The Morbidity and Mortality Conference: Opportunities for Enhancing Patient Safety

Since the 20th century, health care institutions have used morbidity and mortality conferences (MMCs) as a forum to discuss complicated cases and fatalities to capitalize on lessons learned. Medical technology, health care processes, and the teams who provide care have evolved over time, but the format of the MMC has remained relatively unchanged. The present article outlines 5 key areas for improvement within the MMC along with prescriptive and actionable recommendations for mitigating these challenges. This work incorporates the contributions of numerous researchers and practitioners from the educational, training, debrief, and health care fields. With the best practices and lessons learned from various domains in mind, we recommend optimizing the MMC by (1) encouraging a culture that leverages expertise from multiple sources, (2) allocating ample time for innovative thinking, (3) using a global approach that considers individual, team, and system-level factors, (4) leveraging learnings from errors as well as near misses, and (5) promoting communication, innovative thinking, and actionable planning. The 5 evidence-based recommendations herein serve to ensure that MMCs are structured learning events that promote, encourage, and support safe, reliable care. Furthermore, the outlined recommendations seek to capitalize upon the MMC's opportunity to engage early discovery as well as proactive risk assessment and action-oriented solutions.