Analysing the Differences of Resilience Between Experts and Novices in Order to Increase Medical Safety and Quality

In clinical sites, including hemodialysis, medical staff have to deal flexibly with fluctuations in the physical condition of patients or the progress of dialysis treatment in order to increase the safety and quality of medical services. It is often observed that experts can perform such actions, whereas novices cannot. A training program is needed to teach appropriate skills to novices in a short time. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the components of experts’ behavior in order to develop such a training program. This study analyzed the differences between experts and novices in their performance during hemodialysis medical services. Subsequently, these differences were discussed from the viewpoint of resilience engineering. As a result, it was found that experts can anticipate the medical characteristics of patients and tasks (e.g., variability of each patient’s condition) and characteristics of patient satisfaction (e.g., contents of medical services that patients demand). Experts depend on their memories of previous treatments and apply them to today’s patient (even though the treatment conditions of the last time and today are different); however, this may lead to medical accidents.