, particularly in cases associated with respiratory failure, mechanical ventilation and pharmacotherapy. In spite of the obvious necessity to learn from AHCE, its realisation in health-care organisations is still rare. This conceptual review therefore aims to (i) clarify the most relevant terminology, (ii) identify obstacles related to this health-care topic, and (iii) present possible strategies for solving the problems, thereby enabling respiratory and intensive care medicine to systematically and effectively learn from failure. A review of the literature (effective as of June 2013) derived from the electronic databases Medline via PubMed, EMBASE, ERIC and Google Scholar identified the following relevant obstacles (ii): a so-called blame culture associated with concealing failure, missing system analyses (vs. individual breakdown), and (economically) misdirected incentives. Possible strategies to overcome these obstacles (iii) include acknowledging the importance of leadership, a safe environment, open reporting, an effective feedback culture, and detection (e. g., trigger-tools), analysis and discussion (e. g., double loop learning) of failure. The underlying reasons for the occurrence of AHCE are based on structural, organisational and human shortcomings, and affect all categories of caregivers. Approaches to solving the problem should therefore focus primarily on the entire system, rather than on the individual alone.