Workgroup


The ISCOME Workgroup promotes the conduct and implementation of interdisciplinary communication research to create safer, higher quality healthcare world wide. With its workgroup program, ISCOME activates diverse international, cutting-edge research teams that gather at ISCOME to investigate and advance current communication-prone topics in healthcare quality and patient safety with an approach that is:

  • Transdisciplinary

  • Evidence-based

  • Collaborative

  • Multicultural

  • Multi-level

  • Global

ISCOME Workgroup Manifesto

The failure to establish effective and appropriate interpersonal communication in the delivery of healthcare is a leading cause of patient harm and loss of life. Thus, communication can be considered the ultimate mediating mechanism of patient safety and quality. Communication is also the ultimate moderator of the association between health goals and health outcomes, and a direct and unique predictor of positive patient outcomes. A high quality communication environment activates effective linkages between goals and outcomes while ineffective communication undermines and deteriorates health and wellbeing. ISCOME is a global center that generates and supports transdisciplinary and international workgroup teams of innovative scientists, policy-makers, and front-line experts who are committed to communication-based research and solutions that lower rates of adverse events and improve quality. ISCOME is dedicated to increasing awareness of these critical linkages between communication science and patient safety and quality by translating evidence and axioms from communication science to health care, enhancing the research agenda, developing tools for providers, managers and quality improvement practitioners, and ultimately informing policy.

Workgroup Meeting 2016: “Interdisciplinary Horizons for Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety”

Suboptimal quality and safety are a well-recognized and documented healthcare problem across the globe, even in developed countries. Preventable incidents harm at least 43 million patients across the globe each year at a cost of $132 billion in excess health care spending (Jha et al., 2013), evidencing that preventable deviations from care standards are a serious global health burden.

It is widely recognized that the process of communication is central to every aspect of health care quality and safety. Interpersonal communication is the vehicle through which safe and high quality medical care takes place – when clinicians communicate well with colleagues and patients, health outcomes are substantially enhanced; when communication is performed poorly, both patients and clinicians are put at significant risk. In fact, ineffective interpersonal communication has been identified as one of the root causes of harmful events.

The ISCOME 2016 workgroup meeting focused on the interdisciplinary tangents that advance communication science into the field of patient safety. The meeting was co-funded by ISCOME, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMS), and comprised an invitation-only gathering of 30 prominent scientists from 10 academic disciplines and 9 different countries. The workgroup pursued the objective to generate an innovative interdisciplinary research agenda that substantiated the following six “hot topics” of patient safety: (1) big data, (2) digital technology, (3) team coordination/integration, (4) patient/family activation, (5) healthy aging, and (6) patient-centered care.

Photo: ISCOME 2016 Workgroup Meeting at the Lilienberg Congress Center in Switzerland

Photo: ISCOME 2016 Workgroup Meeting at the Lilienberg Congress Center in Switzerland

ISCOME Workgroup Publications

The efforts of the ISCOME Workgroup have generated numerous outputs, including journal articles, funded international collaborations, and interdisciplinary books.

Journal articles:

  • “How communication “failed” or “saved the day”: Counterfactual accounts of medical errors.” Street R.L., Petrocelli J.V., Amroze A., Bergelt C., Murphy M., Wieting M.J., Mazor K.M. Journal of Patient Experience (2020).

  • Hannawa, A. F., Spitzberg, B. H., Childress, M., Frankel, R., Pham, J., Wu, A. (in press). Communication Science Lessons for Patient Safety and Quality Care. Journal of Patient Safety and Risk Management.

  • Amati, R., Bellandi, T., Kaissi, A. A. & Hannawa, A. F. (2019). Testing the Integrative Quality Care Assessment Tool (INQUAT): Comparing U.S. and Italian managers’ perceptions of quality. International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance.

  • Hannawa, A. F. & Frankel, R. M. (2018). “It matters what I think, not what you say”: Scientific Evidence for a Medical Error Disclosure Skills Model. Journal of Patient Safety.

  • "Using and choosing digital health technologies: a communications science perspective." Authors: Ovretveit J, Street R, Thimbleby H, Thilo F, Hannawa AF. J Health Organ Manag. (2017, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28260405)

  • "Patient and family empowerment as agents of ambulatory care safety and Quality." Roter DL, Wolff J, Wu A, Hannawa AF. BMJ Quality & Safety (2017, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27558306

  • “Medical error disclosure, interpersonal forgiveness, and outcomes”, Authors: Hannawa AF, Shigemoto Y, Little TD, Journal: Social Science & Medicine (2016, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27017088)

  • Open-access special issue: „Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Medical Error“, Journal of Public Health Research (2013), accessible here.

Books:

  • Textbook for medicine: „New horizons for patient safety: Understanding Communication -- Case Studies for Physicians." Authors: Annegret F. Hannawa, A. Wu, R. Juhasz. Foreword by Sir Liam Donaldson. 2017.

  • Textbook for nursing: "New horizons for patient safety: Safe Communication -- Evidence-based core competencies with case studies from nursing. Authors: Annegret F. Hannawa, A. Wendt, L. Day. Foreword by Pat Benner. 2017.

Funded projects:

  • Project title: “Toward an interdisciplinary conceptualization of medical error disclosure competence (MEDC)”, Methods: Focus groups and social scientific experiments; Funded by: Swiss National Science Foundation (Principal Investigator: A. F. Hannawa).