Ensuring safety of the complex adaptive modern healthcare systems we work in requires healthcare professionals to be skilled at maintaining continuous situational monitoring of the system; and the implementation of situational monitoring that takes all system factors into account often leads to significant cognitive load. Hence, the Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (STEPPS) tool was developed using the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) Framework to potentially help to reduce intrinsic factors related to cognitive load through structuring thoughts as well as structured systems thinking during the post hoc analysis of events.

During this workshop, participants will be introduced to the SEIPS Framework that allows analysis of patient journeys and patient care pathways. Participants will also be given the opportunity to apply the STEPPS tool whilst analysing example events for contributory systems factors.