Patient Safety in the Cardiac Operating Room: Human Factors and Teamwork: A Scientific Study from the American Heart Association

The cardiac surgical operating room (OR) is a complex environment in which highly trained subspecialists interact with each other using sophisticated equipment to care for patients with severe cardiac disease and significant comorbidities. Thousands of patient lives have been saved or significantly improved with the advent of modern cardiac surgery. Indeed, both mortality and morbidity for coronary artery bypass surgery have decreased during the past decade. Nonetheless, the highly skilled and dedicated personnel in cardiac ORs are human and will make errors. Refined techniques, advanced technologies, and enhanced coordination of care have led to significant improvements in cardiac surgery outcomes

Voices from the Teams - Impacts on Autonomy in Large-Scale Agile Software Development Settings

Forming autonomous, self-organizing, cross-functional teams in software development is becoming more common even in larger organizations, and many organizations are implementing the Scaled Agile Framework. When autonomous teams need to work together, they must sacrifice some level of autonomy since work needs to be coordinated with other teams, which could be a threat to team performance. This study presents how perceived autonomy has changed by listening to the voices from the teams in three large organizations. Although several respondents did not express any experienced changes to autonomy at all, others put forth important changes. The practices where several teams gather in joint events are important arenas in both positive and negative aspects. The arenas give teams a better overview and a sense of being empowered in using their veto right to stop overload of planned work. However, more detailed planning in every single team could cause less ability to switch work between teams and a sense of suffocation due to detailed routines and practices.</p