Crisis resource management (CRM). The human factor in acute medicine

Even though it is well known that about 70% of accidents with patient are due to deficiencies in the area of human factors and crisis resource management (CRM), health care professionals (i.e. physicians, nurses, paramedics) are still not educated in this aspect. This is in contrast to the fact that there are proven methods and tools available in education and training of human factors and CRM and CRM-based simulation team training using video-based self-reflective debriefing methods is particularly effective. Other important steps to enhance patient safety in the future include concepts to promote a safety culture or the introduction of effective non-punitive incident reporting systems. This article provides an overview of needs and instruments especially for CRM training. Even today such training programs are still relatively rare and not systematically implemented in the German speaking countries, Therefore, there is still a lot to do and achieve. At the same time this offers a great opportunity to be a part of the future to be among the pioneers who write history and take on the responsibility to integrate CRM-based training concepts into medical education in all fields of acute care in order to make it as common and irreplaceable as is the case in most other high-risk high-reliability industries.